‘Trial by Jury’ is one of the most quoted cornerstones of ‘British Justice’ – or rather, British Justice as we like to believe it exists. Until the last few years of Labour control of the British eduction system, there was scarcely a child in the country who could not have told you that it dated from the hard won protections from the State embodied in the Magna Carta. Most kids today probably imagine that the Magna Carta is to be found in the ice-cream cabinet.

‘The Jury’ as they are colloquially known have undergone many changes over the centuries to reflect social mores of the time. Once they were nobles and knights, protecting others of similar rank from having their lands confiscated by the King. Civil claims as we know them today.

Criminal offences were the province of those men believed ordained by God, the Clergy. Speaking with God’s voice, and thus God’s wisdom, morally equipped to judge those who had transgressed the few criminal crimes of the time – Thou shalt not Kill, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife and especially not his under-age daughter, Thou shalt definitely, emphatically, not covet his son or even thy neighbour himself….

The Clergy dispensed these duties using their mystic powers. Burning a hole in your hand was popular, holding your head under water a foolproof method. Unquestioned methods on account of those mystic powers bestowed by God upon payment of ‘ex’ number of groats to Ye Olde local Theological College.

When the Pope decided that he no longer wished to supply omnipotent agents to ‘divine the truth’, the Jury system that existed in civil disputes was extended to the Criminal Law. The members of The Jury were scarcely the man in the street, definitely not the woman, nor the landless majority – they were local squires expected to research the crime and decide the facts – and still be an infallible method of divining the truth but without the divine intervention.

We have tinkered with the definition of ‘Peers’ ever since; deciding that ownership of property was not a deciding factor in truth divining ability, nor gender, but sanity counted, or a semblance thereof, as did age. Past 70 and you apparently lose the mystical ability to divine the truth, before the age of 18 you are not so blessed. Today The Jury is a random selection of local voters who have lived in Britain for more than 5 years and fit the other qualifications. 

We do not know how Juries decide a matter – they may engage in witchcraft for all we know. Their deliberations are secret. In some areas they may be wildly partisan and given to particular decisions based on which church their great-grandfather worshipped in – alternatively they may come under great pressure to decide in a certain way simply because they live in an area where a particular decision is required of them as a preferable alternative to having their knee-caps shot off. We just don’t know – we can only speculate. That is why the Jury system was abandoned at one point in Northern Ireland in favour of the so-called ‘Diplock Judges’ who sat alone, arbiters of Law and Fact.

The advantage of a Judge is that he is required to record his reasons for making a particular decision, giving the accused more chance of appealing against an apparently irrational decision. You will never know what influenced the Jury that decided you were guilty; it could have been that your eyes were too close together.

We don’t expect the Jury to understand the vagaries of mental illness, even though the man ‘in the dock’ may have committed criminal offences. We allow him to state his case before a tribunal of specialised individuals. His ‘freedom’ – or otherwise – is decided by a Judge, advised by someone with medical expertise and a person with extensive knowledge of what is politely called ‘social care’ these days.

Not 12 people from the locale who may be swayed by emotive views on, for instance, the danger to society that the average schizophrenic may pose. We understand that the media portray mental illness in a particularly negative light, and the ‘average citizen’ would cheerfully lock up every schizophrenic for the rest of their days, given the chance.

I would suggest that the time has come for the so-called ‘historic sex abuse cases’ to be tried by a similarly specialised tribunal.  A Judge to rule on the law. Someone with extensive knowledge of the damage that sexual abuse can do to a person’s ability to retain information accurately, to come forward in timely manner, to tell the truth – and someone with long experience of caring specifically for teenagers who come from damaged backgrounds, who can tell the difference between bitterness born of prior abuse and a desire for revenge on the system, and those who have genuinely  suffered abuse within the care system.

At present, we decide these matters via a Jury fed on a daily basis media propaganda designed to make them believe that all women are strong, intelligent creatures, but who need protection from beastly men, children are all utter innocents incapable of lying until an elderly celebrity put his arm round them, and men all have bulging eyes and bulging trousers, likely to inflict incalculable harm unless safely incarcerated.

We have Jury members happily proclaiming ‘Wow! I wasn’t expecting to be in a jury deciding a paedophile’s fate, I’ve always wanted to Fuck up a paedophile & now I’m within the law!’ Note: the sentiment was not whether an individual was a paedophile, but merely one of ‘deciding his fate’.

Why should he not think like that? Operation Yewtree has successfully convinced the general public that it is not necessary to investigate allegations of sexual abuse, the mere fact that an allegation has been made is sufficient to label a person ‘paedophile’.

How many people on Jury duty will have been influenced by this new line of thinking? Is it just or reasonable that a man’s liberty should rest on unknown factors within the Jury room – ‘he’s got bulging eyes’ – when so much of the evidence relies on two versions of shaky memories of events long ago?

A tribunal comprised as I have suggested would be required to record the reasons for their verdict in writing, reasons which could be challenged. Based on evidence understood by those hearing it. Literally understood, not understood from advertisements on afternoon TV, or a half listened to TV documentaries which left them believing that all children’s homes were places of untold horrors.

Historical sexual abuse is different. Rules of evidence which apply in other criminal cases have been abandoned to give victims a better voice. The least we could do to redress the balance for the accused is to allow that evidence to be heard by specialists who truly understand the problem and are accountable for a particular decision.

To leave a man’s liberty up to a random selection of an increasingly emotive general public without any accountability for that decision to be challenged on grounds of irrationality is decidedly Un-British.

What think you?

The keening and wailing from the feministas yesterday after prosecutor Robert Colover performed his duty as an official of the court and disclosed evidence which ‘suggests an explanation or partial explanation of the accused’s actions’ was ear deafening.

Initially, the commentators were baying for the head of Judge Nigel Peters, The Sun describing the expected ’fury’ – for their readers did not know of the incident before The Sun published its story; children’s charities were quick to pile in behind – Paul Jackson, a junior numpty for the NSPCC described the disclosure as a ‘perversion of justice’.

Eventually, one or two media folk who could actually read, realised that the true ‘culprit’ was the barrister whose words the Judge was echoing. They clambered over each other to demand his head on a platter - 43,236 of the outraged trotted over to the grandly named ‘world’s petition site’ to demand that Attorney-General stop this heinous business of forcing prosecutors to disclose any fact that could possibly mitigate an offence against a woman. I’m surprised that they stopped short at that – why not demand that those accused of sexual offences not be allowed to conduct a defence at all?

This wasn’t the defence counsel blaming the victim – this was the prosecution barrister for the CPS speaking. We don’t yet – nor do any of the dozens of journalists wailing this morning – have the full transcript of the trial. But sheer logic, something sadly missing the the main steam media, tells me that it wasn’t Robert Colover voicing his personal opinion of the victim – he would scarcely  have been prosecuting if that was his belief – but Robert Colover disclosing that the prosecution held evidence which described the victim as ‘predatory and egging on the accused’.

Had he not done so, and had it later been discovered that the prosecution held such evidence, then an appeal would have held the entire conviction to be unsafe.

Robert Colover was complying with the Attorney-General’s own rules for disclosure. For doing so, he has this morning been presented to the Feminstaz as a duly suspended sacrificial lamb.

Do you really want to engineer a situation where the prosecution holds evidence that would exonerate you from, say, a driving offence, but keep quiet about a letter they received from the victim admitting that it was his fault?

Of course the victim in this case was a child, and the accused was alleged to have engaged in sexual activity with her – and that according to the Feministaz means that the rule of law should be thrown out of the window.

Why not dispense with the need for a court case? An accusation alone from a woman should be sufficient to lock up the accused for life without any need to traumatise the victim further…

Welcome to 2013.

Back in 2010, the British Daily Mail newspaper in the UK was reported as likely to be sued by the American internet giant Facebook.

The Daily Mail faced legal action from Facebook, after wrongly naming the social networking site in an article about child safety online. The Mail published an online retraction of the article by child protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas, which was originally published under the headline:

“I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.”

Whilst the newspaper was busy retracting, the reporter Mark Williams-Thomas, was tweeting his innocent role in this catastrophe that he claimed had been totally caused by the Daily Mail.

In a message sent via Twitter, author of the piece Williams-Thomas said he had “made it very clear in final copy to the Mail that the experiment was conducted on a SNS [social networking site]“ with “no mention of Facebook“.

It was a terrible mistake that Williams-Thomas bitterly regretted had happened and his representative at the Daily Mail expressed her clients’ legal position quite categorically. The Guardian picked up on the contretemps. Williams-Thomas was reported as even having utilised his police training by taking notes of his 24 hour day and who he had spoken to at exactly what minutes of that day. This sort of detailed reportage always sounds convincing. The Mail was forced to apologise and take the rap.

 ”The paper apologised in print today and online yesterday for the error, which the author of the piece, Mark Williams-Thomas, insisted had been introduced at the paper despite being told it was wrong. Williams-Thomas, a former policeman who now works as a criminologist, subsequently explained:

“At 19.48 hours on Tuesday 9th March I sent amended copy to the interviewing journalist at the Daily Mail in which I had made small but significant changes to the copy she had sent to me which I read at 19.21, including removing the word Facebook and replacing it with ‘well known social networking site’. I made it very clear to the journalist and her alone that the changes I had made were necessary before publication. It is clear that the changes were not made… At no stage prior to publication did I have any communication with any editors at the Daily Mail.”

The protestations by Mr. Williams-Thomas became absolute and irrefutably clear in the Guardian:

“Williams-Thomas insists that he was not using Facebook but had been using another, unspecified social network.”

So, you can imagine my surprise when I clicked on this old youtube clip that has been on youtube since April 2011 and watched the first 37 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1lfp2xFQ5M

Just as Bill Clinton did NOT have sex with that woman………

So Mark Williams-Thomas did NOT use FACEBOOK……..are you sure?

In case your computer cannot do video, here are some image captures and a verbatim transcript of the dialogue

“My latest investigation has uncovered shocking new evidence of how paedophiles are posting horrific images and videos of child abuse on Facebook.”

“At first glance these could be innocent images of young kids posted by themselves or their families…”

“but a closer examination of their profile page, and the friends linked to them, reveal some truly disturbing images of children being sexually abused, along with keywords that direct other paedophiles to other places where they can trade them.”

So we are left with a few questions after all.

Did Mark Williams-Thomas lie to the Daily Mail and pretend that his story was not about Facebook?

Did the Daily Mail know it was about Facebook but then simply wanted to avoid a costly legal battle?

If there are horrific images of child abuse easily accessible on Facebook why have Mark Williams-Thomas and the Daily Mail attempted to hide this fact from the world by insisting their investigation was not using Facebook?

Facebook of course may have their own list of questions.

One thing is for sure, we have not heard the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So Help Me God!

©Moor Larkin

Seven words jumped out near the start of the second chapter of this book.  ‘But the truth had to emerge eventually’ –  fifteen chapters later the truth had still not put in an appearance.

I’m glad I did not buy this when it first appeared for sale in April this year. Then it was £7.99 – I saved £7.10 with my kindle version. Had I waited another 24 hours I could have saved another 13 pence, perhaps if you wait a few weeks longer the publisher will pay you to read it.

The authors starts as he means to go on, using other people’s words instead of his own. A title, no doubt inspired by graffiti scrawled outside two of Jimmy Savile’s  homes, followed by 17 chapters of stories lifted straight from British newspapers and magazines from January 2012 onwards.  Other Amazon reviewers complain that he repeats the same stories, surprising given the hundreds more he could have found had he made that little bit more effort.

Here is the author’s interpretation of a tale included in Jimmy’s 1974 autobiography – “As it Happens”.  The story involves a girl , a night club and a lady police officer.

 ‘If she comes in I’ll bring her back tomorrow but I’ll keep her all night first as my reward’ he wrote of his meeting with a woman police officer.  Sure enough, that evening the young girl came in.  Savile claimed that he took her into his office and told her : ‘Run now if you want, but you can’t run all your life’ The girl stayed at the dance and then overnighted at Savile’s before he took her to the police station the next morning.’

‘He went on : ‘The lady policewoman was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues, for it was well known that were I to go I would probably take half the station with me’

Here is what Jimmy Savile OBE wrote  from Page 51 of his own book – “As it happens” Jimmy Savile 1974

‘A high ranking lady police officer came in one night and showed me a picture of an attractive girl who had run away from a remand home. ‘Ah’ says I all serious, ‘if she comes in I’ll bring her back tomorrow but I’ll keep her all night first as my reward’.  The law lady, new to the area was nonplussed.  Back at the station she asked ‘Is he serious?’

It is God’s truth that the absconder came in that night.  Taking her into the office I said ‘run now if you want to but you can’t run for the rest of your life’  She listened to the alternative and agreed that I hand her over if she could stay at the dance, come home with me and that I would promise to see her when they let her out.  At 11.30 the next morning she was willingly presented to the astounded lady of the law.  The officer was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues for it was well known that were I to go I would probably take half the station with me.

A ‘high ranking lady police officer ‘ in the late 1960’s? I’m not sure about that one Jimmy and there’s that implication of power and influence  that Savile could not really have had, that is, if another story that is, regurgitated in the same chapter is anything to go by.

The author introduces Dennis Lemon who ‘acted as Savile’s bodyguard’ and the ‘He’s up to court tomorrow – interfering with young girls, he’s worried’.  No ‘taking half the station’ with him that time is there ?

The author ends his first chapter disclosing how much Jimmy was paid for each episode of Jim’ll Fix it in 1980 (£600) and how much he got in 1990 (£2350) so he obviously saw the press reports about the numerous Freedom Of Information requests made to  to the BBC in the wake of the Newsnight fiasco.

In Chapter 2 – ‘the story breaks’ in the Sunday Mirror in January 2012, closely followed by the Oldie, The Guardian and the Telegraph and despite the fact that ‘nothing had seen the light of day in the mainstream media’ before Jim’s death, within three months every paper in the land printed the story of the brave Newsnight journalists and the film that never was.

The subtitle of this book is ‘the inside story of the greatest scandal in TV history’.  A more fitting start as it happens, would have been ‘the inside job that was done on one of the greatest television stars in the history of television’, but that would have been a tad long given the fact that he couldn’t even be bothered to write ‘television’, ‘TV’ has to do.

The book is actually a compendium rather than a narrative; I hope I got that right. I’m no author but I do know a well researched piece when I see one, and this is certainly not.  His first error occurs right at the beginning when he describes Top of the Pops being first aired in 1974….

1974 is certainly an important year in the Savile story as it happens, am I repeating myself enough already?

‘Bosses of flagship BBC2 show Newsnight launched the investigation into Sir Jimmy in the days after his death ….. but they were eventually ordered to scrap the report’ He goes on quoting the Sunday Mirror : ‘the TV journalists discovered that complaints regarding the star were made to police in 2007 …. But the CPS decided to take no action due to insufficient evidence’.

The Sunday Mirror has a ‘BBC source’ spilling the beans in January 2012 who explains the film maker’s honourable intent for starting an investigation that ‘by interviewing the 3 women Newsnight hoped to establish the truth of the claims ….. only for BBC executives to halt the investigation’.

When I read the above, I naturally assumed the ‘source’ to be Meirion Jones, the producer of the ill fated film but McShanes epic continues with ‘the insider said’ ….. people are up in arms ….. someone somewhere should have realised that a report trying to uncover a dark side of one of the BBC’s favourite sons was a silly thing to do.  It cost millions …… down the drain’.

The author does get round to mentioning Meirion Jones but not before he introduces us to the hero of the story: Mark Williams–Thomas the eventual presenter of Exposure. The next newspaper stories covered occur in August 2012, seven months after the Mirror ‘broke’ the story.  The author announces that ‘his (Jimmy’s) victims were tracked down by MWT’; he quotes Thomas’ online blog thing the night before ‘Exposure’ hit our screens, explaining how ‘a year earlier, after presenting a programme about child protection, he was approached by someone who asked if he had ever heard about JS being involved in child abuse. He had heard rumours, but JS was still alive at the time and MWT was ‘sceptical’ as no journalist or publication had ever substantiated such stories. Savile died before the former detective could speak to the source and when he did, although that source had credibility it was a ‘lone voice’.  ‘He had never been on my radar’ said Williams-Thomas.

MWT is clearly referring to the Newsnight film broadcast on 6^th July 2011. July 2011, three months before Jimmy’s death on 29^th October 2011. He does not mention this, unless there are footnotes not included in the Kindle version, so I include my own points by way of further information to the serious reader.

‘I knew that the key would be to collect credible evidence’.  Recounting the ‘I ran it like a police operation’ boast from Thomas, ‘he and L Gardiner (producer of Exposure) were the only ones who knew the identities of the women who chose not to speak on record about Savile’. He was taking a ‘big risk’ he said but concluded that ‘I have no doubt that on the evidence I have gathered, if Savile was still alive I would be banging ON HIS DOOR TO GET HIM NICKED’.

Williams–Thomas is stretching my patience now.  I should read the primary source again to see if he actually said that, because if he did then he is deliberately misrepresenting the facts.  He did not track down the ‘victims’ most of them were already available to him eleven months before Exposure aired.  It also beggars belief that only he and Lesley Gardiner his ITV producer, were aware of the identities of the anonymous ‘victims’.  Lesley G is the wife of Alex G, Thomas’ producer in the delightfully titled 2009 show  ‘To catch a paedophile’ .

The reader is not told the identity of one of Thomas’ early ‘credible’ witnesses used later in the film but he is described as a ‘BBC producer’ who ‘said he was surprised when Savile invited him to a Chinese restaurant called the Lotus House‘.  The more interested readers of Anna and Moor’s blogs will recognise this as Wilfred De’ath, his story gets a few paragraphs and is followed by another alleged ex BBC employee, one Sue Thompson, her rather important piece gets just one paragraph.

Just a few chapters later, the author describes what he calls ‘The BBC in Crisis’.  The ‘credible’ witness is arrested but the author does not appear to have linked this despite the press reporting his being a ‘producer of Savile’s on the BBC show teen Scene’ the very show that De’ath was allegedly meeting Jimmy about when the alleged Chinese Restaurant incident took place.

The reader is then introduced to the following :

Fiona, Charlotte, Angie, Karin (choir girl story Stoke Mandeville), Val and Anna who ‘did not take part in the documentary but wrote of her experiences online’ and implicated ‘two other stars’ in an incident alleged to have taken place after a recording of Clunk Click. ‘Anna’ is presumably Karin Ward then, strange that two ‘Karin’s’ feature in the the same story, but we have to remember that the author is merely presenting press reports, unless these were the names used in the film – answers below please, I really cannot GO THERE again.

A few paragraphs later a four page piece on Colleen Nolan and her experiences on TOTP.  I will make no further comment on this, apart from the fact that the Duncroft gals have, up to now shared less than 6 pages in total.

Just hours after Exposure aired Scotland Yard announced it’s verdict on Jimmy Savile.  The ‘recent information would be ‘assessed’ and the Metropolitan Police would be ‘putting victims at the heart of our enquiries’ – David Gray.  The backlash against all things Savile and the BBC began, and within days his headstone was removed.

By 9^th October Commander Peter Spindler ‘was quoted as saying’ : ‘we have formally recorded 8 criminal allegations [...] his offending behaviour does appear to be on a national scale’.  He goes on to describe ’20 potential victims’ but ‘we believe we will come up with between 20 and 25 victims’.  He made it clear that the ‘police would only launch investigations into living individuals about whom allegations are made if they get some evidence’. It would be an ‘assessment rather than an investigation’. Because Savile was dead, officers were looking at other alleged abusers whose names had now cropped up’.

The Panorama special  ‘What the BBC knew’ is covered next and is interesting because it provides the ONE direct reference to the man who formed such a huge part of the authors ‘inside story’.  ‘Meirion Jones who also worked on the story said ‘I was sure the story would come out one way or another and if it did the BBC would be accused of a cover up’. He goes on ‘I wrote an email to Peter saying ‘the story is strong enough’.

By 19^th October the police announced that the JS inquiries have become a ‘formal criminal investigation’ – in just two weeks ‘200 potential victims’ have been uncovered.

In the 5^th chapter, ‘The Victims speak out’, begins the ‘most disturbing of all’ the stories to date, that of Jimmy’s great niece.  His depiction of the family’s response speaks volumes: several members of the Savile Clan said ….. ‘such remarks brought shame on the entire family’.

Under Chapter 6 entitled ‘More Allegations’ we are treated once again to Karin Ward’s memories of regular visits to BBC TELEVISION CENTRE – ‘sometimes going every week to sit in the audience’.  She goes on ‘The production staff must have known. They were in and out of his dressing room with snacks.  We were drinking alcohol and some of them must have seen Jimmy with his hand up someone’s top’.

Prior to this we have the Deborah Cogger story and following Karin comes ‘Jill’ who spoke to the Sun about her experiences in Jimmy’s caravan when he suddenly turned up at her mother’s B and B.  Next we have the anonymous future model, who had to have an abortion after Jimmy raped her when she was just 16.  She was so traumatised by these events that she applied to work with Savile on Top of the Pops several years later.

By Chapter Seven – ‘Duncroft’ it is mid October and 5 ex Duncroft girls are named:

1. Toni Townsend
2. Carole Wells 52 years old
3. Bebe Roberts 62
4. Frances Jennings 53
5. Kathleen Webb 55

Chapter 8 is called ‘Broadmoor’.

Chapter 9 is ‘More Hospital visits’ but begins with a story about one Katrina Rose, then a minor incident involving an occupational therapist, then the reader somehow arrives in Glen Coe.  ‘Savile owned a cottage in Glen Coe and it was feared that as many as 20 victims may have been taken there’.  The founder of the mountain Rescue team, Hamish MacInnes who knew Jimmy well, had heard no such allegations indeed he imparts a very interesting piece of information when he says :

‘HE DID NOT SEEM TO LIKE TO STAY HERE ON HIS OWN, SOMEONE LOCAL WAS ALWAYS WITH HIM’

I will skip the next few chapters and fast forward to Chapter 14 – ‘Charity work and famous connections’ for it opens with another interesting snippet that the reader may not have picked up on yet and that is that ‘A GREAT MANY PEOPLE DID NOT LIKE JIMMY SAVILE’. Using remarks that could have been lifted straight from Daily Mail readers comments – ‘he gives me the creeps’ or ‘I can’t stand that man’ but ‘he does  a lot for charity’.  To be fair the author does outline some of Jimmy’s efforts in this sphere but soon reverts to form describing an alleged abuse of a 11 year old in Stoke Mandeville’s chapel during mass and other horror stories including the account of an ex-nurse who claims to have witnessed Jimmy abusing a patient in a hospital bed in Leeds General Infirmary.

Reading the same awful stories again for the purpose of investigation could certainly dampen the soul of the most fervent Savile supporter, but, just as sure as behind every silver cloud there is a much bigger blacker one you can always rely on someone somewhere in the entertainment industry to provide a little light relief.  For me that someone turned out to be Jim Davidson.  I laughed out loud at his remarks before and after his arrest in January 2013.  “Just pick someone you don’t like and say it’s them” he says of the ‘witch hunt’ that is/was the Yewtree police investigation.  Of Jimmy: ‘as odd as he was, Savile can’t defend himself’ and of his own arrest, ‘I can’t remember last week, let alone 25 years ago’.  Thank you Mr Davidson, you made my day with that.

Chapter 16 is called ‘The Duchess and her family’. This is what the author says about Jimmy and his mum. ‘Behind the seemingly innocent childlike devotion to her he so frequently expressed, was there some other secret that was never spoken ?’

McShane finishes his compendium of other people’s stories with the release of the findings of the Yewtree ‘investigation’ wherein an ‘assessment’ of the claims made against Jimmy Savile have rendered him responsible for 214 ‘crimes’.  The last word is left to Mark Williams –Thomas whose words I will not repeat here save the author’s:

‘And he (Williams) added, chillingly :’There could be at least double the number of potential victims.  It’s a mere drop in the ocean’.

All in all, I am glad that I purchased and read through ‘Savile the Beast’ for one thing it brought to my attention was the fact that Wilfred De’ath’s story actually involved the Mascot Hotel in Central London, a rather down market establishment off Baker Street, rather than the eminently more upmarket Ascot Hotel in Mayfair.  Myself and several other commentators had discussed this story at length on Moor Larkin’s blog.  The De’ath story seems even less likely now.  Where I could imagine customers having access to a telephone in a posh hotel, and the Ascot, Mayfair is a very posh hotel, I cannot quite see this facility in the Mascot.  This finding led to another by Moor Larkin, thorough as ever, to note that De’ath was a regular contributor to the Oldie Magazine whose boss Richard Ingrams edited Private Eye.  Strange that Mr Ingrams claims never to have heard anything about Jimmy Savile back in the day?

Anyone who puts pen to paper has a motivation.  It is sad that someone would want to merely compile a number of press reports about a tragedy without any thought that the stories might not be true.  John McShane’s ‘home page’ on Amazon lists his other works which include books about ‘Baby P’, Levi Bellfield, Cheryl and Ashley (Love wars) and Heath Ledger, the latter of which attracts the following response in the review section :

The only saving grace was that it is not very long and quick to read but then again that was probably rushing my way through it. I felt the author knew nothing about Heath Ledger other than what he has trawled off the internet and dare I say it threw it together just to cash in on the actor’s death.

I couldn’t have said it better myself save adding the following conclusion. The initial television investigation into claims made against Jimmy Savile is described here as an attempt to see if those claims had any substance.  Whoever made this statement to the press is a liar.  In his earliest e mails to his boss, Meirion Jones uses the words ‘Jimmy Savile Paedophile’.  It’s all there in Appendix 12 of the Pollard Report that is mentioned by everyone but read by nobody.  This book will appeal to those who are only too willing and happy  to believe that Jimmy Savile was indeed a ‘beast’ rather than ‘one of the greatest characters of this city’ – Leeds General Infirmary on news of the death of Sir Jimmy Savile.

Addendum

I was in Leeds a few weeks ago as part of my Savile’s Travels investigations.  I spoke to several people including two mothers outside the lakeside Café to which Jimmy was a regular visitor.  They were interested to hear that an alternative view of the story is being investigated and that evidence exists that the stories presented in the television show were untrue.  They told me that the main reaction of Leeds folk was one of hurt and betrayal especially given the fantastic send off Jimmy was given.  They did not dismiss my idea’s out of hand, quite the reverse.  The Press and others have perpetuated a huge lie about the Late Jimmy Savile.  The general public appear to have swallowed this lie but I believe that their hearts and minds can be recaptured and the record can be set straight.  I don’t know where I read it but somewhere someone remarked that Jimmy Savile NEVER said a bad word about anyone.

McShane’s publisher is no stranger to allegations of falsehood.

After an acrimonious dissolution of the original partnership in March 2002, John Blake went solo. In August 2008 a book which was about to be published by JBP, On Her Majesty’s Service under the name of Ronald Evans, a former bodyguard of Sir Salman Rushdie, had a Declaration of Falsity made against it by a Judge in the High Court for the inclusion of 11 “serious falsehoods” defaming Mr Rushdie, after extracts were serialised in The Mail On Sunday. The book was never published.

Jimmy Savile wrote two books during his life, three, if you count ‘Love is an uphill thing’ which is  basically the paperback version of the hardback ‘As it Happens’ published in 1974 and written in just three weeks in ‘longhand’ and on ‘knocked off – (note) books’.  ‘As it Happens’ is the one most quoted in the main stream media because of the stories involving girls.  The second (or third) book Jimmy wrote has been mentioned but largely ignored in the press.  It is called ‘God’ll  Fix it’ and was commissioned and published in 1978 for Mowbrays Popular Christian Paperbacks. Jimmy was working on a  programme called ‘Speakeasy’ in 1978 a religious talk show.   Anyone who wants to know the real Jimmy Savile would do well to read this book.  I will quote just a few lines of his chapter ‘Why do I think people suffer’ because I think that it gives an important insight into Jimmy’s thoughts on his efforts for those he saw as less well off than himself and the real motive behind his hospital and charitable efforts.

‘For instance, I might have got up at six in the morning to drive to see a kid in hospital.  What I have done for the kid is nothing.  The kid’s example helped me no end, because if nothing else, it made me realise that I was fortunate, blessed, or whatever, and that my body was even now able to enjoy the good things of God and put itself out for the very child that was suffering’.

Join me in Leeds on 29^th October in Roundhay park for a walk around the lake.  It’s not that far and it’s a lovely place.  Let’s show the media what we think of their stories and let’s show Jimmy and his family that we can put ourselves out just a little bit for him and them.

©Rabbitaway.

Another day, another expensive inquiry into the ubiquitous ‘Savile allegations’. Operation Newgreen, the ‘Oh my God, someone’s making allegations that West Yorkshire Police were complicit in concealing Savile’s ‘offending’ – we’d better hold an Inquiry’ knicker waving exercise that has been convulsing West Yorkshire Police.

The Police, nationally, are well aware that, if you broadcast a programme on national television, followed by nationwide newspaper coverage, that ‘x’  - now deceased – is a paedophile and that lawyers are lining up to formulate civil claims against their estate, you will awaken long buried memories in people of once meeting that individual, and that the knowledge that other people are making compensation claims means they will no longer be ‘alone’. If you add in the fact that anyone making such claims ‘will be believed’, then you can be assured that the phone lines will be busy. Thus it was that ‘within 24 hours’ of an obscure made-for-TV ‘fictumentary’ being aired – West Yorkshire police had agreed a budget,  committed specially trained personnel, and were ready and waiting for the onslaught of ‘victims’ requiring support and advice.

The report doesn’t actually investigate any of the ‘Allegator victims’© raised from their torpor to snap at Savile’s heels – or rather his multi-million pound estate. Not investigating victim’s accounts is now ‘national policy’.

“The majority of these crime reports have been finalised and recorded as having being committed by Savile, in line with national policy.”

Instructions were issued to make sure that there were no rogue investigations carried out by enterprising police forces and that Operation Newgreen remained true to the ‘nationally agreed’ policy of not actually investigating anything concerning victims…(page 21 Newgreen report) so we have no details of any ‘victims’ stories.

What it does do is painstakingly take apart some of the 150 people who were part of the ’600 people who came forward to provide information to Operation Yewtree’ – for you see, not all the people who came forward to Yewtree were alleged victims, some were merely repeating tittle tattle that they thought Yewtree should know about. And some of those people were West Yorkshire policemen. Some of the stories that they had to tell have appeared in national newspapers (policemen leaking information to national newspapers? Whodathought it?) They are now enshrined in the national psyche as Zombie factoids. Shot down by painstaking investigation and interviewing – not the fallible memory of traumatised ‘victims’ who can’t be expected to remember whether it was 1978 or 1988 that they were raped in a crowded hotel foyer by a national celebrity – but truthful policemen, trained in the art of recounting solid facts.  Not that shooting them down will do any good – the factoids are already up and running for the Augean stables of conspiracy sites muttering ‘whitewash’, ‘cover-up’ and ‘pathetic excuses’…

Still, for the benefit of those interested in the truth, here are a few spent carcasses of some of those Zombie factoids:

At 7.5 (all these references refer to the Newgreen report) In October 2012, media reported that Savile had been investigated by the police in relation to offences of indecency involving ‘young girls’ (age not stipulated) – an employee of Savile’s nightclub was quoted as saying that ‘he had paid them (the police) off’.

Radio Leeds then conducted their own interview with this unnamed employee who had told them that he had been misquoted (surprise!) regarding ‘paying off the police’. The West Yorkshire Police (WYP)have also traced this employee and he has reconfirmed that he was misquoted by the media – he had actually said Savile had paid off the alleged victim’s families.

However, WYP didn’t leave it at that, they also trawled through the CPS records and court records to see if they could find any trace of such a prosecution ever being started, never mind withdrawn. Nothing. Zilch. Just the word of an ex-employee of the nightclub.

Still they didn’t rest. They trawled through the Yewtree ‘victim’s’ reports – surely this person would have come forward and told their story now – after all, they had allegedly been prepared to stand up in court 50 years ago? Nothing. Zilch. Just a misquoted newspaper report of an allegation.

At 7.9. The 1964 ledger compiled by the Metropolitan Paedophile unit that the HMIC report ‘Mistakes were made’ said should have been sent to West Yorkshire police.

This is the famous ledger that HMIC ‘linked to Savile to Duncroft school’ as early as 1964. Only obliquely! It named Savile as a possible visitor to the house of a musician who was later found to be living off the immoral earnings of two prostitutes who had earlier attended Duncroft. There was no suggestion that Savile had even met the two girls! Still ‘join the dots’ is a popular zombie game…

West Yorkshire police are puzzled as to why the HMIC report ‘should have been sent’ to them – for there are no mentions in the ledger of any connections to West Yorkshire!

At 7.11 The anonymous letter received by MPS in 1998.

WYP went to the trouble of tracing the Met officer who received this letter. He apparently received more than one such letter, which he was of the opinion were written by the same anonymous author. He acknowledged that at the time there was a popular rumour circulating in his department that ‘Savile was a paedophile’ – a claim refuted by his senior officer. However, a series of ‘green ink’ anonymous letters alleging Savile was a paedophile would be more than sufficient to start such a rumour.

They also traced the WYP officer to whom the Met officer had imparted this information. He handed the information over to a Detective Inspector who headed the equivalent unit in WYP. All 24 police officers who worked in this unit at the time, many now retired, have been traced and interviewed. None of them have any recollection of receiving a copy of this anonymous letter, or what happened to it. At 7.19 the force acknowledge that even though the Met police had been unable to verify the information – they should have recorded it.

At 7.21 The HMIC report claimed that in 2003 the Met police ‘spoke with’ a woman who claimed to have been assaulted at a recording of Top of the Pops (is this the famous ‘hand on bum’ incident?) The HMIC said this information should have been passed on to West Yorkshire Police. Again WYP are mystified – the victim was not from Yorkshire, nor was the offence allegedly carried out in Yorkshire, nor was any prosecution mooted against anyone from Yorkshire.

At 7.22 The infamous 2007 Duncroft allegations. Surrey Police did make enquiries of WYP as to whether they had any intelligence on ‘Savile the paedophile’. They did it via the anti-corruption unit because not unreasonably (and faced with the sort of ‘Allegator victims’© that were capable of waving forged letters from Surrey police around) they didn’t want to risk some enterprising policeman earning himself a few bob from a tabloid by reporting that a national celebrity was under investigation (as if!). The WYP replied that there was only one crime report concerning Savile – as the innocent victim of having his spectacles stolen!

There was only a telephone conversation at this stage, with the promised follow up of a report. Neither Surrey Police nor WYP have any record of this promised report having been sent.

Surrey Police did interview Savile under caution. They sent him a letter asking him to make contact – a letter which he promptly mislaid. He asked his friend Inspector Mick Starkey (tactfully described as DI(A) in the report – no one wants to be publicly identified as a fried of Savile’s these days!) to find out who he was supposed to be contacting in Surrey. Mick Starkey phoned the Surrey police control room, found out who Savile was supposed to be talking to and passed on a message giving that policeman Savile’s phone number – all done on the official recorded police telephone lines.

The intelligence thus gleaned from Surrey was correctly logged onto WYP system, in a confidential section – and importantly ‘tagged‘ so that its existence would show up in any subsequent search, but without making the salacious details apparent to any enterprising policeman with a hot line to the Daily Mirror (as if!). The full report could then be accessed by any genuine future enquiry.

At 7.33 Police Officers who had made reports to Operation Yewtree.

Not surprisingly, the words of an ex-police officer would have been taken extremely seriously by Operation Yewtree. They do not suffer from the ‘memory distortions’ of traumatised victims, and could be expected to be truthful, factual, objective and not salacious. Thus when one retired officer reported that he had met an ‘angry Savile’ jogging in Roundhay Park, shortly followed by an ‘upset’ female stating that Savile was a ‘horrible man’ who she wished would not come into the cafe that he believed she worked in – it was taken very seriously.

WYP have traced the owners of the cafe and all their former female employees. They all say that Savile came in regularly, they had become good friends with him, and that he never behaved or spoke inappropriately to them. He took them to London to see the filming of Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It and always behaved like a gentleman. The only record WYP could find of any police presence at the cafe, or anything involving a female, was one woman who complained of having been short changed in the cafe whilst Savile was drinking tea there.

WYP have also traced all 21 former colleagues of the officer who made this claim to Yewtree – none of them have any recollection of the incident, or of any claims being bandied around alleging a sexual offence.

Now in the HMIC report this incident was referred to as a ‘victim attempting to report an offence’ by Savile at a prior date to Yewtree. However, the officer concerned has now confirmed to WYP that no such allegation was made to them at the time nor subsequently!

At 7.36 Yet another retired officer – offering the ‘ooh, that proves it’ information that Savile had volunteered the use of his flat to support the policing operation of the Robbie Williams concert in 2006. The offer wasn’t taken up. An entertaining example of the ‘serious allegations’ that were made to Operation Yewtree…

At 7.37 And another retired officer reported to Yewtree that there were ‘rumours’ that Savile was a ‘pervert’. When interviewed by WYP he was unable to provide any more information as to the basis of these ‘rumours’.

At 7.38 Yet another ‘retired police officer’ ringing Yewtree to report that Savile took ‘young girls’ (age unspecified) to his barge in Leeds for parties. Again, challenged by an interview from WYP he was unable to substantiate this. Edited on August 31st 2013 by Anna to add the priceless information that Savile couldn’t have taken anyone to this barge in the 1970s as alleged – the barge sunk in 1959 and remained resolutely underwater until cleared away by the volunteers cleaning the canal in 1970s. So much for information received from ‘impeccable sources’….

At 7.39 A person later described as having a ‘vivid imagination’ reported to Yewtree that two of his/her ex-partners had knowledge of Savile’s sexual abuse. Both ex-partners were traced and interviewed and independently denied having any knowledge of the incidents or even having met Savile…(!!!)

At 7.44 The famous ‘absconder’ who spent the night in Savile’s flat. Sometimes this particular Zombie Factoid is even enlarged to be a Duncroft absconder…of all the people who have made allegations regarding Savile’s offending, none has a greater claim to legitimacy than this young lady – for Savile had even recorded details of the incident in his personal diaries, and his autobiography now in the possession of WYP. A cut and dried claim for compensation from Savile’s estate one might think. No need to clutch the yellowing picture of you standing in front of Savile’s car as evidence that he abused you – you have it in the man’s own words that you spent the night in his apartment! Anything could have happened to you.

But there’s a thing – amongst the throng of eager ’Allegator victims’© – not one claims to have been this young lady! Nor can WYP have any records that support the incident ever having occurred. They can find details of a female officer attending both Savile’s flat and his club whilst searching for a female reported missing by her parents – not an unexpected event for Savile’s club was ‘the place to be seen’ in the words of the officer and a natural magnet for young people – but he doesn’t remember ever seeing anyone other than teenagers aged 16/17 at the club and sweet bugger all at Savile apartment. He did add that he thought Savile was a ‘weirdo’ because he used to dye his hair garish colours…

At 7.50 Another retired officer reported that ‘he remembered’ that another unit had conducted an investigation into allegations of indecent assault by Savile. He named the unit responsible. The WYP traced all those members of the team still alive – and none of them remembered carrying out any such investigation. Nor is there any record of any such investigation.

How many Zombie Factoids is that now? I’ve lost count. All shot down, but all no doubt staggering into the middle distance muttering ‘cover-up’. They will be regurgitated by the main stream media. They are not about to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

For those of us more interested in actual truth, we are still where we started; numerous allegations – and the only ones which have seen the light of day – Jimmy Savile’s niece, now the subject of 11 signed statements to Police calling her a liar, the Duncroft girls with their forged letter and supporting cast of utter liars such as Bebe Roberts, even Police Officers reporting to Yewtree have been shown to be nonsense – all that remains are the unpublicised allegations and in those we ‘must believe‘ for the BBC is about to give each one of the ’Allegator victims’© £33,000 a piece of licence fee payer’s monies rather than risk traumatising them by actually subjecting their claims to the harsh light of day….

‘Giving Victims a Voice’ is starting to resemble the Holy Bible – something that doesn’t bear any examination of the facts, but which sees you denounced as an infidel if you don’t swallow hook, line, and sinker.

The graphic attached to this post entertained me – it seems even a Goat victim must not be identified and thus pixellated – ‘will no one think of the Kids?’

Has the country gone stark staring mad?

Wow! The confabulations that showed up in the original Duncroft allegations continue to unravel.

Freddie Starr is to sue Karin Ward for slander and malicious falsehood.

Karin Ward, or Kat Ward as she likes to be known, was the ex-Duncroft girl, now middle aged and suffering from serious cancer, who fell in with a group of Duncroft girls who had been trying to spin the tale of ‘Jimmy Savile – paedophile’ for years.

Too frightened of getting sued themselves, they declined to sign an affidavit for the Mirror that the tale they told was true; they declined to, or couldn’t, offer the police any verifiable evidence against Mr Savile when the police went to the trouble of tracing all their class mates from the 1970s and could not find any who could corroborate their tale – but they did have success when Karin Ward went onto Friends Reunited asking for help jogging her failing memory of her days at Duncroft for the latest ‘Miseri-lit’ on-line book she was writing.

Her original book made no claims of sexual abuse against Jimmy Savile,  but by the time her new found ‘friends’ had helped to jog her memory, she had been persuaded/persuaded herself that, amongst other claims, not only Jimmy Savile but Freddie Starr had committed sexual offences against her. She had also been introduced to Miss Jones’ nephew, a BBC producer who would be only too happy to use her on screen to bolster his story ‘that any journalist would have wanted’ that his Aunt ran a children’s home where paedophiles were free to prey on children.

The fact that, at that time, Karin was in the middle of chemotherapy, and had had major bowel surgery mattered not a jot to ambitious journalists. Jimmy Savile had died, and they could get this fantastic tale ‘out’, libel free.  They said, in response to the Pollard report, that they had known of his ‘danger to children’ months beforehand, but been too tied up with pressure of work and annual holidays to do anything about it – however, now that he had died and was no longer able to sue for defamation, they could drop everything, bring Miss Ward into studio – nothing was more important to them!

When BBC producers demanded proof of veracity, like a copy of the letter that one of the merry band of Duncroftians was gaily telling everyone who would listen to her that she had, stating that the only reason Savile had not been prosecuted was because he was ‘too old and frail’ –  a letter which later proved to be a cheap forgery – Meirion Jones had a hissy fit, and ‘somehow’ the story was leaked to Miles Goslett on The Oldie magazine that Meirion’s film had been suppressed in some sort of conspiracy to protect Savile’s – and the BBC’s – reputation.

Mark Williams-Thomas, the publicity hungry Chewing GumShoe who had continued to hone his investigative skills on the mean streets of Westminster – plucking chewing gum from the side walk, had taken the information he gleaned from being a £500 researcher on Meirion’s programme, and the contact he had with the FriendsReunited group, over to ITV. There, the tale was resurrected as the infamous ‘Exposure’ programme.

On the day of the Exposure programme broadcast, Karin’s book was re-released, now containing serious allegations against ‘JS’, and has made a lot of sales following the media fest that the Savile ‘revelations’ set off in the post-Leveson media.

I have always had sympathy with Karin, perhaps misplaced, but to me she was the first victim of an unholy alliance between a journalist who wanted to put out a derogatory programme about his aunt and her life’s work, an unwarrantedly ambitious ex-plod who billed himself as a ‘child protection expert’, and a group of bitter middle aged women who loathed the BBC. If any one of them had actually cared about the protection of children they would have reported their concerns, anonymously if necessary, to the authorities whilst Mr Savile was alive.

Karin had an unhappy past, a fractured family, no money – and at the time – no future. She can have had no inkling of the acres of misery she was unleashing  on hundreds of innocent individuals as a result of her decision to include the infamous ‘Savile allegations’ in her latest book. However much I understand the state of mind she was in at the time, anxious to leave some money for her family, feeling bitter against the hand life had dealt her – she did make those allegations, and now she will have to prove, if possible, the truth of them – or give Freddie Starr the money from her book.

I salute Freddie Starr, for the landscape is full of ex-celebrities who have been too frightened to speak out following the Exposure programme – I know, I have had e-mails from many of them, applauding my attempts to get to the bottom of it – but always prefaced ‘this is in confidence, please don’t mention my name’. Many of them have been on police bail since shortly after the programme was transmitted. Unable to have unsupervised contact with even their own children, never mind anyone else’s. Their lives ruined, reputations besmirched, by the very public nature of the witch hunt. Others worked at the BBC with Savile, or other odious individuals who have chosen to jump on the bandwagon. I have spent many hours listening to tales of woe on the telephone from people who do not know which way to turn after the bandwagon has rolled over them.

I never wanted to turn my happy little political blog into ‘anti-witchunt central’ with continual articles detailing the latest travesty of justice – but it happened, and I apologise to those of you who have found it uncomfortable reading. As it happens – perfect timing – I have two major articles coming out tomorrow and Tuesday detailing the changing nature of the Duncroft stories as they gear up for the High Court to take what they can from Help the Heroes and other charities that Savile left his money to – morphing from ‘I’ll tell you a story so long as you promise not to name me’ into ‘he’s dead now, so for ‘x’ pounds I’ll tell you an even better story’ right through to the latest version – ‘I’ve got a great free lawyer and I can sue for some of his millions, so here’s how I say it was now‘…..I was in the middle of putting the finishing touches to those articles when the Starr bombshell arrived.

So congratulations Freddie. You are a Starr – and a brave man. For all my sympathy for Karin, for all my sympathy for your ex-colleagues who are too frightened to speak out for fear they will be next – I admire you. You have the courage of your convictions. You haven’t allowed yourself to be cowed by the threat that it may make the police try harder to ‘nail’ you; you haven’t let the depression of your curtailed contact with your own children get to you; you have your new young wife standing by you – and you are taking the fight right back to where it belongs.

You must know that Karin’s lawyers will be portraying her as a pitiful vulnerable creature, and you as a bully for trying to clear your name. You must know that she will probably get financial help whereas you must dig deep in your pocket. You could have kept quiet until you found out whether you were to be charged or not. You could have stood with the multitude too frightened to speak out. But that is not your style is it? You go ahead and fight for your reputation – others will stand on your shoulders with gratitude. You know I will do whatever I can to help you. 

Besides which you have really pi**ed off that odious little toad, Chewing GumShoe. See, it messes up his whole media career, having people like you saying ‘right, prove it’!

A ‘CFA’ is a Conditional Fee Agreement – in plain English it is a type of insurance that will ensure you do not receive a bill for the time and effort expended by your legal team – even if you lose the case. In other words, you can mount a legal challenge at no risk to yourself. If you win, you get your ‘compo’ and your legal team gets paid by the person you sued; if you lose you don’t have to pay your legal team. If you lose the case, there are some expenses – such as the cost of a medical examination to determine the extent of your ‘injuries’ – which the solicitor may have paid on your behalf, which you could be liable for.

This is where something called an ‘ATE’ (After The Event insurance) comes in. The ATE pays those costs – and heaven forbid, you might have been landed with your opponents legal costs if the court so decided. Between the CFA and the ATE, they ensure that even if you are penniless, that is no reason not to have first class lawyers mounting the best possible case on your behalf – at no risk whatsoever to yourself.

There have been some changes to this system since April of this year. If you win the case, prior to April 2013, the person you sued had to pay a ‘success fee‘ to your legal team – sometimes as much as double their normal fees! Lawyers, not surprisingly, chose not to take on cases they thought might lose – they have mortgages and school fees to pay like everybody else, but assuming that you won – or the case was settled out of court, as it is with 90% of personal injury cases, they could look forward to a bonanza pay-day. For claimants it was a case of ‘we’ve got nothing to lose either way’.  For the person you were suing, it was a case of ‘is it worth fighting this case in court, because the legal fees could dwarf our loss’. As a result of the Jackson Review one important change is that YOU now have to pay the success fee out of your ‘compo’. A small gesture towards the invidious position the person you sued finds themselves in if they wish to contest the claim.

From 1 April new rules on conditional fee agreements (CFAs) come into force. Clients who enter into a CFA on or after 1 April will have to pay the success fee and any after-the-event (ATE) premium from their damages.

These changes have been brought about by sections 44 and 46 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and the Conditional Fee Agreements Order 2013.

Not that this matters in the slightest to the claims I am about to discuss, because fortuitously for everyone except the person being sued – all these claims were commenced prior to April 2013, and so escape the new regulations.

Since it is the all important ‘Duncroft’ allegations – more properly the 2007 ’Operation Ornament‘ allegations – which ARE all important, for had ‘Operation Ornament’ not existed there would have been NO ‘Savile effect’, no turmoil with heads rolling at the BBC, and no multi billion pound compensation claims preventing the charities involved from receiving the money that Savile had left to them, there are one or two important facts to be spelt out to those who may have overlooked them, before you read on…

The ‘child protection industry’ has spent untold millions convincing all of us that ‘child abuse victims’ are always to be believed and are all ’innocent of blame’ young children, preferably in winsome too long nightdresses clutching teddy bears. ‘Tis true, all child abuse victims ARE all innocent of blame. However, child abuse ‘claimants’ are not necessarily in the same category despite ‘Operation Yewtree’s‘ best endeavours to persuade us all that claimants and victims are one and the same thing.  They are NOT.

One of the criticisms levelled at my continuing desire to get to the bottom of the Duncroft allegations is ‘but you weren’t there then, you don’t know what these poor girls had to put up with’. Not precisely true. I WAS there during the period covered by the first public Duncroft allegation, Bebe Robert’s fantasy story of Savile roaming round the very dormitory I was sleeping in, when I was sleeping there, terrorising innocent young girls. To say I was incredulous would be to put it mildly. Bebe Robert’s was promptly dumped by the little group of girls pushing their tale of rampant paedophilia by Savile in the 1960s. She was ‘misguided’, she was ‘only trying to help them obtain justice’. But the rest of them were absolutely telling the truth of what had occurred in the 1970s they said – and I wasn’t there then…

So what had changed in the 1970s? NOT the staff, that was for sure. The same people were still living cheek by jowl with a group of truculent teenage girls, still dedicating their lives to helping them sort out their lives. The buildings had barely changed, other than a spanking new education block. Two things had changed though. First, the school-leaving age had been raised to 16.

Duncroft was a social experiment from the late 50s to see if girls who had stepped off the rigid social requirement of being a ‘good girl’ could be returned to society as reasonable and useful human beings. A decade earlier, those who were unmarried mothers had found themselves incarcerated for life in institutions – even those who were victims of sexual abuse.  Likewise those who played truant. Or went home in the pouring rain wearing a rain coat from the coat rack that they had not properly asked permission to borrow. In my own case, an unhappy home life had resulted in a suicide attempt before suicide stopped being criminal offence.

Duncroft was to be a half way house between the mythical ‘good girl’ status, and a life consigned to perhaps prostitution or other criminal activity by way of earning a living. We were to be given a second chance at catching up on the education we had missed, gain those all important qualifications, and given a helping hand to find a more liberal-minded employer who might consider having one of society’s rehabilitated ‘bad girls’ on his premises. If you think it is hard finding a job today, you should try being a ‘bad girl’ back in the ultra conservative 60s!

Alongside Miss Jones driving this second chance at education, there were also two psychiatrists to attend to any lingering emotional problems we might have – and certainly some of the girls were utterly innocent victims of paedophilia, sometimes within their own family. My best friend at Duncroft was.  She spent years trying to starve herself to death to escape her memories. I am under no illusion as to the damage that sexual abuse can do to a child.

Whereas there had been no duty to educate us in the 1960s as ‘school-leavers’, by the 1970s government had a duty to deliver full-time education to 14 and 15 year olds. This had given the government a problem, for in the 1970s it was no longer considered socially acceptable to consign young people to a mental hospital no matter how profound their mental health issues. Sometimes, those mental health issues required the person to be securely confined – but mental hospitals don’t have education blocks. Duncroft was such a secure environment, it had adequate educational facilities, and two resident psychiatrists experienced with teenage girls – what more could a government with a problem ask for?

Duncroft was promptly taken away from the Home Office and given to MIND, the mental health authority.

One such person in the care of MIND in the 1970s was Mary Bell. I can mention her name because she has long since been given a new identity. Mary, aged 10, had calmly murdered a four-year old child, and then a year later, murdered another three-year old child. Mary plainly needed to be in a very secure environment, she plainly needed to have serious psychiatric help – and she was still entitled to a full-time education. Precisely the environment that Duncroft could provide.

I ask you to keep Mary Bell firmly in mind, and forget that ‘mythical child in the too long night-dress’ as we go through the Duncroft allegations – not out of ‘victim blaming’, for nothing Mary Bell had ever done would justify turning a blind eye to anyone abusing her, however ‘mildly’, but because in order to believe the Duncroft allegations then you have to believe that those same sturdy sensible women who kept us so securely safe in the 1960s unanimously took leave of their senses in the 1970s and were cheerfully letting children like Mary Bell, entrusted to them by MIND,  wander at will in the BBC corridors, and flit in and out of Duncroft as they pleased…

Credulous lawyers giving advice to the multi-million pound entities currently being sued might believe it – but I remain incredulous!

The only thing that had changed from my time at Duncroft, was not the buildings, not the sturdy nature of the staff – but the fact that those consigned to Duncroft by MIND needed even more of a watchful eye than we did. The possibility of losing your career and your pension by a moment’s inattention had quadrupled.

That’s more than enough from me today – tomorrow I shall tell you just how those original Duncroft allegations have blossomed under the care and tutelage of an army of CFA and ATE empowered lawyers, to the point that it has taken me all week-end to even begin to match the schedule of compensation claims that I have in front of me with the tales as told to television companies and indeed the police back in 2007.

But then I don’t suppose the Duncroft girls ever thought that anyone might ask someone who actually knew what they were talking about in respect of Duncroft to look through the claims….

After all, aren’t claimants the same as victims, and aren’t victims to be believed? Isn’t that what the nice policeman said?

For those of us interested in actual truth, until today, we were still where we started; the only allegations which have seen the light of day – Jimmy Savile’s niece, now the subject of 11 signed statements to Police calling her a liar, the Duncroft girls with their forged letter and supporting cast of utter liars such as Bebe Roberts, even Police Officers reporting to Yewtree have been shown to spout nonsense – all that remains are the unpublicised allegations and in those we ‘must believe’ for the BBC is about to give each one of the ’Allegator victims’© £33,000 a piece of licence fee payer’s monies rather than risk traumatising them by actually subjecting their claims to the harsh light of day….I spoke yesterday of the risk free environment in which those claims for ‘compo’ were being made, and the financial penalties that lay in the path of any corporate entity that might be tempted to try to defend the claims.

Let us look now at some of the unpublicised claims, shall we? I am, as ever, interested in those who were in the vanguard of the ‘me too’ multiple claims made by those who watched the dreadful Exposure programme. At the time of broadcast, these comprised a group of girls connected to Duncroft, and one lady who was a member of Jimmy’s fan club. They were the people ‘exhaustively’ investigated by the Levitt report to see whether the claims that Savile ‘could have been stopped’ in 2007,  were it not for the reluctant CPS to press charges, were true. Without those claims, and the forged letter in the possession of Fiona Scott-Johnstone claiming that Savile was not charged because he was ‘too old and frail’, the present ‘Savilisation’© of our media would never have occurred.   Such frail foundations.

First up we have Miss ‘A’. (I will stick to the labels given by Alison Levitt to save you scrambling your brains with alphabet soup). Alison Levitt didn’t actually ‘interrogate’ the four witnesses she physically met, she merely showed them what they had said in 2007 and invited them to comment if they wished to change anything.

Miss ‘A’, in 2007, had told the police that she was a member of Jimmy Savile’s fan club. In 1968 she had seen him on television saying that he needed a holiday and asking if anyone could put him up. She was 20 years old at the time. She wrote to him offering her Mother’s B & B as a suitable venue for his proposed holiday. Months later she received a reply from a member of his staff declining the offer. Two years later, now married and aged 22, Savile was appearing at her local town hall. Whether she had written to him again, or whether an efficient fan club secretary had remembered her previous letter is not known, but Savile’s Rolls Royce and chauffeur was despatched to her home address to see if she would like to see Savile ‘live’. Her husband encouraged her to go – although curiously doesn’t seem to have accompanied her.

Now armed with a CFA and ATE agreement and represented by the top personal injury lawyers Russell Jones and Walker, this account has become ’2 years later claimant was told SJS (Savile) was in Worthing and wanted to see her’. She has also now become ‘approximately aged 19‘ at this date….

She must have been very excited to arrive at this crowded live venue in Savile’s own Rolls Royce because ‘the next thing she remembered’ (in 2007) was not the show, nor the crowds, but Savile’s arm around her leading her to his caravan parked outside the Town Hall. The account to the High Court in pursuit of civil damages now says ‘SJS urgently put his arm around C and urgently took her to his caravan’. No mention of the very public place where the caravan was alleged (in 2007) to be parked.

In 2007 there was no mention of a locked door, but now Miss ‘A’ remembers that ‘SJS locked the door’ and said he ‘would like to lock claimant in his cupboard and take her with him’. In 2007 he had apparently said ‘you are lovely; I’d like to lock you up in a cupboard and you’d be with me all the time’. In 2007 he also said he’d like to buy the house next door to her, and then he’d be happy all the time.

However, Savile is not so loquacious with the CFA effect applied; now he ‘pounced on’ her, with her on ‘her back and him on top‘. Conjures up a grim picture, doesn’t it – back in 2007 he was ‘lying beside her‘ paying her compliments. The detail of him allegedly putting her hand on his crotch remains the same, but he is no longer fondling her breasts over her clothing as he allegedly was in 2007, now he has ‘put his hand up her skirt‘. The rather touching detail from 2007 of Savile asking her if she was on the pill, and her reply that ‘she didn’t do that sort of thing’ has turned into ‘SJS shouted at her and asked if she was on the contraceptive pill’. At least she still agrees that Savile lost interest in sexual activity with this fully adult woman once he knew that pregnancy might be a possible complication. There is no mention now of that other touching detail; Savile giving her a crucifix with a good luck charm attached – something she still carried with her in 2007 – or ensuring that she had the bus fare to get home again. I know that memories can be fallible following ‘child’ abuse – but surely things you remember saying to the police in 2007 should still be there following a TV programme in 2012?

Miss ‘A’ would now, 42 years later, like the High Court to award damages for ‘injury, including psychological injury’. Her solicitors propose to obtain a medical report to confirm that she has been thus injured – for the purpose of lodging the claim, they only have her assessment that she was…

Russell, Jones and Walker are also representing one of the more fascinating of the Duncroft claims. I can’t name her, but have reason to suspect that she is the same individual called Miss ‘G’ by Alison Levitt. It is difficult to tell, because as Levitt belatedly admitted, she was unaware when interviewing Miss ‘G’ that Miss ‘G’ had already appeared on one of the TV programmes telling a far more exotic account to camera than the one she later vouchsafed in the more sober surroundings of an interview with Alison Levitt QC….I shall call her Miss ‘G’ for the purpose of examining the claim of Russell, Jones and Walkers ‘other’ client.

Miss ‘G’ is alleging that aged 14 Savile took her to an ‘outbuilding’ in the grounds of Duncroft. An ‘outbuilding’ eh? Are you getting visions of spiders webs, discarded paint cans, rusty tools and possibly the remains of the gardener’s bottle of whisky? I suspect you are intended to – it sounds horrific. This outbuilding had a name. Not the Hanoi Hilton, nor the Black Hole of Calcutta – it was known as Norman Lodge! I shall allow a short pause at this point for previous residents of Duncroft to stop laughing and compose themselves.

Yes, the ‘outbuilding’ that he allegedly took this 14-year-old girl to, was the very same modern two storey, purpose-built hostel for working girls aged over 16 that those of us who know what we are talking about, as opposed to the credulous army of lawyers who will be reading these claims, know perfectly well that no 14-year-old from Duncroft would ever have been given unfettered access to. That accommodation the other side of the grounds where the working girls kept their clothes, make-up, cigarettes, spare change and all the other things we would dearly have loved to get our hands on. Not only that, but he allegedly removed this 14 year-old from the locked facility (who unlocked the door?)of Duncroft to the wonderland of Norman Lodge for the purposes of ‘making a phone call to her sister as sister was a fan’.

This is risible nonsense on stilts with its eyes popping out. I have great difficulty in believing that Ruth Cole, Bridie Keenan or Margaret Jones would have reacted with anything other than a derisory snort at the suggestion that any 14 year-old girl be allowed to make an unsupervised phone call from one of the many telephones inside Duncroft on the basis of ‘my sister is a fan of this visitor’, but will allow for the unlikely occurrence that they might have weakened sufficiently to allow a supervised phone call from inside Duncroft – but unlock the door so you could go swanning over to Norman Lodge on your own with a male visitor?

A visitor who then put ‘his hand up our claimants blouse, and pushed his other hand hard into her trousers’. And when our claimant returned from swanning around this outbuilding Norman Lodge and told the staff what had occurred she was then ‘confined to her room for the night’ (how did the other girls in her dormitory get to bed that night if she was ‘confined’ in her room, we didn’t have single rooms?) and had all her privileges removed. Naturally she is also claiming to have suffered psychological damage as a result of this ‘trip to an outbuilding’. Not that her solicitor had actually expended any money on getting a Doctor to confirm this at the time of lodging her claim.

Miss ‘G’ claimed to Levitt that she was 17 and resident in Norman Lodge and had been asked to make Savile a cup of tea by Ms Jones. She claimed that Savile had asked her to ‘give him a blow job’ in return for a job at Stoke Mandeville as a nurse (she was allegedly training to be a nurse at the time). She refused to do so.  What Alison Levitt was unaware of was the Ms ‘G’ had already burst onto our television screens making considerably more lurid allegations than ‘indecent suggestion’.

Remember I asked you yesterday to keep the sad history of Mary Bell (I am not saying that Ms ‘G’ was Mary Bell – she wasn’t) in mind as indicative of the sort of girls that MIND were asking Duncroft to educate and keep safe – and the public safe from? And ask yourself again how likely you think this tale of the wandering 14-year-old is.

She alleges she reported this heinous incident to the staff but no action was taken – I hope she is alleging that it was to one of the members of staff now deceased, otherwise Karin Ward will not be the only person getting sued for malicious falsehood. The surviving members of staff are pretty damn angry.

A few more writs for slander and malicious falsehood might just see an end to the Savilisation© of our media.

*Oh, there are more, I shall be serving Ms Beef Biriani next, but I’ve had enough for the day. I’m having a hard time with some anti-allergic medication in preparation for another bloody scan on Thursday, so you’ll just have to be patient. Hard to believe, but there really are some things more important in my life than this nonsense.

Resuming tomorrow….

Another day, another CFA. Good Lord, another Russell, Jones and Walker client. How strange that they should all choose the same brief?

It is 1974, yet again, and yet again the claimant is 14(question mark). How hard is it to work out how old you were in 1974? Too hard for the Daily Mail, they still report Karin Ward as being 55 and aged 14 in 1974…

I shall call her Ms ‘H’ – although Ms ‘H’ didn’t have all the excitement of being called up for the Levitt report on account of Ms ‘H’ never having told anybody that that this celebrity, SJS, had ‘pulled her onto his lap’ and ‘forced his tongue into her mouth’. She’d never bragged to the other girls that Jimmy had kissed her, never told a soul that Jimmy had ‘tried’ to touch her breasts. Why? Well, it seems that she had previously witnessed him assault another girl and due to the ‘reaction of the staff’ when this girl had reported she had been assaulted (allegedly placed in ‘isolation’) she did not feel able to ‘disclose’. Other than to her Social Worker, who also apparently did nothing (curiously she doesn’t appear to be suing the social worker for dereliction of duty – perhaps she’s no longer alive to speak up for herself, and hasn’t left an estate worth suing). Even in the years after she left Duncroft, she never felt safe disclosing that Jimmy Savile kissed her, nor did she feel able to make an anonymous phone call to child line or similar. When the police traced all the classmates of Ms ‘C’ and asked them whether anything untoward had ever happened to them at Duncroft, still she hugged her secret to herself. In fact the only thing which appears to have provided a ‘safe environment in which to disclose’ was not the kindly face of Mark Williams-Thomas and his Exposure programme – for she met Alison Levitt after that – could it be the reassuring rustle of the CFA?

Next up is undoubtedly is a new entrant. Apparently unable ‘to disclose’ when the police traced all the classmates of Miss ‘B’ and Miss ‘C’, she has found new courage in the wake of television exposure. I shall call her Ms ‘K’. Did they hire a mini-bus to get to the solicitor? – ‘cos yet again, it is Russell, Jones and Walker….

SJS was exchanging ‘autographs for kisses’ with the girls, but when Ms ‘K’ went to kiss him – he turned his head ‘deliberately’. Of such snubs is vengeance born. Remember how bitter Ms Ward was that Freddie Starr allegedly (we shall see!!) thought her breasts too small to bother with?

Miss ‘K’ was 16 at the time - just as well or there might have been another claim pending for child abuse, on account of the fact that she was pregnant. According to her, SJS ‘placed his hand on her leg’ and ‘pursued her when she went upstairs to change. Whilst she ‘was changing her top, SJS entered the bedroom, closed the door (why? A minute ago he was kissing everybody in plain sight wasn’t he?) and stated he wanted a kiss and a cuddle. SJS placed an arm around her and touched her breasts. He then pushed her on to the bed, removed his penis from his trousers and asked her to touch it. She feared she was about to be raped‘. As she cried and asked SJS ‘to stop’ (I assume she means stop exposing his penis and/or asking her to touch it) because she was pregnant  ‘SJS suggested her pregnancy should mean that she was willing’….

This incident allegedly took place in a group dormitory in a locked building (Duncroft) from which neither Ms ‘K’ nor importantly SJS could have escaped without staff involvement;  and Miss ‘K’ never mentioned it to anyone? If you say so. Since she didn’t disclose to the police in 2007, Ms Levitt never got to interview her, so we have nothing to compare her story with. We do know that Miss ‘K’ has reported this to the police post-2007 (in time for the Exposure programme?). Mssrs Russell, Jones and Walker, were awaiting further information, before investing any money in obtaining a Doctor’s confirmation of the psychological injury caused by the alleged sighting of an erect penis in her near vicinity whilst pregnant 40 years ago.

Next up is Ms Beef Biriani. Ms ‘C’ – the one who wanted to thump Ms ‘B’ for dragging her into this police investigation, according to the Levitt report. You’ll be relieved to hear that Ms Beef Biriani has finally established whether the blanket was ‘over or under’ – a matter which caused her much confusion when Alison Levitt interviewed her. There she was, sweet 14 (at the time – strange she told Ms Levitt that she was 15…). (Ms ‘B’ originally told the police that Beef Biriani was 14 at the time. Confusing isn’t it?) Lord, has anybody ever checked just how old she really was in 1977?

‘SJS entered the sitting room and made a beeline’ towards this pregnant teenager wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a three seater settee in the TV room. Must have been a three seater TV, for there was already another girl sitting next to her and yet room for SJS? I’m glad she has finally remembered that ‘SJS took hold of (her) right hand, he put it under the blanket and on to his erect penis, over his trousers, and proceeded to rub it’ – because Ms ‘B’ who reported this matter as a witness in 2007, was quite sure of what she had seen when she contacted the police and set this hare running. Then there was no mention of a blanket – and had all this taken place under a blanket, it would call into question Ms ‘B’s account of what she could have ‘seen’.  Miss ‘B’s ability to see through  blankets is now prayed in corroboration of Beef Biriani’s account of how contact with this ‘erect penis’ caused a physical and psychiatric injury requiring compensation to cure 40 years later.

Ms Beef Biriani is an independent soul, and has apparently scorned the mythical ‘mini-bus’ to Russell, Jones and Walker, in favour of Mssrs Pannone who wish the High Court to be aware that she suffered both physical and psychiatric damage from whatever occurred under the blanket.

Last, but by no means least, we have another independent soul. What shall I call her? Miss ‘First’ or Ms ‘Last’? I’ll go for Ms ‘First. Ms ‘First’ has engaged the services of Verisona, who are suing a number of different legal entities in respect of the ‘severe personal injury, loss and damage’ including ‘pain and suffering at the time of each of the incidents‘ which includes ‘past, current and future psychiatric injury’. Blimey! Whatever could have happened to poor Ms ‘First’?

Well, for a start, Mr Savile first made his appearance in Ms ‘First’s life in 1971 when she was aged 13. This may well be why she is suing Norfolk County Council amongst other respondents because she certainly wasn’t at Duncroft aged 13 in 1971! On their first meeting, ‘SJS kissed her on the lips, placed his hand in her underwear and fondled her vagina. He also placed his hands underneath her top and fondled her breasts’. Allegedly. There was a second meeting, and it is not clear which allegation belongs to which of these meetings, spread as they are over 3 years. ‘She attempted to push SJS off but his strength overwhelmed her’. She was asked to ‘reciprocate and touch SJS penis but did not‘. SJS allegedly said ‘you were doing it for him and you owed him’. Who ‘him’ is is not explained – a witness? Then on a third occasion, when we know Ms ‘First’ must have been in Duncroft, and it must have been in 1974 for we have SJS appearing yet again and assaulting her in similar fashion – but then requesting that she perform fellatio on him in return for being allowed to visit him in the BBC studios and to participate in the Clunk-Click show.  Since the Clunk-Click show wasn’t anything to do with the BBC studios, are we to assume that she made two visits to see him in addition to the two previous ghastly encounters she alleges she had with him?

Whatever, she agreed to perform fellatio ‘in order not to be left out’ – not sure whether that is ‘not to be left out of going to see the show’ or ‘not to be left out of all the other Duncroft girls’ who were apparently fondling his erect penis around this time. Was it never not erect? Can’t tell. Did the staff who accompanied the girls to the BBC theatre to see Clunk-Click also have to perform fellatio on Mr Savile in order to go? (The mind boggles) – fortunately they are still alive and can speak for themselves.

The curious thing about these allegations is that all are said to have occurred in ‘SJS sports car when taken out by SJS with headmistress’ consent’. Given that we are talking multiple offences over a 3 year period, part of which couldn’t have been at Duncroft – are we talking multiple headmistresses here? Given also that the only known time when SJS was allowed to take girls out in his car ‘with headmistress’ consent’, was during a fete, in a group of girls, an event we surely know is true for didn’t little Meirion witness it as a child? Are we to assume that at least two other girls missed  large parts of the fete on account of being marooned on the roadside whilst Ms ‘First’ delivered this fellatio, or were they in the car as well, are they in addition to Karin Ward who lays claim to ownership of a similar story? How many blow jobs are alleged in the back of this Rolls Royce – which reportedly only went round the block in order to give other girls waiting in line for the same ‘treat’ a chance – can anybody say whether Mr Savile suffered from profoundly premature ejaculation compounded by a remarkable ‘recovery rate’. We should be told.

And what of Clunk-Click? Is Ms ‘First’ a witness to the ‘near orgy’ alleged by Karin Ward in the ‘wrong’ television studios, or is she Ms Ward herself perhaps, no longer wishing to mention the alleged ghastly deeds of Freddie Starr and Gary Glitter? Why would she no longer wish to mention them? (- Ah, just remembered!)

Yet again, I am clean out of energy for the day – tomorrow I shall detail the financial aspects of all those rustling CFAs that perform such miracles.

Restorative v. Retributive Justice is a debate as old as civilisation. Restorative Justice is possibly the most fashionable at the moment, in that it focuses on the needs of the victim – and offender. It is a more subjective form of Justice – encouraging the offender to make repayment to society through perhaps community service, or apologising to the victim in person, to understand the wrong he has done and repent. Retributive Justice is the ‘eye for an eye’ form of punitive justice – lock him up and throw away the key.

Both forms of justice require that the offender, once proven so, is available to play his part – either by being punished or to make repayment to the victim and society.

Jimmy Savile is not available to either form of ‘Justice’ – he is dead, and was dead long before he was formally accused or found guilty by the media. So what exactly is going on with these schedules of CFA enabled ‘allegators’© who seek ‘Justice’ belatedly? Who is to pay the price for their ‘Justice’ since Jimmy Savile is not available to do so?

They would say that those who ‘enabled’ these unproven allegations to occur. A difficult ‘second hand’ concept. Since there has been no investigation into whether the events ever occurred, a matter of national policy according to Yewtree, how can you possibly prove that anyone enabled them to occur?

It is said that ‘the BBC employed him and therefore had a vicarious duty in the event of him offending’ – certainly the BBC took no steps to stop him offending – but was that because they were incompetent, willingly turning a blind eye to his offending, or simply because they had no idea that he or anyone else could be offending? Obviously they had some clue that popular celebrities and underage age girls were a dangerous mix for an employer – and presumably that is why they insisted on an ‘over 16′ regulation for those coming in contact with their celebrities. Should they have insisted that all those coming on the premises produced a birth certificate? Should they have learnt to live with the heart broken wails of 16 year olds, no doubt suffering some incurable disease who had turned up ‘for their last chance’ to meet their chosen celebrity and Dad had forgotten to bring the required paperwork?

Possibly something they will have to do in the future now that society is holding them responsible for an event never proven to have occurred, but for which they are being held responsible as though it has been proven to have occurred.

Who else is the target of these CFAs? ‘Jimmy Savile’ cries the mob! He had all those millions and gold chains and everything, he should have to give some of that to me, me, me! They might have a valid point if Savile was alive, if the allegations were true, he would be a reasonable target – but Jimmy Savile ‘lies a mouldering in his grave’ – he has no millions, no gold chains.

‘Well his family then, why should they live a life of luxury’ – sorry wrong target again, he didn’t leave his millions and his gold chains to his family.

Savile left his money to a tranche of charities. Help the Heroes, and (ironically, in the present climate) a domestic abuse and child protection charity, amongst others. That is the target that the CFAs have in their sights. Those millions rightfully belonged to the charities, minus any debts on his estate, from the very second that he died. They would have been in safe hands by now, doing good work for legless servicemen, had Savile’s great-niece not decided that she was remarkably pi**ed off at not being named in his will and come up with a tale – now formally refuted in police statements by 11 members of his family – of how she was ‘abused by him’ by their account some years before she met him. The case represented a potential debt on the estate, and so, from that moment, the executors were unable to put the money to good use, they had to sit and wait to see what happened next.

What happened next will go down in history as one of the greatest shames ever to darken British shores.

Can you even begin to explain to me how ‘Justice’ is served by using an unproven allegation, that can never be defended, as requiring Leeds General Hospital to be deprived of a much needed new life saving scanner – where does that fit on the scale between Restorative and Retributive? How does taking money from Help the Heroes ‘encourage a dead alleged offender’ to make restitution to society? Perhaps you want to tell me that if the alleged victims get their money they will be able to seek professional help to recover from their trauma – not if they live in the north of England they won’t – the charity that might have helped them won’t have the bequest they were expecting to pay their rent, the ‘alleged Victim’ will have it – so how does that work? Will the ‘closed due to lack of funding’ sign on the front door bring them closure on their trauma?

As you will have noticed, every one of the CFAs was lodged before April 1st of this year – which means that the ‘old’ rules apply. The executors know that every single one of them carries a lethal ‘double fee for success’ burden. They have all been lodged by high flying law firms with high fee rates. If the executors were to contest each one – and the case ended up in court, where the victim was awarded a measly one pound for pain and suffering from an indecent suggestion 40 years ago – then the executors still have to pay hundreds of thousands out to each law firm, or in the case of the Duncroft allegations, conveniently most with the same law firm…a cumulative sum of money that could wipe out the estate, leaving the alleged victims with a pound each, the charities with nothing, and the executors – in this case the NatWest Bank, with a filthy reputation for having doubted the word of those poor wee girls. It is a no win situation.

Little wonder that 90% of personal injury claims (and psychiatric damage is counted as a personal injury to the brain) are settled out of court, not subject to rigorous investigation or cross examination, but to a pragmatic decision to fling some dough in the claimant’s direction, settle with the brief before the bills get too high, and as they say in Sarf London, ‘wipe your lips’.

Maybe you concede me the point on the charities, but still feel that suing the BBC is the right thing to do? Aren’t they all on golden handshakes, dishonourable people little better than bankers? Surely it’s all right to aim the CFAs at them, that is harmless enough isn’t it, almost a ‘victimless crime’?

Then let us look at where ‘BBC money’ comes from. Not Jimmy Savile, for a start, nor was he ever ‘under contract’ to them as Moor Larkin has painstakingly proved. BBC money comes from BBC licence fee payers. It doesn’t come willingly; it is in effect, a forced tax on owning a television – whether you watch it or not. Some people are either unable, or spectacularly unwilling, to pay that licence fee. Which is why the BBC employ an army of ‘enforcers’ to go door to door catching those using a television without a licence. ‘Enforcers’ come cheaper when you only employ them during the day, rather than having to pay them extra to go out in the dark when most people are watching television.

That is why the majority of the people that they catch are unemployed – no job to go to during the day and nothing to do but watch tele. The major portion of those people have a very good reason for not having a job – they are single mothers on benefits, looking after their young children during the day. 10% of all ‘criminal’ cases passing through the magistrates court (and it has been as high as 15%) come from this category.

So when you talk of the BBC ‘millions’, not just the millions that executives receive – but also the ‘millions’ that the CFAs are aimed at, they could well come from the benefits paid to single mothers to feed those children. The BBC have put aside £33,000 for each of the 120 untested allegations as potential compensation.  Do you know how many single mothers they will have to take to court next year for each of those £33,000 pots?

242, that’s how many! 242 times 120 = 29,040. And that is punishing Jimmy Savile for something we will never know that he did, or teaching him the wrong he has done – how?

So when you meet a wee bairn on the streets with no shoes and a rumbling tummy, or a little girl too frightened to go home – you explain to them how this new fangled ‘child protection’ works; I wouldn’t have the nerve to try.

You explain to them that Mum can’t feed them today because the BBC took her to court so that a 55 year old woman can get compensation for a hand on the bum 40 years ago; you explain that there is no safe house in Newcastle to give that little girl refuge from a brutal father, because the executors can’t afford that and the lawyers fees. You go and face the anxious queue for a scan in Leeds General Hospital and tell them how it is right and proper that there isn’t a second scanner – because…

Well, because what? What exactly are you going to say? I’m damned if I know.

*Ms Raccoon is going to be off-line for several days now – If you put more than one link in your comment, your comment WILL be held up in the moderation queue, and there will not be anyone to release it. Try to remember! Just one link and nice and friendly….

Talking Angela talks dirty.

I wasn’t intending to post today, but I cannot resist it now. ‘Duncan Disorderly’ has spotted such a corker of a row going on in Paedomaggedon land.

‘Talking Angela’ is an app for your mobile phone. That’s the thing that you stare at when you are out and about in the big, wide and interesting world. It is especially the thing that you stare at when you are sitting in an exclusive restaurant in the company of interesting people. If you are under 40 it is probably the thing that you stare at whilst having scintillating sex – I can’t imagine that mere sex would be sufficient to tempt the ‘mobile generation’ away from their little screens.

If you have ever wondered what it is that these people are actually looking at – read on. There are 57 million chances that they are having a conversation with Angela. Angela is a talking Pussy.

She’s rather childish and looks like the sort of soft toy that parents would buy for their children once upon a time. They don’t any more, they buy them a Blackberry or the latest Samsung and download the ‘Talking Angela’ app onto it. It’s called ‘parenting’ apparently.

You can have a real conversation with Angela; she’ll tell you her name and ask you what yours is. It’s just like the sort of conversation you used to have with that person sitting opposite you in that restaurant. She’ll ask how old you are and tell you what high jinks she is getting up to with her boyfriend ‘Talking Tom’. Regardless of what age you are…

Thereby lies the problem. Although there is, in theory, a ‘child proof’ lock on ‘Talking Angela’, it can be taken off by any competent 5 year old. Assuming that the adult in their life was sufficiently competent to put it on in the first place. Hence ‘Talking Angela’ has been caught having snatched conversations about her Pussy with enterprising 10 year olds. She will ask the user’s name, age, what they like doing at school, and so on, just like a real ‘Talking Uncle’…she encourages you to poke your tongue out at the screen and make silly faces…she asks:

“How long have you been friends with your best friend?”

“I’ve met my best friends at school. Where did you meet yours?”

“What will you do today?”

“I’d like to be your friend. What’s your name?

“How old are you?”

“What do you do with your friends for fun?”

Somebody, and far be it from me to suggest that they have ever, would ever, even have a relative, working in the marketing department of Outfit7, the developers of this app, started a series of rumours on Facebook that far from being a ridiculous talking app, Angela was actually:

A hacker that is sitting behind a webcam, able to see you but you can’t see him. ‘Angela’ asks you very personal and perverted questions,” claimed one widely circulated warning.

Another suggests (all in CAPS naturally!):

“CHECK YOUR KID’S TABLET OR PHONES TO SEE IF THEY HAVE THIS APP ITS A PEDO RING,” shouted another. “THEY CAN SEE YOUR CHILD AND HACK IN TO THEIR PICS AND THEIR FRIENDS LIST…”

The head of Outfit7, a fellow by the name of Login (I’d like a tape of his conversations with Gmail’s Asian-continental help lines!) proffers by way of rebuttal of this rumour.

“We have millions of users every day using this app. Can you imagine, we’d need an army of paedophiles. It’s ridiculous.”

B-b-b-but Mr Login, the entire world knows that there is an army of  on-line paedophiles out there to get your kiddywink – why shouldn’t they be gainfully employed in your company?

The sort of infantilised human being that downloads an app so that they can talk to a cartoon pussy are not moggified mollified that Angela is not a real life Kitty fiddler. They are crowding onto the Guardian comments section swearing blind that their conversation with Angela have included such gems as this from ‘Ashley’: 

No, no, just no when it said what is your name I said jean, then she repiled and said “your such a lier I know your real name is ashley, age ##” “and when you look into angela’s eyes you can see your rooms reflection, well if you look closer”.

Children really should be protected from adults like this…

Meanwhile, Mr Login claims that Outfit7 now have 240 million users.

A years supply of Monbazillac to anyone who can develop a marketable version of the ‘Talking Mark Williams-Thomas’ app. Runner-up prize is a week’s supply to the first person who spots MTwat declaring that Angela should be banned.

I have a marketing plan. I just need the app. The future is bright.

I should have been, and have been for some time, respecting an embargo on what I am about to describe. But it seems that others involved in what was supposed to be a ‘private case’ listed for hearing at the High Court tomorrow have decided to break rank and give – or even sell? – their version of events to the downmarket Daily Star and Daily Record this morning. So no reason for me to keep quiet any longer.

I am not surprised. The amount of skullduggery that has surrounded the issue of ‘compensation’ to the ‘alleged victims’ of a man who has never stood trial or had the chance to defend himself is extraordinary.

Human beings come with many different personalities. Some fiery and challenging like the Cobra, some as meek and retiring as a Mongoose. It may surprise you to learn that lawyers are human beings too.

Some, those with street fighter instincts, choose the hurly-burly of the legal chaise-longue – the ‘no-holds barred’ areas of personal injury and negligence litigation. They are happy in the public eye, at ease with their intimidating reputation that sees less than 10% of torts ever reaching the judicial bench. They raise their heads and hiss – and mostly accept battle honours with no battle.

Other personalities head for the legal equivalent of the marital bed – a post-menopausal marital bed at that. ‘Trusts and Probate’ – that arcane area of English Law where an unhealthy proportion of your clients are not even sentient and ‘battles’ mostly consist of firing ‘paper aeroplanes’ at your opponent, there is rarely any hand-to-hand fighting.

Each to its own. The two legal personalities rarely meet.

Tomorrow in the Chancery Division, ‘Personal Injury meets Probate’ in a grim battle over Claim No:HC13F00335.

Those who have been at pains not to publicise the forthcoming case between ‘Luke Lucas and Roger Bodley v. National Westminster Bank’ did so because what is at stake is essentially the reputation of the Nat West bank as executors of estates. They have a large probate division, which brings a healthy income to the bank. They are trusted by many people to carry out their wishes after their death. Whether their behaviour has been totally above board, reflecting the trust placed upon them by a testator to carry out his/her wishes, or whether they have allowed themselves to become too close to those who would wish to see the testators wishes frustrated, for whatever reason, is what is at stake tomorrow.

Who is Luke Lucas? Who is Roger Bodley? Why should we take an interest?

Well, Luke Lucas is a reclusive Swiss resident who used to have a bird’s eye view of the English Channel, and Roger Bodley is a man building a house of hemp overlooking the Tasmanian Bass Straight. No obvious connection yet? Let’s dig a little deeper? Pretend we are old style journalists, shall we?

Luke lives in Switzerland and here is Roger speaking at the 3rd International Hemp Building Symposium – in Switzerland. Give in yet?

OK, both Luke and Roger were long time friends and trusted confidantes of Jimmy Savile and they are the named trustees of  the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust and the Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Charitable Trust. They are the people who were burdened with the task of ensuring that Jimmy’s assets were distributed to ”provide funds for the relief of poverty and sickness and other charitable purposes beneficial to the community”, as well as “provision of recreational and other facilities for disabled persons”.

The 2013 accounts for the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust showed a shade over three and a half million pounds in hand. Three and a half million pounds that should be working hard for disabled and underprivileged people. People like Help For Heroes, or even victims of abuse through the many charities set up to advise and support such victims. It should be supporting Leeds University undergraduate medical students, funding – among other things – a bursary for the students to conduct research during the holidays.

It isn’t. It isn’t, because within weeks of Jimmy”s death, a woman called Georgina Reay decided that she looked so much like Jimmy Savile that she ‘must be’ his secret love child. She dismissed the idea of DNA tests, ‘forget about DNA’ she said, – just give us a slice of his assets. A year later when it had been comprehensively proven that she categorically wasn’t Jimmy’s child – she decided that actually, since there was no money on offer, she no longer wanted to be associated with ‘that’ Monster.

Meanwhile the dispersal of funds to good causes had been held up as the Executors, the National Westminster Bank, waited to see whether Jimmy really did have a daughter who might be entitled to claim on his estate. Held up just long enough to allow the ‘fearless crusader’ on child protection matters, Mark Williams-Thomas, to take the story that he had been hired for as a £500 researcher on by the BBC, over the road to ITV and turn it into the pot-boiler that he apparently ‘risked his career’ to produce. Quite how you ‘risk’ a career cleaning chewing-gum off Westminster streets by labelling a dead man who cannot defend himself in court as ‘a paedophile’ is a mystery to me. Nor whether you can really call ‘stringing’ stories to the local papers, whilst employed as a police constable, much of a career? In some quarters, like Operation Elvedon, such antics are described as being a possibly criminal career.

By the time that the NSPCC had jumped on the bandwagon, the lawyers were encircling the Savile Trust on behalf of unnamed clients who had just remembered how deeply traumatised they were since 40 years before when their path had crossed Jimmy Savile’s.

Not traumatised in the manner of the severely disabled clients of ‘Help for Heroes’, you understand – missing arms or legs in the service of their country.

Just traumatised in a manner that required, if the Nat West bank as executors of the Estate would be so kind, quickly mind you, to divide up Jimmy’s assets between all of them (after their legal fees had been paid, naturally). As the months rolled by, the legal fees mounted, and the remaining pool to be potentially divided between these new and far more ‘deserving’ clients than mere legless veterans, shrunk. Legless veterans can provide unequivocal proof that they are indeed legless veterans. The clients of these lawyers merely ‘allege’; un-investigated, unproven allegations, that  they are more deserving of Jimmy’s assets.

I said ‘clients’ because we are not talking about all Jimmy’s ‘alleged victims’, no, no. This pot had just been ear marked for the ‘use’ of the clients of just two firms of personal injury lawyers. Or should I say, just one, since one firm seems to have eaten the other firm whilst marking time….

Should the Nat West pay these claimants without investigating? Should they have paid Georgina Reay without a DNA test? Obviously not! How many other confabulatory Georgina Reay’s are there in the pool of remaining clients?

Will this battle between dry and dusty ‘Trust and Probate’ lawyers (Jo Summers of PWT Advice, on behalf of the Trustees) who are possibly not best equipped to handle the sort of media bunfight that this case has elicited and the Nat West Bank under pressure from media savvy ‘Personal Injury’ lawyers throw any light on this matter?

Not many Chancery cases are worth watching – but this one is. The application is for nothing more than the replacement of the National Westminster lawyers as executors of the Savile estate – by an executor who will ensure the claims are investigated before any charity is deprived of money in favour of ‘alleged’ and un-investigated claimants.

I’ll leave you to judge who might have had a vested interest in deciding to help the Daily Star run a story headlined: “Jimmy Savile’s victims fear his charity wants to block a proposed compensation scheme.”

The Cobra may have a fearsome reputation – but the Mongoose can surprise.

‘Reflections on Savile at Duncroft’

Edinburgh ESRC Project

Securing a data set on allegations of sexual abuse made against 

the former disc jockey, Jimmy Savile

This project aims to secure data that might otherwise be lost, relating to allegations made against the former DJ, Jimmy Savile. The initiative for the project came from a lawyer and writer who is a former resident of Duncroft School (from whence the initial allegations against Savile emanate), and whose blogging activity under the name of ‘Anna Raccoon’ has generated a substantial body of related correspondence and contacts which provide and could lead to information not yet in the public domain.

If you are one of the people who has been in contact with Anna about this or who has contributed to ‘The Raccoon Arms’ blog, or another blog on related issues, we ask for your permission to:

(1) Add your blog contributions to our data base

(2) Allow Anna to pass your relevant communications and contributions  to the research team OR/AND

(3) Allow Anna to pass your email address/contact details to the research team

If you are willing, we would also welcome the opportunity to interview former members of staff and residents from Duncroft to gather their accounts of what life was like there, and specifically what they might remember of Jimmy Savile’s association with the School.

Our aim is to digitally archive this data set and to establish a timeline of events, allegations  and circumstances through cross-referencing Anna’s data with that set out in the media and in official reports.

We will code and anonymise all identifying data before recording or sharing findings relating to any of the above.  In the case of (1), above,  we may use the ‘handles’ or monikers that you have already provided.  Your contact details will not be passed on without your permission

On hearing from you, or at your request, we will provide further information about the project. We will provide a consent form which clarifies your agreement and our obligations to you.

This project is being carried out by Mark Smith (Principal Investigator),  Steve Kirkwood and Clare Llewellyn, University of Edinburgh with Ros Burnett, University of Oxford. It is funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council(ESRC).

Contact details:

Dr Mark Smith   mark.smith@ed.ac.uk

Dr Ros Burnett   ros.burnett@crim.ox.ac.uk

Dr Steve Kirkwood   s.kirkwood@ed.ac.uk

Clare Llewellyn   c.a.Llewellyn@sms.ed.ac.uk

School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh

Morning folks!

Back from my hols, and fully refreshed, so it is back to work.

A lot has happened over the past week, and I have been busy researching in England. Let me fill in that doughnut ‘hole’.

The High Court case has taken place – and the outcome was not exactly as portrayed in the media (a small detail that will come as no surprise to regular readers!).

The ‘Third Sector ‘, the charity world’s own news letter said it was the “Charity’s court bid to block compensation payments to Savile victims” – making it sound as though the Trust wanted to ban payments to genuine victims, if there were any – er, No, it wasn’t! The case was the Trust wanting to remove the Nat West as executors, because their solicitors, Osborne Clark, had been excluding the beneficiaries – Help for Heroes, etc – from any discussions on who and under what circumstances, any compensation payments were made.  Solicitors for the claimants, Slater and Gordon, wanted to carve up the money in the estate between their present 139 claimants, on an agreed tariff, without any over sight – otherwise known as investigation – from those who may hold information that conflicts with their clients ‘memories’. 

Although the judge didn’t agree to a change of Executor, he did agree that the Trustees have every right to be included in those discussions and to add their own input – otherwise known as research into the claims – to the discussions. He also agreed with the Trust that confining the available funds to just those claimants who had already signed up to one commercial firm, Slater and Gordon, was potentially unfair to other claimants and that advertisements should be placed in two national newspapers in case anybody else feels that they might be entitled to a share of the Savile Trust and has yet to come forward. Remember – you will be believed! – but also remember, that your claim will now be subjected to scrutiny by the Beneficiaries who have amassed a large amount of unpublished information over the past few months…

Slater and Gordon have run a very slick media campaign over the past few months, with regular stories appearing in the compliant press presenting their client’s case, whereas the Trust made the decision that it would not feed media speculation. Hence my silence on the matter – and galling it has been at times to see how things were twisted to fit that media narrative. Not least over the matter of the cost of that court action.

Liz Dux of Slater and Gordon was out on the airwaves claiming that the Trust’s decision to bring this case was ‘costing £10,000 an day’ – or was it an hour? It could well have been an hour – for when the Trust’s two lawyers, who were charging not a penny for their appearance, arrived for the hearing, a hearing merely between themselves and the Nat West Bank, they discovered that Slater and Gordon had invited themselves along for the day along with a phalanx of nineteen solicitors and barristers, including 3 QCs….to demand that the Judge agreed a tariff on the same day. That is where the £10,000 came into the picture. Potential claimants who find that the pot is empty when it comes to their compensation might care to remember that.

Alan Collins, principal lawyer at Slater & Gordon, said he was not entirely sure why the charity felt it was entitled to the money. “My interpretation, which they may not agree with, is that these cases ought to be defended, that they go back many years, that some cases are spurious and that they should be thrashed out in the court – but that is rather unrealistic,” he said. “For reasons that are not clear, the charity wanted the money.”

For reasons which are not entirely clear…Slater and Gordon want their clients to be paid on the basis of an undefended case, and don’t mention the spurious! That will not now be happening. All that has been agreed is that IF any claims are met, IF any money is left after the army of lawyers have been paid, it will be at an agreed ‘tariff’.

Those claims will be scrutinised against a vast volume of reliable evidence that we have amassed over the past few months – that I will not be sharing with you at present, much as I would love to. I have no intention of making life easy for those who think that the NSPCC holding itself up as the law in this land and stating the ‘crimes committed by Jimmy Savile’ is any substitute for our judicial system of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ means that all you have to do is dream up an occasion when your path might have crossed Jimmy Savile’s for a quick payout.

I will share one nugget with you, just because it made me laugh so much. Remember Karin Ward’s first excruciating ‘Poor Me’ tome? Remember how she said that after, aged ’14′, whoops, actually 16, she was allowed to go to Clunk-Click along with the some other girls and staff from Duncroft, at the BBC TV Centre, whoops, Shepherds Bush Theatre, Jimmy Savile took them out to an ‘exclusive’ and celebrated restaurant where they mixed with the rich and famous and she filled her ‘autograph book’. Oh dear, her age and the venue weren’t the only things she got wrong…

When you appear on TV, you get paid, and you sign a ‘consent form’. So, the BBC dutifully handed out 50p pieces to each of the girls and got them to sign a consent form. Then Jimmy Savile, ever the true Yorkshireman, took them out to, where? ‘The Ivy’, or maybe ‘Le Gavroche’, something to turn the head of a naive 14 16 year old, surely?

…..The doughnut shop two doors away from the Theatre, for a cup of tea and a doughnut…and collected up all the 50p’s to pay for it! If ever there was a definition of ‘Yorkshire grooming’ it has to be ‘pay for your own bloody doughnut’! It was such a memorable piece of ‘Savilisation’ that there does exist a formal record of it…I have it.

There will be another post today, need to do some more research…

In the autumn of last year, a memo was leaked to The Times newspaper, written by the RSPCA’s deputy chairman, Paul Draycott, which discussed the charity’s aims for ‘ten years hence’. It reminded me of the RSPCA’s remarkable powers, based on the 2006 Animal Welfare Act, to mount prosecutions instead of the Crown Prosecution Service, and to simultaneously act as chief investigator. It is the only charity to have such quasi-official powers.

There has been a lot of disquiet about this dual role, and the ‘headline’ and expensive cases which it has used its powers to bring. Something that is probably not too far removed from the charity’s decision to ensure that its chief executive ‘stepped down with immediate effect’, suffering from a medical complaint that was not defined as being either physical or mental, last week. The truly cynical might think that had the cause been physical they would have been at pains to remove any possible misunderstanding from the minds of the general public.

It made me wonder what the NSPCC’s ‘game plan’ for the next ten years might be.

As the months have passed, I have revisited the question from time to time. Generally as a result of yet another press release from the NSPCC or their ‘apprentice’ – NAPAC. They arrive with monotonous regularity.

“Police and CPS leave survivors of child sex abuse in the lurch’ said the latest from NAPAC. ‘Justice’ system still fails victims despite Jimmy Savile’s exposure as Paedophile.

‘Despite Jimmy Savile’s exposure as Paedophile’ – just read that again.  Neither the Police nor the CPS have ‘exposed’ Jimmy Savile. Naming Jimmy Savile as a paedophile was the work of the NSPCC charity in their ‘Giving Victims a Voice’ confabulation. They went even further in their September 2013 report on ‘focus groups’ comprised of a handful of those ‘victims’ who reported to Yewtree and they ‘were able to trace’. (Will we ever be told how many of the ’600′ have vanished following their late night drunken phone call to Yewtree?)  In their latest report they refer to ‘crimes committed by Jimmy Savile’. The word ‘vulnerable’ appears in every sentence, as though even ‘alleged’ victims of sexual assault are a homogenous group, who react to the alleged offence in identical manner. 

The only Police involvement in ‘Giving Victims a Voice’ was to write down the statements of the many people who phoned ‘Operation Yewtree’ – they didn’t ‘investigate’. In some cases, it was not even current police officers who took down statements. Ex-police officers are merely member of the public. They may remember how to write out a statement, but they have no more authority or standing than you or I writing down what our neighbour has said. 

Yet on the basis of this, the NSPCC has appointed itself both Judge and Jury, and is ‘dissatisfied’ with the work of the police and the CPS. Mark Williams-Thomas kept up a chorus of criticism of every police force, the CPS, and every other authoritative body. The lawyers complain loudly that their clients should not be cross questioned in court. They demand that putative victims remain anonymous and are shielded from view in court. It was beginning to seem as though the only people the NSPCC felt were competent to speak to an alleged victim, investigate crimes of child abuse, or pronounce guilt were, er, the NSPCC.

They couldn’t be looking to go down the RSPCA route could they? To be the sole investigating and prosecuting body for child abuse? Surely I was being paranoid – England is the home of the Magna Carta, of Common Law; it was unthinkable that a branch of the criminal law should be handed over to a private charity. Wasn’t it?

Yesterday, Lord Thomas, the lord chief justice, emerged from his ermine and queried whether:

“so many criminal cases need to be sent to the crown court, a change that would significantly restrict the right to trial by jury.”

“An inquisitorial system might be an improvement’ he said. Justice dispensed “whilst doing so within limited and reducing resources”.

So, we’ve done away with the jury as a cost cutting exercise, but surely an experienced Judge investigating and pronouncing guilt is a long way from my nightmare scenario of the NSPCC being both prosecutor and investigator? Wait, what is this he said?

Research would have to consider whether an inquisitorial procedure would require more judges or a “new cadre of junior judges“.

Circumstances have changed: [...] the crown court is heavily overburdened by a significant proportion of its work relating to serious sexual offences. Surely it is time again to consider this issue again given the financial circumstances in which we are now placed.”

I have never been a fan of a separate category of ‘sexual offences’. I don’t believe that Parliament, or by extension, the law, has any business deciding what sexual practices are or are not acceptable. ALL violence should be criminally prosecuted, as violence, or rather bodily harm. It should make no difference whether it is a punch on the nose or rape. If you have been physically harmed you should expect redress from the criminal courts. It is where the law tries to legislate in respect of emotional or moral harm that it comes unstuck.

Take the example of the laws against, and now permitting, homosexual behaviour. What exactly IS homosexual behaviour, what is normal, what is it that is permitted? Is it ‘whatever’ goes on between two people of the same sex, excluding issues of consent? How is, for example, a young man supposed to judge whether what is asked of him in a homosexual environment is reasonable or not? Nailing his nipples to a bread board? That one was answered in R v Brown, but I could point you to as many ‘unusual’ examples of sexual practices between homosexuals as there are between bizarre heterosexuals. By first proscribing, then permitting, homosexuality they have left a grey area which is capable of confusing a young person.

Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, called for a national debate on the age of consent. A debate. Re-opening the question of whether 16 is still appropriate 100 years after that age was settled on. It may be that we need to raise the age to 18 – but that is never discussed. In an age when a third of teenagers have sex before they reach 16, we react to the mere suggestion of re-opening the debate with the same horror that we should react to being told to consume our youngest for breakfast. As barrister Barbara Hewson found out when she mooted such a debate. She was assassinated by a sycophantic squad of columnist minions, all of them infected with hypocritical and gleeful spite, ready to vomit out a uniform screed. ‘They are children’.

Indeed they are – because the law says they are – perhaps the law should continue to say they are until they are 18? 21 even?

As I left the UK, to return to the land of spoken English in the streets around you (!) I passed a young woman who I assume was no longer a child, in that she was flying unaccompanied on a Ryanair flight without the luminous tag they place round the necks of 14 year olds. She was wearing a t-shirt that barely reached below her ample chest, exposing an equally ample ‘mid-riff’. At first sight the t-shirt bore the legend ‘Gagging for it’. It was only when she drew a deep breath that you could make out the bottle and glass pictured underneath….

I hope, for her sake, and whoever allowed her out unaccompanied, that wherever she was flying to – Ibiza? Lesbos? Read the full t-shirt message and offered her a drink before getting themselves into trouble with this vulnerable potential ‘victim’.

Your thoughts on my spectre of the NSPCC carving out prosecutions of sexual offences as their specialist area?

The new breed of righteous ‘paedophile hunters’ are not a tribe exclusive to the UK. I suspect they were introduced to the native population like grey squirrels – possibly from Australia, where they are even more prolific than in the US if that is possible.

Yesterday, one of the better known, Derryn Hinch, was released from prison in Melbourne, loudly complaining of the unpleasant nature of some of the individuals he had been forced to share his temporary home with. Not that he had done a lot of ‘sharing’, he had requested solitary confinement ‘in accordance with his wishes after he said he was worried for his safety and health‘.

Why would somebody ostensibly ‘on the side of the angels’, an outspoken ‘moral crusader’, have found himself in prison? Because, as is the case with so many of these ‘moral guardians’, he thought he was above the law, better than the law, that the law was merely there to punish the people HE pointed a finger at. Derryn was jailed for his sixth offence of ‘contempt of court’.

Derryn is a ‘shock jock’, a ‘C’ list radio celebrity, whose career is dependant upon remaining in the news. What better way, in today’s climate, than to point the finger at well known people and say ‘he’s a paedophile’. It is a fashion that we have taken to in the UK, as non entities who might have spent their life unknown, become household names with an army of followers, by publicly labelling any celebrity who has had the misfortune to be accused of past indiscretions with a nubile fifteen-going-on-sixteen year old as a paedophile.

I had thought that this was merely a cynical move to build a career in journalism, but the uncomfortable thought has crossed my mind from time to time, that possibly worrisome thoughts had entered their minds – and what better way to hid in plain sight than at the end of the pointing arm? That uncomfortable thought resurfaced when I found this old blog post from Derryn on the ‘way-back’ machine – oh dear; bedding a fifteen year old Derryn? So you too are attracted to the young and nubile and get caught out by a mountain of make-up and a determined teen-ager?

That deleted blog post and the subsequent denouncement of Derryn as a hypocrite who should be charged and convicted was back in 2005; since then, the young woman has been persuaded, we know not how or why, to come forward and say that Derryn was mistaken, she was 17. Perhaps she was. When she met Derryn she said she was 25, so she obviously lied on at least one of these occasions, it is a matter of opinion as to which one.

My point being, not to rake over old Derryn coals, but that when you take a lingerie and swimwear model, dressed up to the nines, out to dinner and subsequently to bed – and she turns out to be 15 after closer interrogation, you are behaving as you are genetically programmed to. To subsequently find yourself in court when she has remembered that er, actually, she was 15 and you are now a wealthy celebrity, doesn’t turn you into a ‘paedophile’ who was ‘grooming’ a child, and should compensate that child.

Or, at least, it does in the eyes of the law, but the publicity which the paedo-hunters direct to these cases is to trivialise and turn attention away from a very real problem.

Down in the shires of Gloucestershire, far from the prying eyes of the TV cameras and the salacious detail gatherers, a young girl was painfully recounting the details of an all too familiar situation. She was born at a time when it was every woman’s right to demand a divorce from a man who now bored her; at a time when genetic Fathers were an optional extra to be seen on birthdays and Christmas, if she was lucky; when having to tell your teacher that your surname had changed, yet again, was a familiar ritual at the beginning of term; when teen-agers were all powerful in a household, able to dress as they pleased and go where they pleased, financed by whatever they demanded; where boyfriends were allowed to stay overnight.

She saw nothing wrong in displaying her pubescent body around the house in front of a succession of young men who had no genetic bond with her; inevitably one was attracted to her. He sexually abused her – for many years. He has now gone to prison. As he should. That is Paedophilia, and rightly condemned and punished – by our judicial system.

Where I part company with the celebrity paedo-hunters, and find myself wrongly accused of being a ‘supporter of child abuse’, is their belief that building a broadcasting career on the back of naming elderly celebrities as Paedophiles, and demanding that they be named and shamed for long-ago dalliances with young groupies is actually doing anything at all for the protection of children. It isn’t. I believe it will positively harm them.

They are diverting time and resources from the wholly inadequate system we already have to protect young people. If you want to campaign for ‘child protection’ then look towards protecting children before they are abused. Not tweeting the details afterwards. And for God’s sake stop using the issue as a way to enhance political divisions.

No matter how extreme the law you call for to chemically castrate ‘all Paedophiles’ – a term which now includes even patting a 15 year old on the bottom over her clothing – or whole life tariffs, even the death penalty; no matter what orders you put in place to ensure that those thus labelled are not allowed to ‘live within 50 miles of a school’ or take any gainful employment; you will never, ever, change the basic evolutionary fact that we are all attracted to the youngest, fittest, healthiest example of the human race that we can possibly get into bed with. That applies to men and women.

Animals protect their young cubs – and we used to. Even as young children we were taught how to wriggle in and out of our bathing costumes under a towel on the beach, not taken to a tanning parlour to get an ‘all-over’ in readiness for our trip to Ibiza with our school friends. We were walked home by Fathers, brothers, teachers – and we understood why. Both men and women took protecting their young from danger as their first duty, not last, after their own desires. The majority of men were protective of women and young girls – and we were taught to stay away from situations where we might come across those who were not so well inclined.

Back in the 60s, we hitch-hiked everywhere; if, God forbid, we had found ourselves in the situation with somebody – it invariably involved the phrase ‘are you in favour of all this ‘free-love’ business’ – that we might have got ourselves into a sticky situation, we extracted ourselves as fast as possible, and looked to the next adult, male or female to help us. Our expectation was that most adults would protect us. And they did. Who would now stop their car on a dark rainy night if they saw a young girl in distress running along the road? Particularly a man.

We have engendered an atmosphere where our young females act as temptress, and we demand that any male who is so tempted is ruined for life, more effectively than if he committed a murder.

In fact, why not silence the only witness to your sexual desires? Why take the risk that she may go to court in 30 years time, and you may be ruined for having sex with that lingerie model who said she was 25? Why not wring her neck instead?

Some ‘child protection’ model we are building.

Mr Justice Scales judgment in the case brought by the ‘Savile’ charities against the National Westminster Bank has just been published.

Of particular note is the following sentence:

In the event, to meet these concerns, the PI Claimants, the Third Party Defendants and the Bank agreed that clause 4 of the Scheme should be modified to provide that any claimant wishing to make a claim under the Scheme will have to give consent for their name to be provided to such sources of information (including the individual beneficiaries) as the Bank and the Third Party Defendants might consider helpful to allow for evidence to be obtained to respond to the claim.

There will be scrutiny of these claims against the mass of information that has been compiled…

Apologies that I do not have time to go through this judgment today or tomorrow, but for those who have the inclination and prefer to make informed decisions, rather than leave it to the media to make their minds up for them here is the full judgment.

Feel free to use the comments section to highlight points of interest……

Neutral Citation Number: [2014] EWHC 653 (Ch)

Case No: HC13F00335

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

CHANCERY DIVISION

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand, London, WC2A 2LL

Date: 11/03/2014

Before :

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE SALES

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

IN THE MATTER OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE ESTATE OF JIMMY SAVILE

Between : 

Between :

Mark Cunningham QC (instructed by Osborne Clark) for the Claimant (National Westminster Bank plc)

Teresa Rosen Peacocke (instructed by PWT Advice LLP) for the Trustees

Piers Feltham, Justin Levinson & Elizabeth Gumbel QC (instructed by Slater & Gordon (UK) LLP) for the 3^rd & 4^th Defendants

Andrew Cosedge (instructed by PWT Advice LLP) for the 5^th Defendant

Neil Block QC (instructed by Capsticks LLP) for the 6^th Defendant

Andrew Warnock QC & Andrew Spencer (instructed by DAC Beachcroft LLP) for the 7^th Defendant

Hearing dates: 24/2/14-26/2/14

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Approved Judgment

I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.

………………………..

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE SALES

Mr Justice Sales:

Introduction

These proceedings relate to the administration of the estate of Jimmy Savile, the television presenter. Jimmy Savile died on 29 October 2011. The current value of his estate, after allowing for a range of expenses that have been incurred, is about £3.3 million.

Jimmy Savile left a will. The executor of the will and Jimmy Savile’s personal representative is National Westminster Bank plc (“the Bank”).

Various individuals are named in the will as beneficiaries (“the individual beneficiaries”). These include Mrs McKenna, who is Jimmy Savile’s niece and next-of-kin. Mrs McKenna has now been appointed to represent the interests of the individual beneficiaries in these proceedings. Under the will, the residue of Jimmy Savile’s estate is left to the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust (“the Trust”).

On 4 October 2012 a television programme was broadcast on ITV accusing Jimmy Savile of being a serial child abuser and sex offender. As a result of that programme and the publicity and further investigations into Jimmy Savile’s activities which followed, a large number of people have come forward to make claims that they were abused by Jimmy Savile.

By the date of the hearing, 139 people had intimated to the Bank that they had personal injury claims against Jimmy Savile and his estate in relation to such abuse (“the PI Claimants”). Some of the PI Claimants have also indicated that they have claims against other defendants with whom Jimmy Savile was associated: the BBC, certain NHS hospital trusts and the charities Barnardo’s and Mind (I refer to these as “the Third Party Defendants”). The great majority of the PI Claimants are now represented by Slater & Gordon solicitors (having previously been represented by the firms of Russell, Jones and Walker and Pannone).

The claims which the PI Claimants have brought forward have not been the subject of determination in court proceedings, and in that sense remain untested allegations. But there is no serious dispute that some, perhaps many, of the claims may be well-founded and meritorious. If such claims are substantiated, there is a serious possibility, to put it no higher, that they would exhaust the money remaining in the estate, leaving the individual beneficiaries and the Trust with nothing.

On the other hand, it cannot at this stage be assumed that this outcome will arise. The individual beneficiaries and the Trust have an interest to ensure that the claims are properly scrutinised. They maintain that if that happens a substantial part of the estate may remain available for distribution to them under the will.

There are two application notices before the court on this hearing. The first is an application notice dated 5 November 2013 issued by the trustees of the Trust seeking an order under section 50 of the Administration of Justice Act 1985 that an alternative professional executor (PennTrust Limited – “PennTrust”) be appointed as personal representative of Jimmy Savile in place of the Bank, “on the grounds (inter alia) that the Bank’s failure to act in the interests or for the benefit of the beneficiaries [i.e. including the Trust], the breakdown of the Bank’s relationship with [the Trust] … based on the mode in which the estate is being administered and caused by substantial overcharges claimed against the estate, prevents the trusts of the estate being properly and expeditiously executed.” The individual beneficiaries support this application. The Bank, the PI Claimants and Third Party Defendants oppose it.

The second is an application notice dated 17 December 2013 issued by the Bank seeking (i) a determination whether a proposed draft scheme designed to facilitate the speedy and inexpensive resolution of personal injury claims by the PI Claimants and others against Jimmy Savile’s estate (“the Scheme”) is a suitable mechanism by which the personal injury claims that have been and may in future be made against the estate can be dealt with and (ii) ratification by the court under section 284(1) of the Insolvency Act 1986 of various expenses incurred by the Bank in the course of executing the will and administering the estate, including substantial legal expenses which have been incurred. The request for approval of the Scheme is supported by the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants. The Bank’s applications are opposed by the Trust and the individual beneficiaries.

At the end of the hearing, I was invited to indicate what my decision would be. I was persuaded that it was appropriate to do so, with detailed reasons in writing to follow. I indicated that I would dismiss the Trust’s application to remove the Bank as executor and personal representative; I would approve the Scheme; and I would  grant validation of expenses as sought by the Bank. This judgment sets out my reasons.

Factual Background

On 9 December 2011, at an early stage after the death of Jimmy Savile, the Bank issued an advertisement in the usual way under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925 in a local newspaper and the London Gazette calling for claims in relation to Jimmy Savile and the estate to be notified to it by 13 March 2012.

The usual effect of such an advertisement is to provide protection for an executor who distributes an estate after paying out valid claims made by creditors (and notified pursuant to the advertisement) against the estate. However, it is common ground that advertisement pursuant to section 27 does not have this effect where, after the time for notifying claims as stated in the advertisement has passed but before the estate has been distributed and paid out, other claims are notified to the executor which require assessment.

That is what happened in this case. After the television programme in October 2012 and before distribution and winding up of the estate, it became clear that it was likely that various personal injury claims would be brought forward against Jimmy Savile’s estate, as has happened.

Clearly, the interests of the PI Claimants, on the one hand, and of the Trust and the individual beneficiaries, on the other, are opposed. Both sides have potential claims to the money in the estate, depending on the contingency of how many of the personal injury claims may be found to be substantiated and for what quantum of damages.

At the same time, the interests of the PI Claimants (and of any other individuals who may in future bring personal injury claims against the estate – “future claimants”) amongst themselves are potentially in conflict, in that the more claims which are found to be substantiated and the greater the amounts found to be due, the greater the risk that the remaining funds in the estate will be exhausted and the recovery in respect of the claims which are substantiated will have to be reduced pro rata. Hence, it is in the interest of those of the PI Claimants and any future claimants who have meritorious claims that those without meritorious claims or who may be making false claims should be screened out in some way, so as not to deplete the remaining funds in the estate and thus reduce the prospect that meritorious claims be met in full or at any rate with the least possible reduction.

A further complication is that, as mentioned above, some of the PI Claimants (and, it may be, future claimants) also have claims against the Third Party Defendants, who are various institutions which are alleged to be vicariously liable for tortious acts of Jimmy Savile, including certain NHS hospital trusts (represented in negotiations and before me by the Secretary of State for Health), the BBC and the charities Barnardo’s and Mind. To the extent that such claims are substantiated, the Third Party Defendants will have claims over against Jimmy Savile’s estate for an indemnity.

Another significant part of the context which has to be taken into account is the impact of legal and other costs which may be incurred by the estate and by others in seeking to resolve disputes regarding the merits of the multitude of claims which have already been brought forward and others which may in future be brought forward. The costs of dispute resolution validly incurred by the Bank in the course of administering the estate will be deducted from the fund available to meet claims of the PI Claimants, future claimants, the Third Party Defendants, the Trust and the individual beneficiaries. Parties involved in arguments to determine those claims will incur costs of their own which may in part also be recoverable from the estate and may in part have to be borne by themselves.

Accordingly, those with claims or potential claims to the fund in the estate have an interest in there being effective scrutiny of personal injury claims while at the same time having an interest in such scrutiny being achieved at the lowest possible cost.

The Bank has gathered in the estate and realised the assets, such as real property, owned by Jimmy Savile when he died. The remaining matter to be sorted out before the estate is wound up and the remaining funds distributed is the resolution of the extent of liabilities in respect of the personal injury claims referred to above. In that regard, enough has been said about the complexities of the situation to indicate the difficult task which the Bank has had to carry out as executor of the will and personal representative, balancing the interests of all those with claims or potential claims to the fund in its hands.

There was a previous hearing before me on 20 February 2013 on an application by the Bank seeking directions. My judgment on that occasion is reported at [2013] EWHC 770 (Ch). In the course of that hearing, I emphasised to all parties the importance of trying to minimise the costs of resolution of disputes in respect of the various claims, so as to avoid what counsel had described as “a feeding frenzy for the lawyers” and to preserve as much of the money in the estate as possible to meet the claims of those with entitlements in respect of it. I said this:

“I would encourage everyone here to be as imaginative as possible in terms of trying to work out sensible ways in which the claims can both be scrutinised, but also dealt with at a minimum of expense in terms of advisors’ fees on all sides. I think it is important that, although the estate is significant, it is not hugely valuable when set against the possible claims which may be brought against it. I am very concerned … that it not be swallowed up, in effect, in advisors’ fees and legal fees going forward.”

The Bank, the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants have taken that observation very seriously. They engaged in negotiations to try to devise a scheme which would allow effective scrutiny of the merits of the personal injury claims at the least possible cost. The negotiations have been lengthy and difficult, but they have borne fruit in the form of the Scheme, which I discuss in detail below.

Also at the hearing on 20 February 2013, counsel then appearing for the Trust mentioned the possibility that the Trust might be involved in some way in scrutiny of and defending the personal injury claims being brought forward against the estate, perhaps even on the basis that the Trust took over the defence of those claims on behalf of the Bank. This was only an idea, not a detailed worked out proposal, and there was little discussion about it. I indicated that the court might be open to accepting such an arrangement, if it was acceptable to the Bank and if it appeared sensible and viable.

In the event, despite some discussion between the Bank and the Trust regarding the possibility of the Trust taking on responsibility for conducting the defence of the personal injury claims, no arrangements acceptable to the Bank could be agreed. The Bank pointed out that it could potentially be at risk in relation to costs orders in the personal injury proceedings and said that it would not be willing for steps to be taken in its name over which it had little control. It also thought it inappropriate that the Trust, as but one party with a potential claim in respect of the estate, should have its costs of litigating over such entitlement paid out of the estate while other claimants in respect of the estate, the PI Claimants, had to bear for themselves the cost risks of such litigation.  These were, in my view, all proper grounds on which the Bank could fairly decide not to permit the Trust to take over the defence of the personal injury claims from itself.

The individual beneficiaries were also consulted, and were at that time against passing over the defence of the claims from the Bank to the Trust. Although Mrs Peacocke made some complaint about the information which was provided by the Bank to the individual beneficiaries regarding this issue, I do not consider that it was defective. She suggested that the Bank gave a misleading impression that the Bank was willing to defend the personal injury claims against the estate; but there was nothing misleading in the letters sent out. That was indeed what the Bank proposed to do, to the extent to which it was proper.

In her submissions at this hearing, although Mrs Peacocke complained about the fact that in the past the Bank did not agree to delegate responsibility for dealing with the personal injury claims to the Trust and its reasons for doing so, she did not seek to say that this is something which the court should now expect or require to be done. I think she was right not to try to advance such a contention. The Bank’s objections against allowing the Trust simply to take over the defence of the personal injury claims on behalf of the estate (and, in particular, to allowing the Trust to do so on the basis that it should receive full indemnity from the estate for the expenses of defending the personal injury claims as it saw fit), as explained to the Trust, were reasonable. Further, it could not be said that they were indicative of any hostility to the Trust as residuary beneficiary under the will.

The Bank sought, instead, to negotiate some form of scheme for consideration of the claims. A further application for directions issued by the Bank on 12 March 2013 was put to one side to enable exploration in negotiations whether a scheme could be agreed. At first, efforts were made to include the Trust in the negotiations, while the individual beneficiaries were kept informed, so far as possible, about their course.

There were three important meetings, on 27 March 2013, 14 May 2013 and 30 September 2013, as well as a good deal of other discussion and correspondence. The Trust was invited to the first meeting, but was unable to attend. It was, however, sent an attendance note of that meeting.

The Trust was not happy with the approach adopted by the Bank at the meeting on 27 March 2013. The Trust felt that the Bank was – in the words of Jo Summers of PWT Advice LLP (“PWT”, the solicitors acting for the Trust) in her second witness statement, dated 17 February 2014 – “capitulating to the demands of the adverse claimants, contrary to the proper administration of the estate and the welfare of the beneficiaries.” By letter dated 17 April 2013, PWT (for the Trust) wrote to Osborne Clarke (the solicitors for the Bank) to make various complaints about the conduct of the Bank. PWT maintained that the Bank’s main duty was owed to those interested under the will and that there was no duty or need to assist adverse claimants to pursue claims against the estate; objected to provision of information to the PI Claimants which was confidential or privileged; complained about expenses incurred by the Bank in communicating with the beneficiaries; objected to the reasons which the Bank had given for declining to delegate the conduct of the defence of the personal injury claims to the Trust; objected to the expenses being incurred by the Bank in administering the estate; complained about the time being taken to resolve matters; and complained that the Bank had not rejected the claims by the PI Claimants for payment of their costs in relation to the hearing on 20 February 2013. The Trust asked for a meeting to address these issues.

On 30 April 2013 a meeting took place between representatives of the Trust and representatives of the Bank. According to the second witness statement of Ms Summers, at that meeting, the Bank explained that it had waived its own fees for acting as executor and personal representative; the Trust proposed that the Bank be replaced by PennTrust, which was independent of the Trust but enjoyed the Trust’s confidence; Mr Tim Parsons, for the Bank, indicated that the Bank was finding the performance of its duties onerous and expensive and that the Bank wished to retire as executor; PennTrust was accepted as a prospective personal representative; Osborne Clarke said they would contact PennTrust to discuss arrangements; and PWT said that it would write to Osborne Clarke setting out the proposed procedure.

At the hearing, the alleged agreement by the Bank to withdraw as executor and personal representative in favour of PennTrust and its later change of heart without (it was said) proper justification was relied upon by Mrs Peacocke as part of the material in support of the Trust’s application to have the Bank removed. In that context, it is unfortunate that this evidential material was only put forward by the Trust in evidence in reply, and was not set out in the first witness statement of Ms Summers, dated 5 November 2013, in support of the Trust’s application. The Bank did not seek to put in further evidence in response to the Trust’s evidence in reply. On instructions, Mr Cunningham QC for the Bank accepted that there had been discussion about the possibility of the Bank stepping down in favour of PennTrust and that at the meeting the Bank had been interested in this; but he said it had only been a proposal for further consideration, and the Bank made no commitment to retire. That is consistent with the account given by Ms Summers in her second witness statement and is supported by the correspondence which followed the meeting (PWT’s letter of 1 May 2013, which said “we canvassed the possibility of agreeing for [the Bank] to be substituted as Executor … and Tim Parsons appeared to be in agreement with this” and sought “to record the proposal as we understand it, and describe the general procedure involved, which if undertaken consensually would be a relatively simple and inexpensive matter”; and Osborne Clarke’s reply of 8 May 2013, which referred to the “proposal” made by the Trust).

Upon mature reflection, and in particular having regard to the progress the Bank had made in negotiations towards drafting a viable Scheme and the desirability of ensuring the Scheme (once agreed with the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants) could be operated effectively and at minimal cost, the Bank decided that it ought not to step down as executor and personal representative. In my view, this was clearly a legitimate and lawful decision by the Bank, which cannot be impugned.

The Trust did attend the meeting between the Bank, the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants on 14 May 2013, acting by Mrs Peacocke (who also appeared for the Trust as junior counsel at the hearing on 20 February 2013 and represented it again in this hearing). However, it is clear that the conflicting interests involved, as asserted at that meeting on various sides, made the meeting fractious and difficult. The Bank, the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants say that they found the Trust to be difficult and unhelpful in the negotiations, with the result that the Trust was not involved thereafter in the detail of the negotiation of the Scheme and was not invited to the third meeting, on 30 September 2013.

At the hearing, Mr Cunningham for the Bank made the incautious comment that it was Mrs Peacocke herself who had been “the problem” at the meeting on 14 May 2013. Whatever may have been his instructions about that meeting, there was not a sound basis in the evidence before the court to support the view that Mrs Peacocke had behaved improperly or had been at fault at that meeting, so as to be “the problem”. (I should note that Mr Cunningham has made it clear, in his comments when this judgment was circulated in draft, that he did not intend by this to suggest that Mrs Peacocke had acted with professional impropriety). Since Mrs Peacocke had been attacked personally in that way, as a matter of fairness to her I allowed her some time in the course of her submissions to give her account of that meeting. In my view, it is clear from what I have heard that at the meeting Mrs Peacocke in good faith stoutly maintained and sought to promote the interests of her client, as she perceived them to be. She did nothing improper or wrong.

Unfortunately, however, whilst Mrs Peacocke undoubtedly acted in a professionally proper way at the meeting, the robust line which she sought to take on behalf of the Trust was perceived by the other parties as unhelpful and unconstructive. The negotiations to construct a scheme which could be agreed by the range of parties directly concerned with the personal injury claims – which included the Bank on behalf of the estate, but did not include the Trust – were complex, difficult and sensitive on all sides. The PI Claimants, for example, have emphasised that they have in the event finally been persuaded to make major concessions and compromises agreeing the Scheme, particularly in relation to the tariff of compensation and the provisions for recovery of costs which it sets out, in the interests of trying to achieve speedy resolutions and payments at least cost. The Third Party Defendants also made significant concessions in order to achieve an agreed Scheme, as did the Bank.

In my view, just as Mrs Peacocke did nothing improper at the meeting on 14 May 2013 and the Trust was fully entitled to take a robust line at that meeting, the other parties involved in these difficult and sensitive negotiations were also entitled to take the view that they would be more likely to make real progress towards agreeing a scheme, and would be able to minimise the costs of achieving that end, if they did not thereafter try to involve the Trust until the final Scheme had been agreed between them and could be presented to the court for approval. Their decision to proceed in this way cannot be impugned as unnecessarily or improperly hostile to the Trust. Rather, it was a legitimate, pragmatic and reasonable approach to the handling of a difficult negotiation.

In fact, when the Bank made the arrangements for the meeting on 30 September 2013, it did not unilaterally decide to exclude the Trust. It sought the views of those then representing the PI Claimants. Mr Collins of Pannone and Ms Dux of Slater & Gordon, for the PI Claimants, both asked that the Trust should not be invited to the meeting. In the circumstances, the Bank acted reasonably and without hostility to the Trust, and was entitled to arrange for the meeting to be held without the Trust being invited to attend.

On 11 October 2013, Osborne Clarke wrote to the beneficiaries under the will to outline the Scheme which it was proposed to put in place.

On 22 October 2013, the Trust wrote to the Bank enclosing a draft of an application notice to remove the Bank as executor and personal representative and a draft of Ms Summers’ first witness statement in support. This was done with a view to trying to persuade the Bank to agree to the substitution of PennTrust in its place. In the draft witness statement, the principal reasons for making the application were said to be: (a) there had been a complete breakdown in relations between the Bank and the Trust which seriously jeopardised the proper administration of the estate; (b) the Bank had failed to advertise properly or at all for personal injury claims to be brought forward to enable the liabilities of the estate to be assessed so that distributions could be made from it; (c) the Bank had taken instructions from solicitors acting for the PI Claimants whilst withholding information from the Trust about the administration of the estate; (d) the Bank’s conduct of the defence of the personal injury claims had prejudiced the estate by disclosing confidential and privileged information to solicitors acting for the PI Claimants; and (e) notwithstanding the Bank’s failure to advertise for claims or assess the estate’s liabilities, or indeed to make any real progress in completing the administration of the estate, the expenses (including legal expenses) incurred by the Bank had been unacceptably high. There was also a draft witness statement of Michael Cash of PennTrust, indicating a willingness to act and setting out the relevant hourly rates.

By letter dated 25 October 2013 from Osborne Clark to PWT, the Bank rejected the Trust’s complaints. The Bank said that it could not agree to retire as executor and personal representative without the court’s approval, and that it considered that the court, in considering the Trust’s application for removal, would take into account the views of all relevant parties, including those acting for the PI Claimants. The Bank called on the Trust to serve its application on all interested parties.

On 5 November 2013, the Trust issued its application, supported by the witness statements from Ms Summers and Mr Cash in finalised form.  Contrary to the request of the Bank, the Trust did not serve the application on the PI Claimants. On 18 November 2013, PWT wrote to Osborne Clarke to say that the Trust did not consider it appropriate to have a client of Slater & Gordon or Pannone represent adverse claimants on the Trust’s application, although it might consider a proposal whereby one party was joined to represent all those asserting claims against the estate.

By letter dated 20 November 2013, Osborne Clarke replied to say:

“Your suggestion of joining one party only to represent all those who have asserted claims or potential claims is preposterous. All parties with a legitimate interest should be able to participate in the hearing, at which all issues will be considered.”

At the hearing, Mrs Peacocke relied on this letter (and in particular the use of the word “preposterous”) as evidence of improper hostility on the part of the Bank to the Trust. In my view, however, it does not constitute such evidence. The basic position adopted by Osborne Clarke regarding the right to participate in the hearing was clearly correct. The proposal by PWT and the Trust to try to exclude those with a legitimate interest from being able to participate was, with respect to them, misconceived. Although “preposterous” is a strong word, I do not find its use in this context entirely surprising or inappropriate. It is not unusual for inter-solicitor correspondence to become, on occasion, somewhat testy – particularly if the writer considers (with some justification, as in this case) that the opposing party is behaving unreasonably. It cannot be inferred from this letter that Osborne Clarke’s client, the Bank, had a settled and inappropriate attitude of hostility to the Trust in relation to the administration of the estate.

Meanwhile, the negotiations between the Bank, the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants proceeded. They were eventually successful in producing an agreed Scheme for which approval is sought from the court. When it was in agreed form, the Bank issued its application notice of 17 December 2013 and served its evidence, including the draft Scheme, on the Trust and the individual beneficiaries.

The Trust indicated its opposition to the Scheme. Mrs McKenna and the other individual beneficiaries also indicated their opposition to the Scheme and their support for the Trust’s application to remove the Bank. Mrs McKenna explains in her evidence that she has become disillusioned with the Bank, since it does not propose defending the personal injury claims as robustly as she would wish, spending the resources of the estate to do so.

The Scheme

The Scheme is designed to facilitate the settlement of personal injury claims which may be brought against the estate and the Third Party Defendants, and indemnity claims by the Third Party Defendants against the estate. It does not oblige anyone to settle a claim. If a person with a personal injury claim against the estate (and, as may be, against a Third Party Defendant) chooses to make an application under the Scheme, the Bank (and any relevant Third Party Defendant) will be required to consider the claim according to a set time-scale and procedure and to decide whether to accept or reject it. The consideration of the claim will involve all relevant evidence in relation to it being referred to a barrister to review. The barrister will then produce a recommendation whether the claim should be accepted, rejected or accepted in part. If it is accepted, the claimant will have the option to enter into a settlement agreement with the Bank. If it is rejected or if the claimant chooses not to settle, the claimant will have to decide whether to commence legal proceedings against the Bank, acting for the estate.

The terms of the Scheme have been negotiated between the Bank, the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants. If the Scheme is approved by the court, it is intended that the Bank and the Third Party Defendants should enter into the Scheme by way of agreement. There is some uncertainty at the moment whether the charity Mind will in fact be able to do so, having regard to its insurance arrangements, but if it transpires it cannot do so it will be a simple matter for the Scheme to be slightly recast as an agreement between the Bank and all the other Third Party Defendants, who have indicated that they are able and willing to sign it. If the Scheme is put in place, persons claiming to have suffered abuse at the hands of Jimmy Savile will have a choice whether to make an application under the Scheme and will also have a choice whether or not to agree to settle their claims on the terms recommended as a result of operation of the Scheme. They will not be obliged to settle at that level.

The main features of the Scheme are that it should operate, for those claimants who choose to make an application under it, as a means of seeking to agree a settlement without recourse to a trial or the making of CPR Part 36 offers; the overall aim of the parties is to seek to agree the liability of each of the estate and the Third Party Defendants, including any claim by Third Party Defendants for contribution from the estate; the Scheme is to be administered by the Bank as executor and personal representative under the general supervision of the court (clause 2.1); an advertisement or advertisements are to be placed in national newspapers setting out a time limit within which claims should be made under the Scheme (clause 2.3); if an individual claim cannot be settled under the Scheme, the claimant may pursue her claim through the courts (clause 2.5); in making a claim, a claimant is required to fill out a claim form providing information in support of the claim (clause 3); provision is made for the submission and obtaining of medical reports and disclosure of medical records (clause 3.2); the Bank or Third Party Defendant against whom a claim is made may seek additional information about it, and must within 56 days either accept or reject the claim (clause 4); if a claim is not accepted, there is to be an effort to meet to try to settle the claim (clause 4.2); the estate is to be deemed to admit a claim for an indemnity by a Third Party Defendant which settles a claim against it under the Scheme (clause 5.1), and a procedure is stipulated to try to promote settlement between the estate and any such Defendant where there is a dispute regarding whether the personal injury claim is valid or not (clause 5.2); the name of any claimant involved in the Scheme shall not be published without the consent of the claimant (clause 6); a set rate for sums in respect of costs in relation to claims settled under the Scheme is set out (clause 7); there is a tariff of damages claimable under the Scheme, depending on the seriousness of the abuse in question (schedule 6); payment of a claim out of the estate will only take place if the court approves such payment (clause 8.1); where a Third Party Defendant has a claim for an indemnity against the estate in respect of any claim settled pursuant to the Scheme, it agrees that its entitlement will rank behind any liability the estate has to any personal injury claimant who settles their claim pursuant to the Scheme (clause 8.3). The costs recoverable in respect of a claim settled pursuant to the Scheme are limited in amount and no uplift in respect of the conditional fee arrangements under which the solicitors for the PI Claimants are acting will be payable (clauses 7 and 8).

The main object of the Scheme is to try to achieve as much clarity as possible, as quickly as possible and at the least cost possible, regarding the extent of liabilities of the estate. It is only when the extent of those liabilities is known, or can reasonably be estimated, that it will be possible for the correct distribution of money in the estate to be worked out. At that stage, it is contemplated that the Bank would make an application to court for sanction and approval of payments to be made by the Bank out of the estate. Settlements of claims made pursuant to the Scheme will not, in themselves, involve payment out of money from the estate, but only agreement to the quantification of those claims as a necessary and important step towards allowing payments out of the estate (in whatever appropriate sum) in respect of those claims.

The Scheme is similar to those which operate in relation to certain road traffic accidents and employment and public liability claims under Protocols under the Civil Procedure Rules, which likewise seek to promote fair scrutiny of claims and settlements at the least cost which can be achieved.

If the Scheme is approved and given sanction by the court on the Bank’s application, it will have two main effects so far as the Bank’s position is concerned. First, it will mean that the Bank can incur legal expenses in operating the Scheme with reasonable assurance that the court will find that it is entitled to recoup those expenses out of the estate (subject to possible scrutiny later of the reasonableness of the amounts of those expenses). Secondly, it will mean that, if the quantum of those personal injury claims found to be valid can be assessed by means of the Scheme procedures (or by means of those procedures and prompt resolution of any other claims pursued outside the Scheme), it is likely that the court will give sanction and approval at the final stage for payments to be made out of the estate to claimants, the Trust and the individual beneficiaries, as the case may be. The giving of such approval will provide the Bank, as executor and personal representative, with protection in respect of any later claims brought forward against the estate after it has been distributed: cf Re Yorke (deceased); Stone v Chataway [1997] 4 All ER 907.

It is because of this second effect that there was some debate at the hearing about the form of the advertisement which would be required to be given under clause 2.3 of the Scheme, if the Scheme is approved. I was concerned to ensure that any advertisement would give potential personal injury claimants who have not yet intimated claims against Jimmy Savile’s estate fair notice that they might in practice lose the opportunity to make claims against the estate after a certain period of time, after which it is proposed that the Bank will apply for the sanction of the court to make payments out of the estate and to wind up the estate, leaving no further money to meet later claims. I am satisfied that the form of the proposed advertisement as finally agreed is appropriate. It is in terms which will give fair warning that it is intended that the estate will be fully paid out within a year after the date of the advertisement or as soon as possible thereafter and it will contain an explicit warning that if notice is not given of a claim before such distribution, all right to recover from the estate will be lost.

At the hearing, there was also debate about other features of the drafting of the Scheme, with contributions being made by Mrs Peacocke for the Trust and by Mr Cosedge, counsel for the individual beneficiaries. Some adjustments were made to the final form of the Scheme for which the court’s approval is sought. In my view, the adjustments which were made would all have been capable of agreement by the Bank and the Third Party Defendants had they been raised promptly by the Trust and the beneficiaries in the course of correspondence after they had notice of the Scheme terms in December 2013.

Mr Cosedge also raised a series of other points on the Scheme, not as objections to it, but for consideration by those who had negotiated the Scheme. None of them indicated that they were attracted by any of these further points. In the context of Mr Cosedge’s list of points, Mrs Peacocke raised one matter which she said was an objection to the Scheme. She said that it was a defect of the Scheme that a Third Party Defendant might agree a higher settlement in relation to a personal injury claim than the Bank was prepared to agree, and then claim over against the estate an indemnity for the greater sum. However, I do not think that it can be said that this is a defect in the Scheme. Since Third Party Defendant indemnity claims under the Scheme are to rank behind personal injury claims under the Scheme (clause 8.3), it is very unlikely that a Third Party Defendant would seek to employ such a tactic in order to increase the size of the (potentially worthless) indemnity claim it might have against the estate. And in any case, if such a situation occurred, the Scheme makes it clear that the  Bank is not obliged to accept the validity of the higher indemnity claim which may be made (clause 5.2 and 5.3).

The most significant point of amendment to the terms of the Scheme which was agreed at the hearing related to the stage for consideration of claims under clause 4 of the Scheme. Clause 4 did not originally say in terms that the Bank and Third Party Defendants would be entitled to seek to obtain information about claims made under the Scheme from any other person who might have relevant information bearing upon such claims, but Mr Feltham for the PI Claimants assured me that this was properly covered by clause 4 as it stood, since that would be something to be done in making the assessment whether to accept or reject the claims. Since the individual beneficiaries maintained that they had information which might be relevant to assessing whether some claims were bogus or not, and were concerned that the Bank would not have regard to this in assessing such claims under the Scheme, I indicated that it seemed desirable to allay those concerns by making express provision in the Scheme allowing for this to be done.

After considering the matter overnight, however, those acting for the PI Claimants (in particular) indicated that in fact this might not be possible, out of a concern that it would be unlawful by reason of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 for the Bank or Third Party Defendants to identify to others a person who was making a claim in relation to sexual abuse. I was concerned by this, both because no-one had presented any detailed reasoned argument to me to explain why this would be the effect of the 1992 Act (and I was doubtful, absent such argument, that it would be) and because it appeared to make the operation of the Scheme potentially unfair to the Trust and the individual beneficiaries, in that it might well in practice disable the Bank or Third Party Defendants from seeking from them information which could have a material bearing on the question whether a particular claim has merit or not.

In the event, to meet these concerns, the PI Claimants, the Third Party Defendants and the Bank agreed that clause 4 of the Scheme should be modified to provide that any claimant wishing to make a claim under the Scheme will have to give consent for their name to be provided to such sources of information (including the individual beneficiaries) as the Bank and the Third Party Defendants might consider helpful to allow for evidence to be obtained to respond to the claim. I am satisfied that this adjustment to the Scheme avoids any problem arising from the 1992 Act in the operation of the Scheme and will allow for the possibility of appropriate access in the course of such operation to relevant information held by the individual beneficiaries and others.

The Trust submitted that the Scheme was defective for a number of other reasons. Ms Summers, in her first witness statement, complained that the Scheme is “unworkable and futile”, and that costs to negotiate it and operate it should not be recoverable out of the estate.

 I do not accept this criticism. It is true that claimants are not required to claim under the Scheme and that those who do are not obliged to settle at the level which might be indicated under the Scheme. Until they settle, claimants retain the right to launch proceedings in court. However, there are considerable potential benefits for claimants in using the Scheme and it is likely that claiming under the Scheme will be attractive to many or all of them. Use of the Scheme will provide a good opportunity for their claims to be quickly and inexpensively scrutinised by a barrister, so that they have a reasonable chance of reaching a settlement at an agreed level which can be regarded as fair. Agreement about that will in turn help the Bank to get to a position in which the full amount of valid claims is known, so that it can decide whether and in what amounts they can be paid out of the estate and whether and in what amounts the claims of the Trust and the individual beneficiaries upon the estate can be met. This will allow the Bank to come to court for sanction of payments out of the estate, so that those who are entitled to the money remaining in the estate can actually receive what is due to them.

Personal injury claimants who do not claim or settle under the Scheme will have a difficult choice. They can go to court, but that may involve them in expense which may prove to be irrecoverable; they may fail in their claim and receive nothing; they will be on risk for an award of costs being made against them in favour of the estate if they lose, or if they have failed to apply under the Scheme without good reason; and taking that step will be likely to lead to the Bank being forced to incur legal expenses which will deplete further the balance remaining in the estate, so diminishing whatever recovery they might hope to obtain (in contest with all the other personal injury claimants) at the end of the day. Even if some claimants do pursue this course, despite the risks they will face, it is reasonable to think that the numbers are likely to be comparatively small and easier to deal with than if the Scheme was not put in place.

Mrs Peacocke also developed certain other criticisms of the Scheme in her submissions. In my view, there was no substance in any of these criticisms that should lead the court to refuse to approve the Scheme. She suggested that the court should withhold approval and require the parties to the Scheme to negotiate some more to see if it could be improved, from the point of view of the estate. However, to do so would increase the cost of negotiating with the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants in circumstances where there is no evidence to suggest that there is any prospect that the Bank could achieve better terms than those in the Scheme.

Since Mrs Peacocke made criticism of the proposed Scheme part of her complaint about the behaviour of the Bank as executor, it is relevant at this juncture to express a view about it. In my judgment, the proposed Scheme is a sensible and pragmatic attempt at a solution to the complex situation which confronts the estate. It seeks to strike a fair balance between the objectives of providing for reasonable objective scrutiny of claims made against the estate whilst minimising the costs of dispute resolution and seeking to maximise the scope for distributions out of the estate to those who are really entitled to it (whether personal injury claimants, the individual beneficiaries or the Trust). It is a feature of the Scheme that it provides for comparatively summary and truncated scrutiny of the merits of the personal injury claims under it, as compared with a Rolls-Royce type examination of those claims at trial in court proceedings. But the problem with Rolls-Royce trial procedures to resolve such disputes is that they are expensive, and are such as would be likely to exhaust the estate in payment of legal expenses if every claim were pursued in that way. In my view, the provisions of the Scheme allow for proportionate and sufficient objective scrutiny of the merits of the claims consistent with the proper administration of the estate. I do not accept the Trust’s further criticism of the Scheme, that it is unfairly generous to the personal injury claimants.

Having made these points, however, I wish to emphasise that in my view the relevant question is not so much whether the court thinks that the making of the Scheme is a good idea in the circumstances (which I do), as whether an executor and personal representative faced with the practical problems confronting the Bank in administering the estate could reasonably and lawfully assess that it should enter into the Scheme. The further question, then, is whether in light of that assessment the court should give its sanction for the executor to do so. I discuss the relevant legal test below.

I reject any suggestion by the Trust that the Scheme shows that the Bank is incompetent or unable to continue in post as executor and personal representative. On the contrary, I consider that the Bank has behaved entirely properly and in line with the indication given by the court at the hearing on 20 February 2013, referred to above. Further, as discussed below, I consider that the role of the Bank in negotiating the Scheme and its ability and willingness to carry it into effect are strong reasons counting against the Trust’s application to remove the Bank as executor and personal representative.

The relevant law

On the test to be applied on the question whether an executor and personal representative should be removed and replaced by order of the court, the principal authority to which I was referred is the decision of the Privy Council in Letterstedt v Broers (1884) 9 App Cas 371, in which the court’s power to remove and replace a trustee was confirmed and discussed. It is common ground that similar principles govern the question whether an executor and personal representative should be removed by the court: see Thomas and Agnes Carvel Foundation v Carvel [2007] EWHC 1314 (Ch); [2008] Ch 395, [44]-[47] per Lewison J; Kershaw v Micklethwaite [2010] EWHC 506 (Ch), [6]-[14] per Newey J.

In Letterstedt, at 385-386, Lord Blackburn referred with approval to the discussion in Story’s Equity Jurisprudence at section 1289:

“But in cases of positive misconduct, Courts of Equity have no difficulty in interposing to remove trustees who have abused their trust; it is not indeed every mistake or neglect of duty, or inaccuracy of conduct of trustees, which will induce Courts of Equity to adopt such a course. But the acts or omissions must be such as to endanger the trust property or to shew a want of honesty, or a want of proper capacity to execute the duties, or a want of reasonable fidelity.”

 He went on at 386-387:

“It seems to their Lordships that the jurisdiction which a Court of Equity has no difficulty in exercising under the circumstances indicated by Story is merely ancillary to its principal duty, to see that the trusts are properly executed. This duty is constantly being performed by the substitution of new trustees in the place of original trustees for a variety of reasons in non-contentious cases. And therefore, though it should appear that the charges of misconduct were either not made out, or were greatly exaggerated, so that the trustee was justified in resisting them, and the Court might consider that in awarding costs, yet if satisfied that the continuance of the trustee would prevent the trusts being properly executed, the trustee might be removed. It must always be borne in mind that trustees exist for the benefit of those to whom the creator of the trust has given the trust estate.

The reason why there is so little to be found in the books on this subject is probably that suggested by Mr. Davey in his argument. As soon as all questions of character are as far settled as the nature of the case admits, if it appears clear that the continuance of the trustee would be detrimental to the execution of the trusts, even if for no other reason than that human infirmity would prevent those beneficially interested, or those who act for them, from working in harmony with the trustee, and if there is no reason to the contrary from the intentions of the framer of the trust to give this trustee a benefit or otherwise, the trustee is always advised by his own counsel to resign, and does so. If, without any reasonable ground, he refused to do so, it seems to their Lordships that the Court might think it proper to remove him; but cases involving the necessity of deciding this, if they ever arise, do so without getting reported. It is to be lamented that the case was not considered in this light by the parties in the Court below, for, as far as their Lordships can see, the Board would have little or no profit from continuing to be trustees, and as such coming into continual conflict with the appellant and her legal advisers, and would probably have been glad to resign, and get out of an onerous and disagreeable position. But the case was not so treated.

In exercising so delicate a jurisdiction as that of removing trustees, their Lordships do not venture to lay down any general rule beyond the very broad principle above enunciated, that their main guide must be the welfare of the beneficiaries. Probably it is not possible to lay down any more definite rule in a matter so essentially dependent on details often of great nicety. But they proceed to look carefully into the circumstances of the case.”

As noted by Lewison J in Carvel at [46], “The overriding consideration, therefore, is whether the trusts are being properly executed; or, as [Lord Blackburn] put it in a later passage, the main guide must be ‘the welfare of the beneficiaries’.” The court is called on to apply that broad principle, having careful regard to the particular circumstances of the case.

Mrs Peacocke said at the hearing that she did not seek to say that the behaviour of the Bank fell within the category of cases of positive misconduct identified by Story (although I think that the Bank might have been forgiven for thinking otherwise, from the way in which the evidence in support of the Trust’s application was framed). Rather, she submitted that relations had broken down between the Bank and the Trust and the individual beneficiaries, so that they no longer had confidence in the Bank’s administration of the estate; and since there was available a suitable alternative executor and since (she said) there was no reasonable ground for the Bank to refuse to step down as executor, the court should, following the guidance of Lord Blackburn in the second full paragraph quoted above, remove it.

In order to assess this submission, it is necessary to examine carefully the nature of the obligations upon the Bank as executor and personal representative in the unusual circumstances which have arisen in relation to Jimmy Savile’s estate. I accept the submission of Mr Cunningham, for the Bank, and of Mr Feltham, for the PI Claimants, that proper execution of the Bank’s obligations – what, in the context of Letterstedt, Lord Blackburn called the proper execution of the trusts – in the circumstances of this case requires the Bank to have regard not only to the interests of those claiming under Jimmy Savile’s will (the individual beneficiaries and the Trust) but also to the interests of those among the PI Claimants, possible future claimants and the Third Party Defendants who may have meritorious claims against his estate. If personal injury claimants or Third Party Defendants have meritorious claims against the estate, the proper fulfilment of the executor’s role is to see that such claims are paid out of the estate before making any distribution under the terms of the will. On the material available to the Bank and before the court, the assessment can properly be made that there are likely to be at least some meritorious claims. That is not a possibility that can be discounted on the basis that the claims all appear to be weak or without substance.

The interests of the beneficiaries under the will (including the Trust) cannot automatically be promoted above those of the various personal injury claimants and Third Party Defendants who may have good claims against the estate. I reject the submission by Mrs Peacocke that the Bank was obliged to treat the interests of the beneficiaries under the will as superior to those of the claimants against the estate. The entitlements of both beneficiaries and claimants depend, in substance, upon the same contingency, namely whether and to what extent there may be valid and meritorious claims against the estate.  It is that contingency which the Scheme is designed to address and, so far as may be possible, determine.

In light of the claims against the estate, and the real risk that it may prove to be insolvent because of them, the Bank is obliged to have regard to the interests of the class of claimants against the estate as well as to the interests of the beneficiaries under the will. The position is in significant respects analogous to that of a company which faces a real risk of being unable to pay its creditors, where the directors are bound to consider the interests of the creditors and not simply those of the shareholders: see e.g. West Mercia Safetywear Ltd v Dodd [1988] BCLC 250, CA, 252-253, and Hellard v Carvalho [2013] EWHC 2876 (Ch), [88]-[89].

The decision of Chief Registrar Baister in Re Vos [2006] BPIR 348 provides further support for this view. In that case, the executor of the will of a testator who had been a Lloyd’s name, whose estate faced substantial claims by Lloyd’s, engaged lawyers to defend the estate against those claims. Lloyd’s eventually obtained summary judgment against the estate and then presented a petition for an insolvency administration order in respect of the estate, which was in due course made. One question which arose was whether the payment of the legal expenses incurred in the defence of the estate should be ratified under section 284 of the Insolvency Act 1986. This provision, when read with Article 3 of the Administration of Insolvent Estates of Deceased Persons Order 1986, has the effect that where the estate of a testator is found to be insolvent, any disposition of property in the period after his death is void except to the extent it was made with the consent of the court or was subsequently ratified by the court.

Counsel for the trustee in bankruptcy submitted that the court should in its discretion refuse ratification of certain expenses incurred in defending the claim by Lloyd’s, on the basis that there was doubt about the solvency of the estate from the outset, that “There was therefore a duty (arising out of the doubt) to administer the estate as if it was insolvent”, and that the possibility of insolvency became a probability thereafter: para. [34]. The Chief Registrar accepted these submissions: para. [34]. He explained his reasoning in the following paragraphs. At para. [37] he said that, “even allowing a reasonable time in which to investigate the estate and see what could be done, there came a time when [the person administering the estate] realised, or ought to have realised, that the estate was insolvent or at least that there was a strong possibility of its being so.” From that point, the estate should have been administered as insolvent, if only out of an abundance of caution: para. [38]. The Chief Registrar was critical of the efforts made on behalf of the estate, without the benefit of approval by the court under the Re Beddoe jurisdiction, [1892] 1 Ch 547, to seek to settle the Lloyd’s claim, including by making threats to dissipate the estate’s assets in the course of any litigation: para. [40]. As he said at para. [41]:

“It is one thing to adopt tactics of that kind in ordinary commercial litigation, but different considerations apply where one is dealing with money that should be held on trust for the general body of creditors and beneficiaries of an insolvent estate. In taking the approach he did, in my view, [the person administering the estate] misunderstood completely what his obligations were. From the point when he realised, or ought to have realised, that the estate was insolvent it was no longer acceptable to engage in horse trading with one of the creditors of that estate. His obligation was to ensure that each creditor of the estate received that to which it was entitled under the statutory regime. He was under no obligation to see that Lloyd’s got anything more than it was entitled to, but he had no business trying to ensure that Lloyd’s claims were dealt with other than fairly, that is to say rateably …”.

Thus, the Chief Registrar makes the important point that a person administering an estate has an obligation to be fair to those who may have good claims against the estate. It should, however, be noted that one cannot transpose everything he said to the circumstances of the present case. Since, as explained above, the rights of claimants against the estate and the rights of beneficiaries under the will cannot be known with any certainty at the moment, depending as they do upon the contingency referred to, it cannot simply be said that the estate should be administered as if it is insolvent and the beneficiaries under the will have no relevant interest. Mr Feltham correctly acknowledged that the Bank should have regard not only to the interests of claimants against the estate but also to the interests of the beneficiaries under the will.

In my judgment, the person with the primary responsibility for balancing these different and competing interests which ought to be taken into account is the executor, the Bank. In the context of this case, this requires emphasis. It is not for the court to intervene to “second guess” the Bank’s decision to negotiate and implement the Scheme, unless the Bank has acted in breach of its duties. The weight to be given to the respective interests in deciding how to proceed is a matter for evaluative assessment by the executor, taking a range of factors into account such as the apparent strength of the claims against the estate (so far as that can be assessed at this stage), the potential extent of the liability of the estate to the claimants, the interest on all sides in minimising the costs of dispute resolution and the appropriate means to be adopted to ensure fair scrutiny of the merits of the claims made while avoiding the exhaustion of the estate in legal costs.

In my view, no good case has been made out by the Trust or the individual beneficiaries to indicate that, in negotiating the Scheme and in now asking the court for approval to implement it, the Bank has acted or will act in any way unreasonably or without fair and proper regard to the interests which ought to be taken into account in deciding how the estate should be administered. The Bank has been at pains to negotiate a scheme which allows for fair scrutiny of the claims made against the estate and which seeks to contain the extent of any sums due and the costs of such scrutiny within reasonable and proportionate bounds.

Mr Feltham for the PI Claimants submitted that in the context of administration of an estate in relation to which there is a real risk that it is insolvent, the court should adopt the same underlying policy as in administration of bankrupts’ estates, of discouraging applications to control the conduct of the administration so as to minimise expensive applications to court where the estate is or may be insolvent and to avoid overburdening the administrator: see Bramston v Haut [2012] EWCA Civ 1637; [2013] 1 WLR 1720 at [66]-[69]. In the latter context, the principle is that the court should only interfere with a decision of the official receiver or a trustee in bankruptcy “if it can be shown he has acted in bad faith or so perversely that no trustee properly advised or properly instructing himself could so have acted, alternatively if he has acted fraudulently or in a manner so unreasonable and absurd that no reasonable person would have acted in that way”: ibid., at [69].

Whether or not the position will always be exactly the same in a case of possible insolvency as distinct from a case of established insolvency, I agree with Mr Feltham that particular caution should be exercised by the court when considering whether to interfere with the administration of a testator’s estate where there is a real risk that it is insolvent. It is in such a context that particularly difficult choices may have to be made in balancing different competing interests in respect of a fund which may prove to be inadequate to satisfy all the reasonable claims being made upon it. There will often be no clear and obvious standard to guide how to proceed. Also, it is in that type of situation that the court should be astute to discourage wasteful depletion of the estate in management and legal expenses to the prejudice of those making valid claims against it, by ensuring that the executor and personal representative is accorded a substantial margin of discretion to decide how best to proceed.

In the present case, my own view is that the Scheme is a fair and sensible scheme to facilitate resolution of the issues faced by the Bank and that it ought to be implemented. But even if I myself would not have negotiated or sought to implement the Scheme, had I been executor, I would still have concluded that the Bank was fully entitled to make the decisions it did to seek to negotiate the Scheme and is now fully entitled to seek to implement it. In my opinion, these are matters well within the proper scope of the Bank’s duties and discretion as executor and personal representative.

In light of the guidance in Letterstedt, I consider that it would not be appropriate for the court to take the further step of removing the Bank as executor unless there is a real risk that the Bank will not act fairly and conscientiously in that office or if the Bank cannot be expected to continue to carry out the administration of the estate in an effective and proper manner.

As I discuss more fully below, the Trust and the individual beneficiaries have failed to show that there is any risk that the Bank will fail to act fairly and conscientiously in its office as executor. The facts that the Bank has waived its usual fees for acting as executor, has negotiated the Scheme in the responsible way it has and has even subsidised the administration of the estate by agreeing to pay out of its own resources for certain expenses amounting to about £20,000 in relation to a variation of the will for tax reasons are all strong indicators that the Bank has acted and will continue to act fairly and conscientiously in its office as executor.

Mrs Peacocke submitted that the Bank has shown unacceptable and improper hostility to the Trust in the manner in which it has dealt with the estate’s affairs. I reject this submission. It is true that there have at various points been conflicting views between the Trust and the Bank about how to proceed, but it cannot be inferred from this that the Bank has adopted an improperly hostile attitude towards the Trust or that there is any real risk that the Bank will not carry out its duties as executor and personal representative in a proper and lawful manner. The points on which there have been conflicts of view or in relation to which the Trust has felt badly treated (such as its exclusion from the latter phases of the negotiation of the Scheme) have not been the product of hostility by the Bank to the Trust, but the result of proper and reasonable judgments by the Bank about the best way to proceed to administer the estate, having proper regard to the interests of all those who may prove to have an entitlement in respect of it.

There are many contexts in which trustees or those in equivalent positions, such as personal representatives of a deceased person, have to make judgments which involve striking a balance between different competing interests and which may thus adversely affect some persons claiming under the trust or in respect of the estate of the deceased. It is to be expected that in such cases there will often be an element of friction between the trustee or personal representative and those disappointed by their decisions. This is not in itself a good ground to remove the trustee or personal representative from their office.

Mrs Peacocke sought to rely on a further passage from Lord Blackburn’s opinion in Letterstedt, at p. 389, in which he concluded that the trustees in that case should be removed. The full passage at pp. 389-390 is as follows:

“But though their Lordships acquit the Board [the trustees] of concealment in these accounts, the spirit which permits such charges is naturally offensive to the appellant and unfair towards the trust estate. They can only be made by persons who are themselves exasperated by the course pursued towards them, and determined to try somehow or other to get remuneration of which they conceive themselves to have been unjustly deprived. The making of such charges, and the vexatious course pursued by the Board in opposing the perfectly reasonable inquiry which the plaintiff asked before the referee, are calculated to introduce additional irritation into a relation which was disturbed enough before. And they have an important bearing on the question whether, in view of the future welfare of the trust estate, it is expedient that the Board should remain trustees.

It is quite true that friction or hostility between trustees and the immediate possessor of the trust estate is not of itself a reason for the removal of the trustees. But where the hostility is grounded on the mode in which the trust has been administered, where it has been caused wholly or partially by substantial overcharges against the trust estate, it is certainly not to be disregarded.

Looking therefore at the whole circumstances of this very peculiar case, the complete change of position, the unfortunate hostility that has arisen, and the difficult and delicate duties that may yet have to be performed, their Lordships can come to no other conclusion than that it is necessary, for the welfare of the beneficiaries, that the Board should no longer be trustees. Probably if it had been put in this way below they would have consented. But for the benefit of the trust they should cease to be trustees, whether they consent or not.”

In my view, the most pertinent section of this passage for present purposes is Lord Blackburn’s statement that friction or hostility between trustees and the possessor of the trust estate, or beneficiary, is not of itself a ground for removal of the trustee: see also Kershaw v Micklethwaite, supra, [27]-[32]. As I have mentioned, it will often be the case that a trustee or other fiduciary, acting perfectly properly, has to take decisions which may leave some persons interested in the trust estate disappointed or upset. That is not a good ground for the court to remove them. On a fair and proper analysis, that is all that has happened in this case.

Lord Blackburn indicated that something more would be required to justify removal of the trustees in Letterstedt. In that case, the trustees had overcharged the trust and had behaved vexatiously in seeking to brush off the inquiries of the plaintiff without good reason, thereby materially contributing without justification to the conflict and hostility that had arisen. That is not a feature of the present case. There is no evidence of improper over-charging by the Bank, and the form of ruling already made at the hearing in February 2013 and again later in this judgment (in accordance with the proposals by the Bank) in relation to ratification of legal expenses incurred in the course of the administration is specifically designed to allow for proper scrutiny of the propriety of any such expenses before they can be recouped out of the estate.

Lord Blackburn also referred to a material change of position by the trustees in Letterstedt and to the difficulties which they would have in carrying out further difficult and delicate duties in implementing the trust in that case. Mrs Peacocke sought to suggest that in the present case there had been a material change of position by the Bank, in that it had at one point agreed to step down as executor in favour of PennTrust but then reneged on that agreement. She also sought to suggest that the breakdown in relations between the Bank and the Trust which had occurred meant that the Bank could not now administer the estate effectively and should be replaced.

I do not accept either of these contentions. As to the first, as explained above, although the Bank did at one stage express interest in the possibility that it might step down as executor, it did not commit itself to do so and events moved on. In my view, nothing the Bank did in this regard contributed improperly to any breakdown in relations or conflict. It is not a matter which indicates that the Bank has shown improper hostility in relation to the Trust, nor that the Bank has inappropriately provoked hostility on the part of the Trust. The circumstances of this case are far removed from those in Letterstedt.

Further, this is not a case in which an executor has refused to resign “without any reasonable ground” for that refusal (Letterstedt at p. 386). On the contrary, I consider that there are good grounds, based on the need for fair and effective administration of the estate in the interests of all who may have claims upon it, to justify the Bank in its decision to remain in post:

The Bank is a professional executor of good repute which is capable of being neutral and impartial in administering the estate as between the different competing interests and, on any fair view, of being seen to be impartial. It was not appointed by either of the main contending groups, the personal injury claimants or the beneficiaries under the will. By contrast, if PennTrust were appointed in the Bank’s place, there is a significant risk that it would be perceived by the personal injury claimants as the candidate put forward by the opposing group and as potentially less than completely neutral, which would in itself pose a risk of greater disruption and argument – with all the additional cost of dealing with that – in carrying through the administration of the estate. Generally, the court will be slow to remove an executor and personal representative just because one group claiming against the estate is disappointed and disaffected as a result of reasonable decisions the executor has made in an effort in good faith to strike a fair balance between competing interests;

The Bank has said that it is willing to act without charging the estate, which will assist in safeguarding funds for eventual distribution from the estate. By contrast, although PennTrust has indicated that it is willing to “read in” for taking over the executor-ship without charge, it appears it does propose to charge for its services as executor thereafter;

By negotiating with the PI Claimants and Third Party Defendants to the successful conclusion of getting agreement on the Scheme, which offers a sensible way forward for handling the various personal injury claims, the Bank has established a track record of effective and appropriate administration of the estate in the unusual and testing circumstances of this case. There seems little justification for the court to impose a new executor on the estate, with the risk that would involve that the new executor might not be so effective in dealing with the situation going forward;

The negotiation of the Scheme has required a good deal of give and take between the parties to the negotiations, in the course of which the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants have developed confidence in the fair approach of the Bank to handling the claims. The Scheme provides a general framework, but its effective implementation in seeking to arrive at as many settlements of valid and meritorious claims as possible, to facilitate ultimate distributions from the estate, will also depend on effective co-operation between the parties going forward. In my view, it is strongly in the interests of the due and effective administration of the estate that the Bank should remain in place to carry through the implementation of the Scheme, rather than run the risk of severe disruption of such implementation by replacing the Bank with the Trust’s proposed executor, PennTrust, which has not developed equivalent working relationships with claimants.

In this context, I should add that there was some debate at the hearing about the significance of a further potential factor, namely that the testator, Jimmy Savile, had himself chosen the Bank to be executor. I can see that in some cases the choice of the testator might be a significant factor to be brought into account, for instance where a testator has chosen a family member to be executor and can be presumed to have chosen them because of an assessment that they are fair-minded, dependable and in possession of a good understanding of the family context. But in the present case, I do not think that the fact that Jimmy Savile chose the Bank to be executor is a matter which in itself carries significant weight. Of far greater importance are the factors discussed above.

As to the second contention of Mrs Peacocke referred to above, there is no difficulty regarding the due administration of the estate going forward arising from any sense of conflict or hostility between the Bank and the Trust. No participation by the Trust or co-operation between the Bank and the Trust is needed to allow the Scheme to be operated effectively or to secure the due administration of the estate. The Trust does not have a role to play in operating the Scheme or in helping with that administration. All that remains to be done is to assess the extent of valid and meritorious claims against the estate, primarily (it is hoped) by operation of the Scheme.

By contrast with the position of the Trust, the individual beneficiaries say that they do have material evidence which they could contribute to assist with the evaluation of the merits of some of the claims which have been or may be made against the estate, by reason of their knowledge of some of the individuals involved or the circumstances of the claims. But there is no difficulty of co-operation on their part to ensure that there is proper scrutiny of such claims. Mr Cosedge for the beneficiaries confirmed that they would be willing to provide to the Bank what relevant information they have to contribute in relation to any claims. In fact, they have already provided some information of this kind to the Bank.

Accordingly, although the Bank continues to have difficult responsibilities to discharge, this is not a case in which the Bank has duties of a character which, by reason of the unfortunate friction which has arisen with the Trust, cannot be properly performed for the benefit of the estate and the welfare of all those who may be found to have entitlements in respect of it (contrast Letterstedt, at p. 389).

The particular grounds for removal of the Bank put forward by the Trust

Against the background of this discussion, I turn to address the particular grounds which Mrs Peacocke argued should lead to the conclusion that the Bank ought to be removed as executor and personal representative. There are nine, as set out below. I do not consider that any of them by itself, nor by cumulative effect, would justify the removal of the Bank.

First, Mrs Peacocke complained that the Bank should have taken steps promptly after the television programme about Jimmy Savile or after the hearing on 20 February 2013 to advertise for those who wished to make personal injury claims to come forward within a limited time, with a view to cutting off other claims made after that date. As I understood this complaint (despite Mrs Peacocke at another point in her submissions disavowing reliance on the section 1287 of Story’s Equity Jurisprudence as cited in Letterstedt), it was a contention that the Bank had failed properly to carry out its duties as executor to limit the number of claims which might be brought against the estate, with a view to preserving as much of the estate as possible for those claiming under the will and allowing an early distribution of the estate.

 I reject this complaint. The Bank had properly placed an advertisement for claims under section 27 of the Trustee Act shortly after Jimmy Savile’s death, in the usual way. The situation which arose after the television programme in October 2012 was new and complex. The Bank was entitled to take time to work out how to proceed, rather than rushing forward with placement of a new advertisement in an attempt to cut off some claims. There was massive publicity, so it was not necessary to place an advertisement to alert individuals who might have been affected by Jimmy Savile’s activities to the fact that they might have claims against his estate. The Bank was entitled to explore with the PI Claimants who did come forward how their and others’ claims might best be dealt with, and in that context was entitled to discuss and seek to agree a timetable to advertise for further claims to be brought forward before the estate assets were finally distributed. This was another area where the Bank had to strike a balance between competing interests, between the interest of those with potentially meritorious claims against the estate to have a full and fair opportunity to consider their position and to make a claim before the estate is distributed and the interest of those who have entitlements in respect of the estate to be paid out reasonably promptly. It is not possible to say that the Bank has acted unreasonably or in breach of duty by first acting to agree the Scheme and then arranging, as will be done, for a further advertisement to be placed as described above.

Second, Mrs Peacocke complained that the Bank should have tried to arrange for the Trust to be involved in the management of the personal injury claims against the estate, as had been canvassed at the hearing on 20 February 2013. In my view, however, the Bank was fully entitled to conclude, after reflection, that this was not an appropriate way forward. The Trust had no entitlement to be involved. It became clear that the Trust wished to use the estate’s assets (not its own) to defend the claims in the way which the Trust, rather than the executor chose. The Bank was entitled to consider that this would not be the best way to administer the estate and to pursue instead negotiations for the Scheme. It is very unlikely that those negotiations could have been successful if the Trust had been interposed as it demanded.

Third, Mrs Peacocke submitted that the Bank had not responded properly to the complaints of the Trust set out in the letter from PWT dated 17 April 2013. In particular, for no good reason, the Bank failed to follow through on what she contends was the agreement that it should retire as executor in favour of PennTrust. For reasons already explained above, I do not accept these submissions. There was no final agreement by the Bank to retire in favour of PennTrust and there were and are good reasons why the Bank should not retire or be removed as executor.

Fourth, Mrs Peacocke said that the Bank reacted with inappropriate hostility to the Trust when the Trust sent the Bank its draft application notice for removal of the Bank and the draft evidence in support in October 2013. I do not accept this submission. The draft application notice and evidence involved the adoption by the Trust of an unduly hostile and critical stance in relation to the Bank, effectively accusing the Bank of misconduct as executor without good reason, and the Bank was entitled to reject the draft application and the accusations in the robust way it did. It is completely unsurprising that the Bank reacted in this way. It is not a reaction from which it can be inferred that the Bank has formed an attitude of inappropriate hostility to the Trust which is likely to impede it in fulfilling its duties as executor and personal representative in due and proper manner. The Bank was entitled to point out, as it did, that the court would wish to supervise any question of replacement of the executor and that the views of others, including the PI Claimants, would be relevant matters to be taken into account in relation to such a question.

Fifth, Mrs Peacocke complained that the Bank had failed properly to rebuff claims by the PI Claimants for payment out of the estate of their costs of attending the hearing on 20 February 2013, on the grounds that their solicitors had been acting under conditional fee agreements which did not include an obligation on the clients to pay such costs. Accordingly, Mrs Peacocke said, the Bank should have rejected these claims for payment of costs, since they did not satisfy the indemnity principle.

The background to this particular complaint is that at the end of the hearing on 20 February 2013 there was a discussion regarding the order to be made and what costs could properly be paid out of the estate assets, on the basis that they were properly incidental to the due administration of the estate. Counsel for the PI Claimants asked for their costs of attendance to be paid out of the estate. Mrs Peacocke, for the Trust, asked for the Trust’s costs of attendance also to be paid out of the estate. She said that she understood that those acting for the PI Claimants were acting under conditional fee agreements, but did not know if those covered their attendance at that hearing. I indicated that I would have reservations about ordering payment of CFA costs (i.e. base costs plus uplift) out of the estate, and Mr Collins for the PI Claimants indicated that the costs they were claiming were ordinary recoverable costs without an uplift. The transcript of the hearing has not fully captured what was said, but Mr Collins has explained in his evidence for this hearing that this is what he said and I accept this – in fact, it accords with my own recollection. Mrs Peacocke then said that the Trust agreed that all appropriate parties should have their costs paid out of the estate and accepted that it had been helpful to have submissions from the PI Claimants. I accepted the submissions made by the PI Claimants and the Trust that their costs in relation to that hearing should be paid out of the estate, and the order made on that occasion made provision for this.

However, when the PI Claimants put in their statements of costs to the Bank, it was stated that these were costs due under conditional fee agreements (albeit all that was claimed were ordinary costs, with no uplift). The Trust, confused perhaps by the fact that the transcript did not record the full exchange with Mr Collins, objected to the Bank paying these costs. The Bank referred on this objection to the solicitors for the PI Claimants, who have confirmed that the costs claimed are payable by their clients, so that the indemnity principle is indeed satisfied. They have certified as much in the statements of costs which they have submitted.

At this hearing Mrs Peacocke persists in the Trust’s objection to payment of these costs. She also says that the Bank should have done more to clarify the position to the satisfaction of the Trust.

In my view, the Bank acted in an appropriate way by passing on details of the Trust’s objections to the PI Claimants so that they could respond. I am  satisfied from the statements of costs for the PI Claimants, certified in the usual way by the solicitors, that the costs really are payable by those claimants to their solicitors and that the indemnity principle is satisfied in relation to them. The costs claimed are £17,539.56 and £9,690.00 (including VAT). They are reasonable and proportionate. To end this chapter of the dispute, Mr Feltham applied for an order that the court now give its sanction for the payment of these costs. I am satisfied that this is appropriate in the circumstances and give such sanction.

Sixth, Mrs Peacocke complains about a feature of the Scheme, as originally put forward. The original version of the Scheme as attached to the Bank’s application notice of 17 December 2013 contained a provision (clause 7(1)(b)) which appeared to make the Bank liable for all the reasonable costs of the PI Claimants in respect of the Chancery proceedings concerning the administration of Jimmy Savile’s estate into the future. I had reservations about whether it was appropriate to include such a provision in the Scheme, which I raised. Counsel for the PI Claimants explained that all that was intended was that the limitation on costs recoverable by the PI Claimants in relation to claims made under the Scheme should not preclude the possibility of them seeking further payment of costs from the estate in relation to participation in the Chancery proceedings, should any such payment be found by the court to be appropriate. It was a simple matter to re-draft clause 7(1)(b) to achieve this effect more clearly and in appropriate terms, and this was agreed by those supporting the Bank’s application for approval of the Scheme.

Mrs Peacocke, however, seeks to rely on the fact that the original version of clause 7(1)(b) was framed as it was in support of a contention that the Bank has shown that it is unwilling or incapable of carrying out the administration of the estate in a proper way. However, this was not an objection to the Scheme raised by the Trust in correspondence, to give the Bank and the PI Claimants an opportunity to respond. The Bank has readily accepted the revised form of clause 7(1)(b) and there is no basis to suppose that it would have failed to do so earlier, had the point been raised. There is nothing in this item of complaint which indicates that the Bank will not fairly and conscientiously carry out its duties as executor and personal representative.

Seventh, Mrs Peacocke complains that the Bank would not agree to pay the Trust’s costs in relation to the hearing on 20 February 2013, despite the order that such costs should be paid. The Bank has in fact been seeking agreement between all parties in relation to the costs in respect of that hearing of all those who were entitled to attend and who are covered by the costs order made. The costs order says that costs are to be assessed “if not agreed”, and the Bank has taken the prudent position that this means that agreement by all parties attending the hearing is required. Because of the Trust’s objection to the payment of the costs of the PI Claimants (see above), it has not been possible to secure general agreement on all the other costs. In the circumstances, it cannot be inferred that the Bank’s omission to agree and pay the Trust’s costs of the hearing is evidence of hostility to the Trust or any indication that the Bank will not fairly and conscientiously carry out its duties. The court having resolved the question of the PI Claimants’ costs of this hearing, above, it is to be hoped that the outstanding costs issues from the hearing on 20 February 2013 can now be agreed.

Eighth, Mrs Peacocke submits that the Bank has wrongly approached its task as executor on the footing that it is under a duty to take into account the interests and wishes of the PI Claimants along with the interests of those claiming under the will, and that the Bank has in all cases preferred the interests of the PI Claimants. I reject both parts of this submission. The Bank has been right to take into account the interests of those with claims against the estate in deciding how to proceed: see above. The Bank has had a particular legitimate need to take into account the wishes of the PI Claimants, because for good reason it has been seeking to agree the terms of the Scheme with them. The Bank has not simply and invariably preferred the interests of the claimants to the interests of those claiming under the will. It has, in an entirely proper manner, sought to achieve a fair balance between the different competing interests in respect of the estate.

Ninth, the Trust complains that the Bank has improperly shared confidential or legally privileged information with the PI Claimants. I reject this complaint as well. The Bank has shared information of various kinds with the PI Claimants with a view to encouraging them to agree the terms of the Scheme. The decision to do this fell well within the scope of the decision-making discretion allowed to the Bank as executor and personal representative. Even if it had information in its hands which was protected by legal professional privilege of the Bank or was confidential, in the sense that the Bank could have chosen to withhold it from the PI Claimants, the Bank could properly decide to provide such information to the PI Claimants if it judged that this would assist in the negotiation of the Scheme, even if in some respects it might be unhelpful to the Bank if litigation later ensued. In fact, however, Mrs Peacocke did not show me any information in the hands of the Bank which might have any significant detrimental impact upon its ability to defend the personal injury claims, which the Bank disclosed to the PI Claimants.

For the reasons given above, I dismiss the Trust’s application for the Bank to be removed from its position as executor of Jimmy Savile’s will and as his personal representative.

The Bank’s application for approval of the Scheme

For the reasons already explained, I consider that the Bank was entitled to seek to negotiate the Scheme with the PI Claimants and the Third Party Defendants; that it would be lawful and appropriate for the Bank to enter into the Scheme (or, if Mind drops out, its equivalent); and that it will be lawful and appropriate for the Bank to seek to operate the Scheme with a view to securing fair scrutiny of the personal injury claims being brought forward and settlement of claims to the greatest extent as may be possible and appropriate. I am satisfied, on the information available, that the notice to be given by advertisement of the Scheme will be long enough to give a fair opportunity for all persons who think they have a claim against the estate, but have not yet brought it forward, to do so. It is therefore likely that, after the Scheme has been brought into operation, the Court will give sanction for payments to be made out of the estate and for the estate, in effect, to be wound up in accordance with the timetable contemplated under the Scheme.

It is just and appropriate for the court to give its approval and sanction for the Bank to enter into the Scheme and to operate the Scheme.

The Bank’s application for validation and sanction of expenses incurred in the administration of the estate

The parties are agreed that the general framework for consideration of this application is that set by my ruling on 20 February 2013: see [2013] EWHC 770 (Ch). The Bank seeks validation under section 284 of the Insolvency Act 1986 in respect of two classes of expenses. The first class is those expenses incurred or to be incurred in the ordinary course of administration of the estate, such as the costs of conveyancing in relation to realising the assets in the estate. The second class is the legal expenses involved in dealing with the personal injury claims which have been brought forward, with the disputes which have arisen in relation to the handling of the administration of the estate and with the negotiation of the Scheme. The legal expenses incurred have been substantial.

No objection to any item in the first class has been pressed in submissions. All these items appear clearly to be proper expenses of the administration which the Bank is entitled to recoup out of the estate. It is appropriate to grant a full validation order in respect of these items.

As regards the second class, the Bank seeks a validation order in respect of these items for the purposes of the insolvency regime, but without prejudice to the ability of any person with an interest in the due administration of the estate to make objection in due course – on the issue whether the expenses should be borne by the estate – to the appropriateness and extent of the expenses. This was the order made in relation to such expenses on the last occasion.

In my view, it is appropriate to make an order in this form in relation to all the items of legal expense for which sanction is sought on the present application. There is no item of expense which, on the material before the court, can be seen to be improper and not fit for validation on this basis. In particular, as is clear from what I have said above, the Bank has acted properly and for the due administration of the estate in seeking to get agreement on the Scheme and is in principle entitled to recoup the proper and reasonable legal expenses involved in doing so. The order to be made will allow for scrutiny of the detail of the legal expenses at a later stage, if objections are to be made to their amount.

I should add here that there is nothing in the material before me regarding the charges made by the Bank or by Osborne Clarke to the Bank which supports any case by the Trust – if such a case is still relied on by it, despite Mrs Peacocke not distinctly including it in her nine grounds of objection to the Bank’s actions as developed in submissions – to the effect that the Bank has overcharged the estate.

Conclusion

This judgment sets out the reasons for the rulings about which I informed the parties at the end of the hearing. I dismiss the Trust’s application to remove the Bank as executor and personal representative. I accede to the Bank’s application for approval of the Scheme. I also accede to the Bank’s application for full validation of certain expenses of the administration of the estate, as referred to above, and to its application for validation of legal expenses of the administration, subject to the possibility of challenges later on to their recovery out of the assets of the estate. I give sanction for payment of the PI Claimants costs in relation to the hearing on 20 February 2013.  

The Trust and beneficiaries came into conflict with Natwest in its role as executor and personal representative of the Savile.  In particular the Trust – which was named in the will as the residual beneficiary of the estate and would have included intended bequests to charities such as Help for Heroes object to the way the Bank had allowed PI claimants (Slater and Gordon representing) to take precedence over the beneficiaries and the Trust and the exclusion of the Trust in setting up  a compensation scheme ‘The scheme’ in consultation with PI claimants, and the third party defendants the BBC, the NHS , Barnardos and Mind.

The scheme was intended to assess claims and negotiate settlements within a set tariff so as to minimise costs, given that the there were limited funds in the estate, and that administration and prior legal hearing had already been significant.

The third parties had an interest in the estate, in that they would wish to recover claims made against them in whole or in part from the estate.

In the event the Trust were excluded from construction of the scheme, and received notice of it having been decided, subject to the ratification of the Court.

One of the central objectives of the scheme was to sift the good claims from the bad, in addition to deciding just how good in the sense meriting higher or lower payments within the tariff they were.  To this end a barrister was to be appointed to assess the statement of claim and any medical evidence and other evidence in support or undermining. It was said that this was in the interest of the parties to the scheme, in the sense that unmeritorious claims would deplete funds in respect of meritorious ones.

An application to remove the Bank as executor was refused and the judge approved the scheme subject to one modification – that the Bank  and Third party defendants had the express power to consider evidence from the Trust as to the merit of claims where there was information to be given.  This was Clause 4:

 ”Clause 4 did not originally say in terms that the Bank and Third Party Defendants would be entitled to seek to obtain information about claims made under the Scheme from any other person who might have relevant information bearing upon such claims, but Mr Feltham for the PI Claimants assured me that this was properly covered by clause 4 as it stood, since that would be something to be done in making the assessment whether to accept or reject the claims. Since the individual beneficiaries maintained that they had information which might be relevant to assessing whether some claims were bogus or not, and were concerned that the Bank would not have regard to this in assessing such claims under the Scheme, I indicated that it seemed desirable to allay those concerns by making express provision in the Scheme allowing for this to be done.”

But the PI Claimants persisted.  They said it was not possible for this scrutiny to take place.  It would be unlawful, because so to do would mean the names of claimants would have to be disclosed to the Trust by the Bank, the BBC and others. It would appear so far as the PI claimants were concerned the sifting was strictly an internal affair.

PI  Claimants maintained it was contrary to:

‘the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 for the Bank or Third Party Defendants to identify to others a person who was making a claim in relation to sexual abuse.”

The learned judge reflected:

 ”I was concerned by this, both because no-one had presented any detailed reasoned argument to me to explain why this would be the effect of the 1992 Act (and I was doubtful, absent such argument, that it would be) and because it appeared to make the operation of the Scheme potentially unfair to the Trust and the individual beneficiaries, in that it might well in practice disable the Bank or Third Party Defendants from seeking from them information which could have a material bearing on the question whether a particular claim has merit or not.”

In the light of this key objective within the scheme itself, the parties were obliged to agree that:

“clause 4 of the Scheme should be modified to provide that any claimant wishing to make a claim under the Scheme will have to give consent for their name to be provided to such sources of information (including the individual beneficiaries) as the Bank and the Third Party Defendants might consider helpful to allow for evidence to be obtained to respond to the claim. I am satisfied that this adjustment to the Scheme avoids any problem arising from the 1992 Act in the operation of the Scheme and will allow for the possibility of appropriate access in the course of such operation to relevant information held by the individual beneficiaries and others.”

That the learned judge was puzzled by the reference to the Sexual Offences Amendment Act 1992 is hardly surprising.  For this Act covers lifelong anonymity as to the publication of complainants’ names in respect of which criminal proceedings for alleged offences have been instituted.

This of course is singularly lacking in respect of the accused.

Even so it is usual or names of accusers to be disclosed in relation to the defence of civil claims, including the making of enquiries and sharing information and identities for that purpose, and in the sense that the executors are bound to act in the interests of estate and the beneficiaries, not just claimants  (but including them in sifting the good from the bad for the sake of the good) it would be obliged to test the evidence in meaningful way which in turn means that naming and necessity are at one.

©Margaret Jervis