Moor Larkin, a fellow blogger interested in getting to the bottom of the Savile hysteria, made the following comment recently. It was so insightful, that I thought it was worth sharing here.
"One thing that has occurred to me is that the Duncroft allegations were pretty small fry, until they began to be embellished. Even taking those original allegations about intimate touching as true, they were, by their own admission consenting/playing games. Given that they never alleged any major assault by Savile at that time, then what was was going on could have been seen as just evidence of their own burgeoning sexual maturing, misdirected towards a man who might have been expected to know better. Regardless of what Savile's behaviour may or may not have been, one sad thing is that these grown women now seem to have been convinced by puritanical men that their behaviour was so "wrong" that they have to be victims in order to be forgiven."
In the meantime, the site set up by some 70s Duncroft women - we'll call it the food site, as all the posters seem to have taken the name of various foods to identify themselves - stays on line with all its grammatical errors, including the howler in the subject line. Someone went over and attempted to correct this mis-statement, and her post was deleted, as well as posts by others protesting the tone of this little mud puddle. My particular favorite was "All Margaret Jones done was sit on her arse chain-smoking." It's "did," my friend, and furthermore yet another poster comes on and claims that she, the poster, is "bright and intelligent," because Margaret Jones said she was. Can't have it both ways, ladies, either she sat on her arse chain-smoking or her word validates you.
I've never been over to their site to post anything, though they've insisted I've done so. I'm not the only ex-Duncroftian who thinks this blog of theirs is more than ridiculous, apparently, and some of them are women who were there in the 70s.
So, just where did all this start? Thereby hangs a tale.
On December 30, 2011, about two months after the demise of Jimmy Savile, the following message was sent to some members of the Duncroft group on Friends Reunited. I didn't get one, but a friend did and sent it on to me with a comment that I'll spare you, and also noting that this was probably a result of the publication of Karin Ward's dodgy book.
I'd been a member of the FRU Duncroft group since about 2002, it had very few members at that time, and that remained the case for about 5 years. I kept up with the women I knew personally.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for your consideration:
Hi,
I hope you had a very happy Christnas and that you and your family/loved
ones have a wonderful New Year.
I am sorry to contact you like this but as
you may or may not know a very emminent TV presenter/prog. maker, has been
contacting many girls who are aware of what happened at Duncroft. Many of us
were interviewed by Police andJournalists, but nothing has been achieved as not
enough people would 'speak out'. Most of us have put those awful years behind us
and grown on the experience of being a 'Duncroft Girl''. I know Mark, (W-T) has
contacted many people directly, he has spoken to those staff who are still
living and as he says he has "dotted the i's and crossed the t's". It is now up
to us to help him. Many of us know what happened, experienced it or just
pretended it is not our problem etc. well, I think it is our problem as most of
the e-mails I get from ex-girls concern the offences of past visitors to
Duncroft, spanning many years. I was not at Duncroft for many of the years
concerned but I am aware of what happened. Being aware and the person concerned
giving first hand reports are two different things. I would therefore urge you
to take this, our last chance to get the many people who exploited us. We know
who they are and if you would rather contact Mark directly then I think that is
correct (if you want his email address or further details then please ask me!).
Please, please take this last chance to do the right thing. even if you know
nothing then that is important as it puts the timeline in perspective.
I
know what I am asking is very difficult but many have families and have been
told to 'Forget'. I am not certain how we can forget until it is corrected, so,
I would therefore ask you, and no one else, to do what is right as we will never
have another chance.
I am seeing this man in a few days and as I have much
memorabilia from those days I would also ask you to sort out your physical
memories and contact either Mark or myself. Please remember that NO ONE else can
do this for you and we must speak out if we want to correct history. This is
really our LAST CHANCE.
Thank you so much for putting up with my ranting and
remember all you have to do is press the reply button even if you think it is
not important or anything, we still need to know.
Thank you again and Happy
New Year, etc." [Emphasis added.]
This message was signed by someone who somehow or another, despite the fact she admits she wasn't at the school during those years, shows up on the first Exposed show. Difficult to miss her as she appeared under her own name. When she was on Friends Reunited, she had what they called a "Wee Me," which was an avatar that you could design yourself, a cartoonish figure that represented you. Her Wee Me was a woman with long red hair cut with a fringe, and next to her a bucket and spade and a little crab, indicating she lives near the sea - Weymouth, presumably. She also claimed to be a professor at a University.
I was intrigued by this message, figured out who the "emminent" presenter was and contacted Mark Williams-Thomas, as suggested in the initial message. I assured him that nothing inappropriate occurred at Duncroft when I was there, and expressed doubts that anything had happened with Jimmy Savile either. We talked for about 45 minutes. He sounded as if he knew something and was determined to bring it to light, but now I know he was skating on very thin ice indeed, as most of his claims were specious. All they had was Karin Ward and the BBC were not inclined to air this short segment of Newnight during the national hoo-ha after Jimmy's death. Perhaps they asked the producers to come up with more information, or maybe ITV did. Either way, this trawling message was certainly designed to come up with a few more tiddlers. Wasn't Karin enough? Apparently not. Not when you are bent on revenge against "all the people who exploited us."
To my knowledge, Mark WT didn't speak to Margaret Jones until the ramp-up to the second Exposed show. It's common knowledge that her nephew Meirion Jones was the Newsnight producer, and that he and his mother had family issues with his aunt that had nothing to do with Duncroft, to do with real estate. Meirion Jones recently admitted to a blogger that there were some problems. He also said that he noticed 'coded' messages on the FRU site since 2001. No he didn't. If there'd been any I would've seen them and inquired about it.
With other information coming to light about the general cooking-up of this whole story, the house of cards will ultimately come down. Just doing my bit.
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