LONDON (Reuters) – The family of the BBC presenter at the centre of a sex abuse scandal that has rocked the broadcaster offered its “deepest sympathy” to the late Jimmy Savile’s victims yesterday, saying it felt “despair and sadness.”
The statement came as the Vatican, responding to a letter from the Catholic Church in England asking whether Savile’s papal knighthood could be revoked, said the honour died with the person but in hindsight “should not have been bestowed”.
Police said this week that some 300 victims had come forward and that they were preparing to make arrests in a scandal that has already damaged the BBC’s reputation.
Savile’s nephew Roger Foster said the family had been unaware of the TV host’s “darker side” and was struggling to reconcile the image of the man they loved with the allegations of abuse of young girls.
“How could the person we thought we knew and loved do such a thing?” said the statement. “We recognise that even our own despair and sadness does not compare to that felt by the victims.”
Savile, a cigar-chomping former DJ who was one of the BBC’s top presenters, died last year aged 84.
The scandal has destroyed the reputation of a man who had been widely admired and honoured for his charity work, and has raised troubling questions about the BBC’s management and its workplace culture in the past.
