Editing Jimmy Savile (section)

== Death and sex scandal ==
{{Quote|Savile was a callous, opportunistic, wicked predator who abused and raped individuals, many of them patients and young people, who expected and had a right to expect to be safe. His actions span five decades -- from the 1960s to 2010. As a nation at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes. Today's reports show that in reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes.|[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hunt Jeremy Hunt], Secretary of State for Health}}
[[File:Jimmy Savile last photo.jpg|thumb|247x247px|The last photo of Savile, taken days before his death.]]
Savile was found dead at his home in Roundhay on 29 October 2011, two days before his 85th birthday. He had been in hospital with pneumonia, and his death was not suspicious. Immediately after Savile's death, the BBC's Newsnight programme began an investigation into reports that he was a sexual abuser. Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean interviewed one victim on camera and others agreed to have their stories told. The interviewees alleged abuse at Duncroft approved school for girls in Staines, Stoke Mandeville Hospital and the BBC. The item was scheduled for broadcast in Newsnight on 7 December 2011, but was never shown; the BBC broadcast tributes to Savile at Christmas 2011. Newsnight also discovered that Surrey Police had investigated allegations of abuse against Savile. In December 2012, a review led by Nick Pollard of the BBC's handling of the issue described the decision not to broadcast the Newsnight investigation as "flawed". The review said that Jones and MacKean had found "cogent evidence" that Savile was an abuser. George Entwistle – at that time the Director of BBC Vision – who had been told about the plan to broadcast the Newsnight item, was described by the review as "unnecessarily cautious, and an opportunity was lost". There was no public mention of the Newsnight investigation into Savile at the time but in early 2012, several newspapers reported that the BBC had investigated but not broadcast (its report of) allegations of sexual abuse immediately after his death. The Oldie alleged there had been a cover-up by the BBC. On 28 September 2012, almost a year after his death, ITV said it would broadcast a documentary as part of its Exposure series, The Other Side of Jimmy Savile. The documentary, presented by Mark Williams-Thomas, a consultant on the original Newsnight investigation, revealed claims by up to 10 women, including one aged under 14 at the time, that they had been molested or raped by Savile during the 1960s and 1970s. The announcement attracted national attention, and more reports and claims of abuse against him accumulated. The documentary was broadcast on 3 October. The next day, the Metropolitan Police said the Child Abuse Investigation Command would assess the allegations.

The developing scandal led to inquiries into practices at the BBC and the National Health Service. It was alleged that rumours of Savile's activities had circulated at the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s, but no action had been taken. The Director-General of the BBC, George Entwistle, apologised for what had happened, and on 16 October 2012 appointed former High Court judge Dame Janet Smith to review the culture and practices of the BBC during the time Savile worked there; and Nick Pollard, a former Sky News executive, was appointed to look at why the Newsnight investigation into Savile's activities was dropped shortly before transmission in December 2011. By 19 October 2012, police were pursuing 400 lines of inquiry based on testimony from 200 witnesses via 14 police forces across the UK. They described the alleged abuse as "on an unprecedented scale", and the number of potential victims as "staggering". Investigations codenamed Operation Yewtree were opened to identify criminal conduct related to Savile's activities by the Metropolitan Police, and to review the 2009 decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to drop a prosecution as "unlikely to succeed". By 25 October, police reported the number of possible victims was approaching 300. On 22 October 2012, the BBC programme Panorama broadcast an investigation into Newsnight and found evidence suggesting "senior manager" pressure; on the same day Newsnight editor Peter Rippon "stepped down" with immediate effect.

The Department of Health appointed former barrister Kate Lampard to chair and oversee its investigations into Savile's activities at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Leeds General Infirmary, Broadmoor Hospital and other hospitals and facilities in England. On 12 November 2012, the Metropolitan Police announced the scale of sexual allegations reported against Savile was "unprecedented" in Britain: a total of 450 alleged victims had contacted the police in the ten weeks since the investigation was launched. Officers recorded 199 crimes in 17 police force areas in which Savile was a suspect, among them 31 allegations of rape in seven force areas. Analysis of the report showed 82% of those who came forward to report abuse were female and 80% were children or young people at the time of the incidents. One former Broadmoor nurse claimed that Savile had said that he engaged in necrophiliac acts with corpses in their mortuary in Leeds; Savile was friends with the chief mortician, who gave him near-unrestricted access. Exposure Update: The Jimmy Savile Investigation was shown on ITV on 21 November 2012. In March 2013 Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary reported that 214 of the complaints that had been made against Savile after his death would have been criminal offences if they had been reported at the time. Sixteen victims reported being raped by Savile when they were under 16 (the age of heterosexual consent in England) and four of those had been under the age of 10. Thirteen others reported serious sexual assaults by Savile, including four who had been under 10 years old. Another ten victims reported being raped by Savile after the age of 16.

Former professional wrestler Adrian Street described in a November 2013 interview how "Savile used to go on and on about the young girls who’d wait in line for him outside his dressing room ... He'd pick the ones he wanted and say to the rest, 'Unlucky, come back again tomorrow night'." Savile, who cultivated a "tough guy" image promoted by his entourage, was hit with real blows during a 1971 bout with Street, who commented that had he "known then the full extent of what I know about [Savile] now, I’d have given him an even bigger hiding – were that physically possible." During the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in March 2019, it was reported that Robert Armstrong, the head of the Honours Committee, had resisted attempts by Margaret Thatcher to award Savile a knighthood in the 1980s, due to concerns about his private life. An anonymous letter received by the committee in 1998 said that "reports of a paedophilia nature" could emerge about Savile.