The once golden reputation of the BBC has been destroyed by a growing litany of child sex scandals stretching back over half a century.
Calls for a defunding of the taxpayer-funded corporation – once affectionately known as “Auntie” – have intensified after “face of the nation” Huw Edwards became the latest star to be exposed as a child sex fiend.
Top star Jimmy Savile was exposed after his death as being one of the world’s most prolific paedophiles as he used his BBC superstardom to abuse an estimated 450 young victims.
The ex-Radio One DJ became the biggest TV star of the 1980s via his prime-time Saturday night Jim’ll Fix It show before his decades of offending emerged following his death in 2011 with police recording 199 crimes across 17 force areas, including 31 allegations of rape.
The crimes stretched from 1955 to 2009 and allegations included the abuse of desperately ill children and necrophilia with corpses at Leeds General Infirmary mortuary.
BBC bosses were accused of staging various cover-ups to protect Savile whose offending was deemed an “open secret” at BBC Television Centre, with bosses taking no action despite frequently joking about how their star attraction “liked them young”.
In 2001 BBC presenter and music impresario Jonathan King was convicted of sexual offences committed between 1983 and 1987 against five boys aged 14 and 15 and was jailed for seven years.
Chris Denning, one of the original Radio 1 presenters, has been exposed as a child sex monster and among a string of offences received a 13 year jail term in 2014 for a total to 40 sexual offences committed from 1967 to 1987 relating to 26 male victims, the youngest of whom was nine years old.
In 2016, Denning was given a further 13 years sentence after pleaded guilty to 21 sex offences against 11 boys between 1969 and 1986, the youngest of whom was aged eight. He died behind bars in June 2022.
In 2007 Actor Chris Langham, star of the BBC‘s ‘In The Thick of It’ was jailed for ten months for downloading 15 child sexual abuse images and videos. One of the videos showed the “sadistic brutalisation of an eight-year-old girl.”
In 2013 It’s A Knock Out star Stuart Hall was jailed for 30 months for two offences of indecent assault against a girl of 13 and another against a girl under 16.
The following year children’s presenter and entertainer Rolf Harris was jailed five years and nine months after he was convicted of 12 charges of indecent assault against four girls – including one aged seven.