[Trigger Warning: Graphic discussion of rape and sexual assault]

Please proceed with caution through the link: it is very disturbing.

If you’re not in the UK, you may not have heard about the recent posthumous allegations of sexual abuse made against Jimmy Savile, a former British TV presenter.

It’s stirred up a grotesque debate here about whether you should “let sleeping dogs lie” with posthumous rape allegations when someone isn’t alive to be able to defend themselves (yes, really), and it’s emerged that many people (including other BBC presenters and officials) were aware that he was “inappropriate” with young girls.

Now, a former psychiatric nurse at Broadmoor hospital has said one of her former patients in the 1980s, a young woman, told her she had been raped repeatedly by Savile near and under the stage of the theatre of the high-security hospital, but when she had threatened to report him, “he laughed in her face, and said that nobody would believe her and he could do what he liked”.

This brings up two terrifying points:

  • People with mental illness, particularly in inpatient settings, are extremely vulnerable to violence and abuse because a combination of rape culture and mental health discrimination often results in people assuming that they are lying, or have imagined it. Abusers know this: they know that the balance of power lies heavily in their favour.
  • This woman reported her abuse to a nurse and still nothing happened to protect her. No safeguarding measures were put in place: the nurse did nothing but tell a newspaper 30 years later. Edit: The nurse reported the situation to her seniors and police involved in the patient’s supervision, but no further action was taken.
Furthermore:

Savile, who died last October, worked at Broadmoor as a volunteer for almost 40 years, describing himself as the “honorary assistant entertainments officer”. He had an office and living quarters at the hospital and was given a personal set of keys to the wards, West London Mental Health Trust, which now runs the hospital, said on Thursday. It confirmed the hospital has a theatre area, adding “the design has been radically altered since the 1980s and it is not clear now if there was any space beneath it”.

  • Why the hell was a celebrity with no mental health training or medical reason to be there given keys to the wards???
  • Even now the nurse has come out and reported these allegations, and with a wealth of surrounding evidence to suggest that this was not out of character for Savile, the Mental Health Trust that owns the hospital won’t even conceed that the space that the alleged abuse took place in exists
There are so many points about this story that are staggering and terrifying. I just hope this woman is receiving appropriate support now.

Notes

  1. amelia-evangeline reblogged this from mindovermatterzine
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  5. beatasavedlatin said: Stanley said she had been very distressed by the woman’s account, which she found entirely credible, and had reported it at the time to her superiors and to police officers involved in the patient’s supervision, but no further action had been taken.
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