'HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT'
Furious Susanna Reid ‘revolted’ watching Jimmy Savile abuse with victim on GMB
SUSANNA Reid said she was "revolted" after watching footage of Jimmy Savile's abuse alongside one of his victims on Good Morning Britain.
The GMB host was visibly repulsed by the disturbing assault caught on camera during an episode of the BBC's Top of the Pops in November 1976.
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She sat alongside his victim Sylvia Edwards, 63, and recoiled in horror as they watched Sylvia attempt to get away from the vile paedophile as he groped her as a young girl.
Sylvia, who was 18 at the time, explained how the predatory presenter's hand was "rock solid" and she "couldn't shift it out the way".
The teen desperately contorts herself and screams as he touches her under the camoflague of other guests.
She said she was left "embarrassed" while Savile calmly "just kept moving" his hand while talking to viewers.
The beaming abuser stares at the camera and chillingly says: "I tell you something, a fella could get used to this, as it happens, he really could get used to it."
A sickened Susanna told Sylvia: "That's disgusting.
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"I just feel revolted, as anyone would do now, but also by the fact that whenever we were watching that, it was all a big joke at the time.
"Nobody realised - and we should have done - what he was actually doing."
Mother-of-two Sylvia even complained about The 'Jim’ll Fix It' frontman's conduct immediately to a crew member, but says she was just told to "go away".
"It's hard sometimes because I knew what was going on and I asked for help on it," she explained on GMB.
"When the camera went away from us we could actually get out of where we were because we were surrounded – the camera clogged us in.
"And I went down and this man with headphones, I said to him: 'He's just put his hand up behind me and I didn't like it.' And he said: 'Oh go away, that's just Jimmy, go away.' Told me to go, leave."
"I was only with one girl at the time and we were talking about it on the way back home," Sylvia continued.
CATALOGUE OF CRIMES
"But I knew it was wrong, but it was just because I'd been told to get lost, and it was the end of the thing, being ushered out, I just literally went home and told my dad, because there was no one else I can talk to.
"At the time he said he couldn't do anything to Jimmy Savile could he, and I don't suppose they thought about the police then."
His notoriety and star status helped Savile hide his catalogue of sexual abuse that went undetected for decades.
Sylvia's harrowing interview comes ahead of a new documentary airing on ITV on Thursday night, delving into Savile's decades of abuse, titled 'Savile: Portrait Of A Predator'.
It takes a fresh look at the sickening story of the BBC DJ who, from 1955 up to his death in 2011, had sexually abused at least 72 people, raping eight including an eight-year-old.
A total of 450 claims of abuse and rape were made to 13 police forces — but with the passing of time and Savile’s death, not all of them could be proved.
Operation Yewtree detective Gary Pankhurst, who also appears in the new documentary, told GMB: "If we look at the individual and how they managed to operate, what I was thinking about in terms of him as an offender was how he maximised his opportunities to offend.
"LIKE A TERRORIST"
"As you see his career progressing, each decision and change that he made in his career actually gave him greater opportunity to offend against a greater number of individuals and also he increased the amount of protection around him."
The cop even said he operated like a terrorist in order to get away with his crimes, which the BBC, hospital bosses and the police failed to stop.
"There were pockets of offences in many different parts of the country, and they weren’t connected," he said.
"It would be Leeds General Infirmary, or at the BBC, or up in Scotland, or he’d be over at Scarborough.
"Each of these elements of his life were separate circles that didn’t intersect, rather like terrorist cells in which you don’t provide all your information to more than one. That was the way he ran his life."
He explains how Savile had a number of bases including a plush flat in his home city of Leeds, an apartment in Scarborough, North Yorks, and a cottage in Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands.
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Gary said: "It allowed him to be in places where he could disappear. He was just somebody who was very difficult to keep track of."
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