Man who exposed Jimmy Savile explains how he risked his career to do it

The man who exposed Jimmy Savile as a rapist and paedophile risked his career to do it.

Mark Williams-Thomas is a detective-turned-investigator who was one of the people responsible for outing Savile as the depraved predator he was:

Before he died in 2011, most people, while they had suspicions he was a bit weird, thought of the aged DJ simply as an eccentric.

His gold coffin was paraded through the streets of Leeds and Scarborough, with the 85-year-old lying in state so fans could pay their respects.

All the while, those who survived his decades-long abuse, watched on in horror as the country mourned a monster.

It was only once he'd died that his crimes were exposed and those who suffered at his hands were listened to.

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Speaking to LADbible about how he managed to bring the truth to light in a documentary with ITV, Mark said it was a huge personal gamble.

"While I started investigating him, in the early days, my mum phoned me up and she said, 'Mark, do you really think you should be doing this?' There was a big story in BBC Leeds, they had covered it, and talked about me doing this programme, and where was a phone-in, I listened to the phone-in and people were being really horrible about me.

"I remember my mum saying, 'Mark, do you really want to take this on?' And I've had an incendiary device sent to me, somebody sent me an incendiary device, which was sent to myself at ITV in Birmingham, which is where all the post goes, and I remember getting a phone call one day saying, 'Mark, there's an incendiary device that's been sent to you'.

"I remember thinking to myself, 'Right, ok, what does that mean?' And they got the police out there, they got the fire brigade, and they worked out that it was capable of causing quite significant damage."

Mark said that they never found out who sent it or where it came from.

But despite the clear message, he said he never let it put him off, of anything it spurred him on to tell the story.

Samir Hussein/Getty Images

"I remember being so determined to do it, even when it was difficult, we had real challenge to get it commissioned, ITV were amazing, but it was really difficult," he told us.

"I remember saying to my producer on the tube, 'We can't let this go, we have to get this out there'.

"We put out lives into it, and I remember saying to her and a number of other people that if we get this right, then it will make a massive change and difference, but if we get it wrong and people don't believe us, we'll never work in telly again, we'll just be ostracised from everything that we do."

But luckily for Mark and his team, the stories of Savile's survivors were believed, and he was finally unmasked as a 'predatory paedophile'.

A year after the broadcast, over 500 people came forward with allegations of abuse.

Savile's headstone at Woodlands cemetery in Scarborough was eventually torn down, though his grave remains at the site.

You can watch the whole interview here.

Topics: Jimmy Savile, UK News

Dominic Smithers

Dominic Smithers is LADbible's Editorial Lead. After graduating from the University of Leeds with a degree in French and History, he went on to write for the Manchester Evening News, the Accrington Observer and the Macclesfield Express. So as you can imagine, he’s spent many a night wondering just how useful that second language has been. But c'est la vie.

@SmithersDom