It might be hard to think of the inmates of Broadmoor as being vulnerable. These are dangerous men, violent men, criminally insane men. But the men – and, in earlier years, women – who have been admitted to Broadmoor deserve to be treated humanely, no matter what they did on the outside. However, that is not always the case.
In 2010, Rhoda Sibanda, a nurse working on Epsom Ward, was given a suspended sentence, and had to sign the sex offenders register after having a sexual relationship with a Broadmoor patient. She gave the patient a ring and wrote him love letters. This was despite the patient being a convicted rapist and arsonist. Another staff member blew the whistle on them after he saw them sneaking towards a laundry room together.
A strange story emerged in 2012, too, when a Broadmoor staff member and trained martial artist Tracy Morton wrote a letter to a patient telling him that he was ‘very special’, including some sweets, and a request that he eat the letter after reading it. She gave it to a junior colleague to pass on, who reported the incident, leading to her dismissal. She had also been prone to four-letter abuse of patients. During Morton’s tribunal, another worrying story emerged. She had been mentoring a therapy assistant, not named during the tribunal, who had been accused of having sex with two patients. A note from a patient suggested that the assistant had sex with him and with another patient, and he was keen to know whether he ought to have an HIV test. This assistant, who Morton was a friend and mentor to, was only moved on when another post became available, despite the severity of these accusations, which arose in Christmas 2009, but she did not move on to another role until the summer of 2010.
However, the worst offender was the most famous, and – for a time – one of the best-known and well-loved celebrities in Britain: Jimmy Savile.
Whether it was at Stoke Mandeville, Leeds General Infirmary or Broadmoor, Jimmy Savile knew how to get to the heart of medical institutions whose purpose was to care for vulnerable people. His technique was always the same: slick, sick and well-honed. Savile charmed his way in by befriending senior health officials. The endgame was the sexual abuse of vulnerable patients, often in their hospital beds.
Savile’s first contact with Broadmoor is a great example of his ability to charm his way into highly secure medical institutions. The story goes that having received a number of fan letters from the hospital’s patients, in 1968 Savile telephoned Broadmoor’s entertainments officer and suggested he should visit. Shortly afterwards, the head of Broadmoor at that time, Dr Pat McGrath, asked Savile to provide entertainment and organise celebrity appearances for patients in a move that he thought would generate positive publicity for the hospital.
Now, what we have discovered is that there is an ambiguity here. Was he approached and invited? Or did he make an approach and was accepted? Gwen Adshead told us wryly that ‘no one will now admit to being the one that invited Jimmy Savile to the hospital’. So, it seems that history has been re-written and now the accepted ‘truth’ is that Savile approached the hospital himself. He groomed and manipulated people who arguably ought to have been able to identify a more sinister agenda. He obtained a set of keys. He wanted to be their entertainment officer, and eventually to help run the place.
Crucially, what is clear is that within weeks, Savile had been handed an unofficial role as ‘honorary entertainments officer’. Apparently, one of his actions in this role was to organise all-female discos as a dubious form of ‘therapy’. His ward access allowed him access to young female patients away from the staff for ‘lasses-only’ seventies dance parties. He had an apartment in Broadmoor’s grounds.
Savile rapidly won the trust of Pat McGrath, the ultimate authority figure for the hospital, and had been allowed a car parking space just outside the security perimeter. He would arrive unannounced, often bringing his caravan. His presence divided Broadmoor staff, but they were united by a reluctance to challenge the authority of Dr McGrath, who viewed handing Savile the keys in such a high secure environment as the highest mark of trust the management could offer.
This trust made Savile very powerful. In 1987, his access to Broadmoor went up another level. Just as he had gained the trust of Pat McGrath in 1968, this time Savile charmed Cliff Graham, a senior civil servant who had met the DJ on his first visit to Broadmoor. As part of sweeping changes to mental health policy, Graham made Savile a leading member of a task force directly involved in running Broadmoor.
Savile boasted about his friends in high places with celebrity visits, including several by Diana, Princess of Wales. Other duped luminaries included the seventies dance troupe Pan’s People and the boxer Frank Bruno, who as we noted, posed for now-infamous photographs with Broadmoor patient Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”.
While he was winning over executives and ministers, Savile was also, according to some, carrying out a reign of terror on the women’s wards. Female patients described how he watched and made inappropriate comments when they showered naked in front of staff. One said she believed two patients had killed themselves due to the abuse they suffered at Savile’s hands. In total, at least five individuals are thought to have been sexually attacked by Savile at Broadmoor, including two patients who were subjected to repeated assaults.
When Jonathan was working towards access from 2009 to 2014 for the subsequent ITV television documentary series one of his great champions was his boss at the time at ITV, leading British arts figure Lord Melvyn Bragg. Bragg has always held a wide range of interests and positions, including Chancellor of Leeds University, as well as being a highly successful writer, broadcaster and television executive. In 2009 he was up in Leeds, connected to his work at Leeds University, and found himself at an event along with Jimmy Savile. To make conversation, he told Savile that we were engaged in access to the hospital for a landmark television series.
Bragg explained subsequently to Jonathan that the mood turned sour as soon as he had uttered the words. Savile instantly became highly aggressive. ‘I won’t let you,’ he said. ‘They’ve been through enough, those people. You won’t make that series, I won’t let you. I won’t have it.’
Whether Savile contacted ministers or attempted to derail the project, we don’t know. It certainly did take a number of years and a change of minister after that meeting before we received our green light.
Savile was hiding in plain sight and acting with brazen impunity. One of those female patients, Alison Pink, alleged that he abused her at Broadmoor.
Jimmy Savile died in 2011, and it wasn’t until 2012, when an ITV documentary was broadcast, that sexual abuse allegations were brought to the public’s attention, leading to more people coming forward with their own stories about assault they had suffered at his hands. All this noise and all these allegations forced the governing body of Broadmoor, West London NHS Trust, to act and commission an independent report on the troubling relationship, which was published in 2014. Investigators looked into 11 allegations of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile at Broadmoor. Kate Lampard QC, who oversaw the investigation by the Department of Health and West London Mental Health Trust, revealed that at some point during his time at Broadmoor, from 1968 to 2004, Savile was given keys which allowed him unrestricted access to ward areas, day rooms and patient rooms.
Alternative entrances to some wards allowed him to reach areas unsupervised and without the knowledge of those in charge. Some staff enforced strict security procedures and distrusted Savile’s motives. Other staff were more tolerant, and failed to enforce strict security and supervision.
Dr Bill Kirkup CBE, lead investigator into allegations at Broadmoor Hospital, said, ‘There were 11 allegations of sexual abuse directly related to Broadmoor by Savile. Six involved patients at the time, two were staff and three minors. Two were male and nine were female. We were able to test in detail the veracity of six of these accounts and we concluded all of them were sexually abused by Savile. Two, both patients, were subjected to repeated assaults.’
Another five accounts were reported to Operation Yewtree – the codename for the police investigation into Savile and others – but the identity of the victim was unknown and could not be traced. Dr Kirkup added that fewer people had come forward from Broadmoor Hospital than elsewhere.
He said: ‘The numbers are likely to be a significant underestimate of the true picture. Patients were very strongly discouraged from reporting at the time. The surprise is so many did find the courage to come forward.
‘Taking all that into account, there seems to me no doubt that Savile was an opportunistic sexual predator throughout the time he was associated with Broadmoor.’
Savile’s power and influence had such a stranglehold that he was able to get his inexperienced and under-qualified friend Alan Franey appointed as Broadmoor’s general manager. In addition to being a way of having another supporter inside the wall, it also sent out a clear message that Savile was deeply involved in the running of the hospital, with the power to hire and fire. He was becoming immune to any challenge.
The report into Savile’s abuse at Broadmoor showed security systems and procedures were improved while Savile was associated with the hospital. His right to keys was not formally withdrawn until 2009, but the use of personal keys was taken away after new security arrangements were introduced in 1998. Savile stopped visiting the hospital after being told how these new arrangements would operate in 2004.
Jimmy Savile’s last visit was in 2004, when they pulled his keys. He was denied access for many years. Now disgraced and deceased, Savile’s toxic brand lingers on. There is an apocryphal story about Robert Maudsley blocking the door with a pinball machine that Jimmy Savile had gifted when Maudsley committed the murder that opens this book. Savile insisted on delivering the pinball machine to the patients. Doors are perhaps Broadmoor’s most fundamental and invaluable resource. What were the doors that Jimmy Savile notoriously had the keys to? Were they the same doors used to bring in the pinball machine he insisted on delivering to the patients against the hospital’s better judgement? It was pieces from this pinball machine that were used by fabled former patient Robert Maudsley. It’s all part of the sordid Savile narrative, which has left a profound and lasting stain on the British cultural landscape.
There was a time when Broadmoor used to have dances, fetes and charity football tournaments. Given these past security breaches and the brazen impunity with which Savile was permitted to operate, Broadmoor’s current profound concern about permeability and indiscretion is perhaps understandable. Protecting patient and staff confidentiality is always very high on Broadmoor’s agenda. Evidence of wrongdoing being exposed at an employment tribunal or in court is something that the hospital can work hard to learn lessons from and take preventative measures against. A more difficult thing to control is staff indiscretion, press leaks, and negative stories emerging in a misleading way. It creates hugely difficult issues for a hospital staff who are overwhelmingly committed, competent and discreet.
Steve Shrubb, Chief Executive for West London Mental Health NHS Trust – WLMHT – and the executive in charge when we made the ITV series, said the following as part of an apology to Savile’s victims: ‘For 150 years Broadmoor has provided treatment to some of the most mentally ill patients in England. Broadmoor Hospital is often the first safe place our patients have found in their lives. Lives which have often been filled with violence, neglect and abuse. This is what makes the reading of the detailed investigations into the abuse so disturbing.’
He added that although it had been 15 years since the abuse Savile put his victims through it was only now the full extent of his behaviour has been uncovered. Shrubb said: ‘For all those years patients and staff who were abused by Savile have kept silent. Some from fear that they would not be believed. Who would believe a dangerous mentally ill patient against a national hero? Or because of fear that they would be punished for speaking out. I want to say thank you to those who were abused by Jimmy Savile in Broadmoor, you have shown great strength and bravery in speaking out about these awful events. I realise my comments can’t heal the injuries that Jimmy Savile has inflicted on you through his callous abuse of your vulnerability but I can offer my most sincere and heartfelt apologies on behalf of Broadmoor Hospital and the WLMHT.’
Deputy Director of Nursing Jimmy Noak attended Jimmy Savile’s funeral. He did so because at this point there was no suggestion of the abuse allegations that were to come. It was only after Savile’s death and burial that the allegations came to light, although there had been mounting concerns about his level of access to the hospital, and successful efforts made to restrict it, long before the allegations emerged.
Through our many years of research we detected quite a mixed view of Jimmy Savile amongst staff. Not all of them subscribe to the notion that he was all bad by any means. Ultimately, as Gwen Adshead emphasises, Jimmy Savile was a massive star, and Broadmoor was more than happy to collaborate with him for many years.
Dr Adshead takes a characteristically alternative, contrarian view on Savile.
‘He was a complicated man,’ she told us. ‘He was someone who wanted to be seen to be a good guy. Seen to be doing great and good things that no one else can do. The TV show Jim’ll Fix It was a metaphor for “I can do anything”. I can do what no one else can do – make dreams come true. He clearly was a man who was very preoccupied with his self-image and very grandiose. Very smart. He was invited to Broadmoor at the time, it was all part of the rehabilitation of the hospital as something more medical. Getting away from it being a prison or an asylum. Nobody wants to now admit to being the person that asked him but he was invited to come and visit and make the hospital seem more outward-seeming and he did.
‘He probably did have keys because he was a bigwig and why wouldn’t you give him keys? But I have to tell you that I don’t believe that he abused any of the women in Broadmoor. Quite frankly, I don’t think any of them would have attracted him in any way. I think he liked conquests but I don’t think he would have wanted any of our women and I think it is very unlikely. Now we know what we know, I would be much more worried about corrupt relationships with the nurses and corrupting and inappropriate discussions with the likes of Mr Kray and with Mr Sutcliffe.
‘He kept himself apart, didn’t he?, and in many ways, he had a very sad life. And I think fundamentally, he was someone who could only gain pleasure by exploiting or degrading other people. It is clear from the records that he was interested in vulnerable young women and the idea that you have to do what I say because I am Jimmy Savile! When you are in my position, you can have any pussy you want – rather Trump-like in a way. It was all much more to do with power than abhorrent sexual desires. He might have been interested in seeing how far he could push things.’
She argued that many of the stories of Jimmy Savile are ‘histrionic’.
‘What happens is that you get a very distorted story. I heard a talk given by one of the police officers who was leading the investigation and he described when Savile had been visiting a hospital and all the nurses were lined up and he had grabbed one of the nurses’ breasts and given them a tweak. This was the 1970s and everybody just laughed, “Oh Jimmy, he’s a lad.” Nobody thought that was a sexual assault at the time, the nurse would have felt embarrassed and humiliated and that was the point. As if to say, “Look what I can do and you can do fuck all about it and you all have to laugh”.’
She acknowledges that Savile’s goal was the humiliation and shaming of women, and his demonstration that it was within his power to make them feel that way. She also acknowledges that he was operating in a very different environment, with a mindset that is now very difficult to imagine ourselves back into.
There were very few people like Jimmy Savile in Broadmoor as they are too damaged, she explained. ‘Mental illness doesn’t do that to you. People like Jimmy Savile go to prison now as people don’t think of being like that as mental illness. So the people we have in Broadmoor now are grossly disabled by their mental illness and who after a while get into the role of a patient and can’t get out of it. They manage to restrain themselves from hitting people for a while and then they go to a medium secure unit and then they have a stand-up row with a member of nursing staff or maybe they hit somebody and then they get sent back.’
Many politicians have come to regret their acceptance of Savile’s forays and free access into Broadmoor over the years, once the inquiry into his sexual abuse of NHS patients was underway. Former Health Minister Edwina Currie expressed support for Savile’s promises to confront the Prison Officers’ Association about working practices. She issued an effusive press release which ended: ‘He is an amazing man and has my full confidence.’
Savile boasted that he was ‘running the hospital’ at Broadmoor partly on the basis of his presence on a taskforce that had been sanctioned by Currie and senior civil servants. This conspiracy of silence, or at the very least, apathy, went all the way to the very top. Even former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s friendship with Savile spanned many years.
The 1980s was an extraordinary era in so many ways for the whole of Britain, and Broadmoor is no exception. It is a mark of how far Broadmoor has changed that all the descriptions of the time seem so bizarre and extreme and utterly extraordinary now.