© The Mirror
Jimmy Saville in 1982
Jimmy Saville in 1982
The government has been dragged into the Jimmy Savile scandal after it emerged that the Department of Health could be sued directly over claims the star abused patients when he was a volunteer at Broadmoor hospital in the 1970s and 1980s.
A lawyer acting for victims preparing legal action against Stoke Mandeville hospital and the BBC said it was possible the government could face civil claims as it was directly responsible for the running of the Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital in that time.
Savile was a volunteer for more than four decades at the hospital, had keys to its secure unit and at one point in 1988 was appointed to lead a "taskforce" overseeing the management of the hospital after its management board was dismissed by the then health secretary, Kenneth Clarke.
Comment: Yet nothing will happen - polls show that a majority of the American public now accept and support the use of torture. A society dehumanized to such a point, cheered on by authoritarians and their followers, will willingly accept measures that inflict pain and suffering on the 'others' without giving it a second thought.
Murder by drone without trail or the need to produce any evidence, routine killing of civilians as 'acceptable losses', isolation and torture of children at home, and the highest prison population anywhere on the planet. All are accepted without a word of protest from the majority in the U.S.