Former model tells of Savile hospital assault

Published on 01/11/2012 01:25

Fresh claims emerged last night that Jimmy Savile tried to rape a woman while on a hospital visit and told her “just think of me as good old Uncle Jim”.

Debbie Curtis, then an aspiring model, aged 22, alleged that the celebrity sexually assaulted her at his room in the nurses’ quarters at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire.

She gave her account as Leeds General Infirmary denied claims by former porter Terry Pratt that the late Jim’ll Fix It star was frequently handed a key to the nurses’ accommodation building at Leeds General Infirmary during the late 1980s.

But officials admitted that Savile did have an office on the site for 10 years because of his fundraising work.

Ms Curtis said that Savile invited her to his room where he groped her and blocked the door to the room despite her protests, and that she was forced to knee him in the groin to 
escape.

Ms Curtis said: “I think I was more shocked that he’d tried to force himself on me when I’d said no. And that’s my biggest reason for doing this interview – I think that no should mean no.

“He was saying, ‘you’re a very naughty girl’. He always wanted me to call him Uncle Jim, something I was not going to be doing.”