Woman reveals Jimmy Savile tried to molest her at Jersey care home

A woman has revealed how Jimmy Savile tried to molest her at a Jersey care home years before he was unmasked as a paedophile.

Sex abuse victim Madeleine Vibert, 57, was a teenager when the TV presenter visited the infamous Haut de la Garenne children's home in the early 1970s.

She told Sky News: "He visited us several times, around Easter each year, and wanted us to join him on his charity walks.

"He used to sit girls on his knee and touch their legs. He tried it on me, but I ran off like a bat out of hell.

"He was creepy and I didn't want him touching me, however famous he was."

Ms Vibert said she told police about Savile during a police investigation 10 years ago and he denied visiting the home, but an old photograph in the Jersey Evening Post newspaper proved he had.

Detectives investigated complaints about Savile's Jersey visits from the time, but found no evidence to prosecute him.

Ms Vibert escaped the TV star's attentions, but was regularly sexually and physically abused by staff and visitors during 14 years at Haut de la Garenne.

She gave evidence to the independent inquiry which this week published a damning report on decades of abuse at Jersey's children's homes.

She said: "It was a brutal regime. If you wet the bed at night they would make you get up and wash the sheets and hang them out to dry. If you were caught talking you would have to stand outside the dormitory for hours.

"If you were really naughty you are locked up in a cell, what they called a secure room, for several days with a potty for a toilet. Often you were naked and everyone could see you through the window."

She and others were regularly picked out for sexual abuse, often taken to an office without any explanation. If they complained, nothing was done.

She said: "I complained to other staff, to people at the Children's Service department in St Helier and others, but nobody listened.

"They said: 'Don't make up such stories, no-one else is complaining'. So I just stopped. At first I was angry, but then I said to the others that we just had to be strong for each other."

Ms Vibert said she ran away many times, sleeping in garden sheds, but was always found and put in a police cell before being taken back to the home where she would be punished and often left with bruises.

Her terrible life at Haut de la Garenne, where her younger sister also lived for many years, is described in her book They Stole My Innocence which was published last year.

She said: "There was a sort of swimming pool in the basement where they told us to get in and where up to ten men were always waiting to abuse us.

"If you kicked and screamed to avoid going in they would tie you to a wooden chair and abuse you anyway."

Ms Vibert welcomed the inquiry's report which said the island's politicians turned a blind eye to abuse claims over many decades.

"It has finally given us a voice and I hope that Jersey's vulnerable children will have a bright future, but I can't be sure that will happen," she said.

"The Chief Minister Ian Gorst and other ministers say many things will change, but they might change their minds when all this fuss has died down."