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PSYCHOLOGY | CRIME | CULTURE
Psychology of Evil: How Jimmy Savile Got Away With It
The horrific man and events are the subject of a Netflix documentary
Trigger warning: sexual abuse, child abuse.
TV presenter, DJ, philanthropist and once-national treasure of Britain, Jimmy Savile, sexually abused hundreds of people for over five decades. Often he did it almost in plain sight. He made creepy statements over and over again on live TV. Whistles were blown as early as the 1960s. And yet he died in his home in 2011, unconvicted of anything.
How on earth did he get away with it?
It would have taken just one breaking story of any of the hundreds of abused people to hit the front pages as they should have done, and his career would have been over with a probable prison sentence. Except no one believed it. Those who knew did nothing. Savile, as now documented in a Netflix series, died aged 84, a free man.
Times have changed but our brains have not
One of the things that brought Savile’s behaviour to light was social media, on early platform Friend’s Reunited. Before that, there was no social media. News didn’t spread freely like it does now. Everything came from television or newspapers — and these are all controlled by a select few people. That setup was easier for Savile to influence. These days, you can’t silence the whole internet.
In the last century, attitudes towards sex and gender were very different. What is now called toxic masculinity was then a normal part of a ‘blokey’ conversation. You could say a lot more without it being seen as weird or wrong — and so get away with a lot more.
But whilst technology and society have changed, our brains are still exactly the same as they’ve been for hundreds of years. What we fell prey to then, we still fall prey to now. In these old ways, high-status abusers are set up to get away with it.
Here is the evil psychology that allowed Savile to abuse, in front of a nation, for over 50 years.
