Jimmy Savile would regularly take teenage girls to a hospital block alone, a former porter has claimed.
Terry Pratt said the late Jim’ll Fix It star was frequently handed a key to the nurses’ accommodation building at Leeds General Infirmary during the late 1980s. Mr Pratt told the BBC that Savile would arrive at Leeds General Infirmary with the girls in the early hours of the morning and then leave before dawn.
He said: “He would go up and the lad on the desk would say ‘Here’s the key, Jim, make sure I get it back’. He’d take the key and would walk out and the two women would follow him towards the nurses’ home. He was going into a property he had no right to go into. He wasn’t a doctor and he wasn’t a nurse.”
Mr Pratt said he became suspicious when Savile began arriving in the middle of the night with different girls who seemed “star-struck” and were “not streetwise”.
But nobody questioned the late presenter’s behaviour at the time, he said, adding: “We looked at him as a sort of film star, a cult figure.”
Mr Pratt said the celebrity, who was a volunteer porter and fundraiser for the hospital, would make several late-night visits a month where he would ask for the key to the accommodation block, spend a few hours there and then leave at 5am.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said it was “shocked” by the claims surrounding Leeds General Infirmary and has vowed to help the Metropolitan Police with inquiries into the alleged abuse.
A spokesman for the trust said: “We continue to be shocked by each new allegation. It is important that they are investigated properly. Once again, we urge anybody who has any concerns to contact us so that we can pass information on to the police or to contact the police directly via the NSPCC helpline, 0808 800 5000.
“The trust is in contact with senior detectives from the Metropolitan Police and we have indicated our intention to help with their inquiries. If there are any issues which need to be addressed following the police investigation, then we will take action.”
Meanwhile, councillors in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, have called for his name to be immediately removed from the honour board for freemen of the borough until the Metropolitan Police concludes investigations.
Mr Pratt said he became suspicious when Savile began arriving in the middle of the night with different girls who seemed “star-struck” and were “not streetwise”.
But nobody questioned the late presenter’s behaviour at the time, he said, adding: “We looked at him as a sort of film star, a cult figure.”
Mr Pratt said the celebrity, who was a volunteer porter and fundraiser for the hospital, would make several late-night visits a month where he would ask for the key to the accommodation block, spend a few hours there and then leave at 5am.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said it was “shocked” by the claims surrounding Leeds General Infirmary and has vowed to help the Metropolitan Police with inquiries into the alleged abuse.
A spokesman for the trust said: “We continue to be shocked by each new allegation. It is important that they are investigated properly. Once again, we urge anybody who has any concerns to contact us so that we can pass information on to the police or to contact the police directly via the NSPCC helpline, 0808 800 5000.
“The trust is in contact with senior detectives from the Metropolitan Police and we have indicated our intention to help with their inquiries. If there are any issues which need to be addressed following the police investigation, then we will take action.”
Meanwhile, councillors in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, have called for his name to be immediately removed from the honour board for freemen of the borough until the Metropolitan Police concludes investigations.
Press Association
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