FRESH questions were raised today about Jimmy Savile’s access to hospitals during his alleged campaign of child sex abuse.
A former porter at Leeds General Infirmary yesterday claimed Savile would regularly take teenage girls to an accommodation block at the hospital in the late 1980s.
And now a photo uncovered by the Yorkshire Evening Post is likely to fuel suspicions that he could effectively come and go as he pleased at Buckinghamshire’s Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
The picture was taken at the opening in 2005 of a cafe at Stoke Mandeville named after Savile in recognition of his fundraising work for the hospital.
It shows him wearing two fake NHS identity badges, bizarrely bearing the name and photos of Hollywood legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
‘Stoke Mandeville Hospital NHS Trust’ is printed on one of the badges while the other says ‘Buckinghamshire Hospitals’.
Savile has already been accused of molesting patients at LGI during shifts as a volunteer porter in the 1970s. He is alleged to have carried out other attacks at Stoke Mandeville, where he had a bedroom.
Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Stoke Mandeville, today said: “The badges worn by Jimmy Savile would not have been mistaken for trust ID badges nor provided any access to clinical areas.”
Ex-LGI porter Terry Pratt yesterday claimed Savile would regularly turn up in the middle of the night at the hospital with girls in tow.
He said the Leeds-born TV star would then be given a key to the nurses’ accommodation building for a few hours.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said it believed Mr Pratt was mistaken.
A spokesman said: “[He] appears to have been talking about a period ... before he started work at the hospital in 1990 and not from first-hand knowledge. The nurses’ home had a warden on duty 24 hours a day and we understand access was very strictly controlled.”
Savile died last year, aged 84.
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