Operation Yewtree

Operation Yewtree was created by the Metropolitan Police in October 2012, the day after ITV broadcast a program in which five women said they had been abused by Jimmy Savile, who had died in 2011, in the 1970s; three said the abuse had taken place at BBC facilities, where Savile worked from 1965 to 2006. Its report, Giving Victims a Voice, published on January 11, 2013, found that 450 people had come forward with information about Savile, that 214 crimes had been formally recorded in 28 police jurisdictions between 1955 and 2009, most in Leeds and London, that 73 percent of his victims were under 18 and that their ages ranged from 8 to 47; it concluded that Savile had been "hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fundraising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades."²

The review of the BBC by Dame Janet Smith, published on February 25, 2016, identified 72 victims of Savile dating back to 1959, the youngest eight, found that 117 people at the BBC had heard rumors about him, including abuse on the premises where Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It were made, and said that "the talent was treated with kid gloves and rarely challenged"; it cleared the institution of responsibility for his abuse. A parallel review by Dame Linda Dobbs found 21 victims of the BBC sports presenter Stuart Hall, jailed in 2013 after pleading guilty to indecent assault.³

Arrests and Convictions

Gary Glitter was arrested in October 2012 and convicted of historic child sexual abuse; a woman abused by Savile at the Duncroft home said she and two other girls were driven to BBC studios and assaulted by Savile, Glitter and a third BBC personality. Chris Denning, arrested in June 2013, was convicted of abusing 24 boys, one of them allegedly raped at Savile's house, and the inquiry returned to earlier investigations of Denning and Jonathan King. David Smith, Savile's former chauffeur and the first person charged under Yewtree, died of a heroin overdose the day before his trial; the writer S. Dovey wrote that he had taken victims to parties with other men and to a house outside Amsterdam linked to Warwick Spinks. Dave Lee Travis, Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris were convicted; charges against Jim Davidson and Freddie Star were dropped.¹

The BBC and the Press

The BBC employed Smith as a chauffeur in the 1980s, despite 22 previous convictions for child sexual abuse dating to 1966, through a private company "off the books." In December 2011 the BBC under Mark Thompson dropped a Newsnight report on allegations against Savile by ten women. In November 2012 the BBC paid damages to Lord McAlpine after a Newsnight report falsely implicated him, and in 2019 it settled with Cliff Richard for 2 million pounds after broadcasting a police raid on his home. Spinks was extradited to the United Kingdom in November 2012. Yewtree was linked to Operation Fernbridge, opened in February 2013 into the Elm Guest House, to Operation Ravine, which arrested King in 2015, and to the earlier Operation Arundel into BBC figures and the Walton Hop Disco.¹