No Harm In It: the bit no one wants to admit about the Jimmy Savile story
He told everyone exactly what he was. And that was fine
“I never did any harm to anybody...” — Jimmy Savile, 2006
When I was about thirteen, maybe twelve, a grown man molested me for the first time. Yes, he must have known I was a child, I was in my school uniform. In broad daylight, he stuck his hands inside my blazer and over my un-developed chest. It was only a few seconds. And I didn’t do anything. I didn’t move. I pretended it hadn’t happened. I never went to the police, I never told the school, I never even screamed for help. But the panic was overwhelming. I didn’t have control over my body any more. I knew how grown up men saw me now, for the first time. It would make me deeply fearful and hateful of men: they became great stalking unfeeling flesh beasts, carnally insatiable and unable to think or feel or regret or love. The wound was made, and I’m not sure it would ever heal. Even now, I struggle with the fact I didn’t cry out. Did he know I didn’t want it? Did I make that clear? Was I giving him the wrong signals? Was it my fault?
This wasn’t 1956: this was 2008.
And I don’t even know or remember or want to attempt to calculate the scores of times a man has molested me, groped me, touched me…
