Meirion Jones said the tabloid was ready to publish the story in 2008, something that could have brought the entertainer to justice while he was still alive. The newspaper’s reporters had signed affidavits from women who had been abused as children by Savile at the infamous Haut de la Garenne orphanage in Jersey. In an article for the Guardian, Jones said Sun reporters and editors were convinced that Saville had abused people on the island. However, the tabloid’s lawyers were worried that they would lose any subsequent defamation case and be left with a 1 1 million bill – in part because the victims may not be trusted in court. Jones said the newspaper knew Saville was highly questionable and if they published a story “they would face the best QCs they could buy, representing a man who might call Prince Charles, Margaret Thatcher, the chief of staff.” organizations, the head of the BBC. and the pope as character witnesses “. The journalist, who is involved in a recent Netflix documentary about Savile, said: “The lawyers’ best guess was that an act of defamation could cost a million pounds and the Sun would certainly lose. The story was canned and the journalists and editors were furious. “But this was not the first or last time Savile escaped because of our defamation laws, which were rewarded with deliberate targeting of vulnerable victims.” Instead, the Sun published a carefully crafted article on child abuse in a Jersey nursing home, along with a photo of Saville on the premises – and repeatedly stressed that the BBC presenter was unaware of what had happened there. Despite this, Savile’s lawyers were still threatening legal action when the Sun published a photo of Savile with children in a nursing home. A copy of the legal threat sent to the Sun in 2008, which the Guardian saw, was sent on behalf of Savile by Fox Hayes Solicitors, a company in Leeds that has now been destroyed. Highlighting the “huge sums” raised by Savile’s charity for children, the lawyers asked the Sun to issue a prominent statement “making it clear that any home visit was completely innocent”, to delete the article from its website and pay compensation to Savile ‘. for the injury of his emotions and reputation “. The law firm said child abuse was “the opposite of everything he did [Savile] has worked tirelessly for prevention. ” They insisted that the entertainer did not remember visiting children in the nursing home in the 1970s, but “any such visit would be unusual in addition to the pleasure he may have given.” After Savile’s death in 2011, hundreds of his victims showed up. The public eventually learned that one of Britain’s most famous light entertainment stars was also one of the country’s most prolific pedophiles. Jones, now editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, helped tell the victims’ stories – but only after the BBC bosses prevented his initial investigation from appearing on Newsnight in one of the company’s worst scandals. He is now urging the government to reform British defamation laws to facilitate the publication of investigative stories, warning that they have been used by people from Savile to big business and Russian oligarchs to evade control. The Minister for Justice, Dominic Raab, is currently overseeing the revision of the relevant legislation. A Sun spokesman declined to comment.
