Disgraced presenter Stuart Hall abused 21 victims at the BBC and the youngest was just 10 years old.
- BBC staff knew he was taking women into his dressing room for sex
- The report said he had 21 female victims but no complaints were passed on
- But senior managers knew one victim who was told ‘you can take a joke’
- He was jailed for abusing 13 girls and said it has been a ‘very difficult’ time
Staff at BBC Manchester knew the former It’s A Knockout host was taking women into his dressing room for sex, although not that some of them were under age, a report by former High Court judge Dame Linda Dobbs found.
The report said he had 21 female victims at the BBC, with the youngest aged 10, between 1967 and 1991, but no complaints were passed on to senior management.
However, it emerged that senior managers knew one victim who was told ‘you can take a joke’.
Hall, now 86, was released in December after serving half of a five-year jail term for historical indecent assaults against girls aged between nine and 17.
One BBC manager who ‘knew’ about Stuart Hall was named in the report as Ray Colley, Regional Television Manager, North West 1970 – 86.
A woman who complained to him about Hall told the inquiry of ‘daily sexual harrasment’, saying: ‘If you were female, at the slightest opportunity he put his arms around you and forced his body against yours…he could stroke your knee or tweak your stocking top, put his hand on your breast or rub your back.’
But she said the reaction of Mr Colley, ‘who was present during some of the incidents’, was: ‘Oh, come on, you can take a joke’, she said, ‘or to say words to the effect of, ‘you can handle that, couldn’t you, you’re a big tough girl’.’
Mr Colley, the report said, gave Hall a dressing down about his conduct after the former arrived at BBC Manchester in 1970, suggesting rumours about Hall’s sexual activity were circulating even then. However he failed to take any subsequent ‘positive steps’ to check if Hall was behaving.
Summarising Dame Linda’s report, Dame Janet Smith said: ‘There were concerns that management would not deal with it because of Hall’s importance to the success of his shows and his celebrity status; he therefore became ‘untouchable’.’
The report said people who were interviewed gave various reasons for a failure to report him, including it being nothing to do with them, fears they were too junior to interfere or might lose their job, or that it was up to management to take action.
The reports said Hall’s actions had to be seen in the context of the behaviour standards of the time, but added: ‘It is difficult not to conclude that, in view of the unusual opportunities for the abuse of young girls that some of the BBC’s work generated, it should have put in place measures designed to prevent such abuse.
‘Whether such measures would have prevented some or all of the especially inappropriate conduct committed by Hall in connection with his work for the BBC is difficult to say.
‘It is likely at the very least that they would have prevented those incidents with which the Hall investigation is primarily concerned, namely those which took place on the BBC’s premises in Manchester.’
The report said young female visitors to BBC Manchester were jokingly referred to as ‘Hall’s nieces’ who had come for ‘elocution lessons’.
It also referred to Hall’s ‘laddish sexuality, characterised by risque banter and often unwanted tactility’.
The official inquiry also concluded that the BBC must undergo ‘self-examination’ to ensure Jimmy Savile’s ‘terrible’ reign of abuse. Savile was found to have molested 72 victims as young as eight.
Dame Smith controversially said the corporation’s failure to stop the monster Jim’ll Fix It star was not the fault of senior managers.
Her long-awaited review found there was a culture of ‘reverence and fear’ towards celebrities at the corporation and that ‘an atmosphere of fear still exists today in the BBC’.
Today, BBC director-general Lord Hall apologised to the victims of Savile and Hall.
He said: ‘The BBC failed you when it should have protected you. I’m deeply sorry for the hurt caused to each and every one of you.’
He added that one account of a Savile victim in particular had stuck in his mind.
‘One of the survivors was told ‘Keep your mouth shut, he’s a VIP’,’ he said.
‘This hit me because it made it so very clear that we, the BBC, did that.
‘Savile committed his crimes in many places but it was the BBC that made him famous.
‘What this terrible episode tells us is that fame is power, a very strong form of power.
‘And like all power it must be held to account, it must be challenged and it must be scrutinised, and it wasn’t.’
In June 2013, Hall was jailed for 15 months after he admitted indecently assaulting 13 girls, before the sentence was doubled by the Court of the Appeal, which ruled it was ‘inadequate’.
Last May he received an additional 30 months in jail – to run consecutively – for two indecent assaults on another girl.
Yesterday, Stuart Hall has insisted that he is the victim in his first interview since he was released from jail for abusing 13 girls – one of whom was just nine years old.
The disgraced ex-BBC presenter described how going ‘from being a national treasure to the bottom of the pond has been very difficult’.
The 86-year-old even went so far as to describe the people who spoke out against him as ‘vindictive’ and ‘malicious’.
Hall served just half of his five-year jail term.
And he was photographed enjoying his freedom yesterday in Oldham, Greater Manchester, near to the bail hostel were he is currently staying.
‘I am bearing up. I am living in a vacuum. It’s like being in a void,’ the It’s A Knockout presenter told The Sun in his first interview since his release from prison last December.
‘I don’t look more than a day ahead. I live one day at a time.’
His comments came on the eve of the release of a report into sex crimes at the BBC.
Dame Janet Smith’s investigation into the culture and practices at the corporation during the years that Jimmy Savile and Hall worked there.
It comes alongside Dame Linda Dobbs’ report into Hall’s behaviour, which is due at 10am today.
Shortly before Hall was freed, one victim told the Daily Mail: ‘The law is a farce. It’s just like saying you can go and abuse all these people and all it will cost is a couple of years out of your life.
‘It’s nothing. It makes a mockery of everything.’
Last month Savile’s victims accused the BBC of a £10million whitewash after a leaked copy of Dame Janet Smith’s report cleared executives of any wrongdoing despite revealing they were warned of his abuse.
Although 107 people suspected Savile of molesting young girls, managers did nothing to stop him because they had no ‘hard evidence’, a draft of the broadcaster’s review into the scandal found.
Celebrities who reported hearing stories about the star’s predilections included Esther Rantzen and Terry Wogan, the draft review said.
The report was commissioned by the BBC to consider the culture and practices at the corporation during the years that Savile worked there.
It emerged this week that Hall’s wife had finally sold the £1.2million four-bedroom mansion where the couple used to live.
Hazel Hall put the property on the market in 2014, a year after her husband admitted abusing young girls, and a sold sign was last week spotted outside the detached property in Wilmslow, Cheshire.
The house had been on the market for a number of months but had previously failed to attract a seller despite a drop in asking price to £995,000.
It is understood the property will now be demolished.
Meanwhile, it was suggested at the end of last year that Hall had refused to return his OBE after the gong was taken away from him following his conviction in 2013.
Hall will be on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life. After initially insisting he was innocent, he later pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting 13 girls aged from nine to 17 between 1967 and 1985.
He was handed a 15-month jail sentence, which prompted such outrage it was doubled on appeal. Months later, while Hall was in prison, two more women accused him of historic abuse.
In May 2014 he was convicted of one more abuse charge and handed a further 30 months’ in jail.