Savile sex inquiry costs Leeds NHS trust over £1m

A report by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust revealed that 60 patients and staff aged five to 75 had been abused by the disgraced BBC presenter at Leeds General Infirmary over a period of 50 years.

The trust carried out the investigation, which cost more than £1m, over the course of 18-months and the bulk of the cost was spent on staffing and legal fees.

The trust said the inquiry was “robust” and “thorough” to ensure that Savile’s victims in Leeds received the “most detailed account as possible”.

A spokesman said: “The amount spent reflects the significant task the investigation team faced and the need to have a credible and experienced team in place.

“The investigation covered an extremely long time frame of 50 years.”

Investigators looked into over 1,300 documents and they traced and interviewed more than 200 internal and external witnesses.

The report found that 33 of the victims were patients, of which 19 were children. A further 19 were staff.

Savile’s victims included a ten-year-old boy sexually assaulted by the Leeds-born DJ while on a trolley waiting for an X-ray and a teenage girl recovering from abdominal surgery.

He also forced his tongue into the mouth of a female doctor on a children’s ward in the 1990s, while grabbing her breast.