Savile 'Molested' Teen During Top Of The Pops

A Top of the Pops audience member has told Sky News she was molested on camera by Jimmy Savile and then laughed at by a member of the crew when she tried to complain.

Sylvia Edwards, who was 18 at the time, says she was told to get lost by a man on the studio floor who said: "That's just Jimmy Savile."

Footage from the programme in 1976 shows the teenager clearly shrieking and jumping up from her seat as she struggles to get away from Savile, who says to a camera: "A fella could get used to all this."

Mrs Edwards told Sky News: "All of a sudden I felt this hand go underneath and I jumped up, I went to go back down again, but I couldn't go anywhere, his hand was still there.

"I was trying to push it away, but he wouldn't move it - I just screeched - I started feeling embarrassed because where could you go?

"I was just getting really flustered and he didn't move, and I just remember trying to get out, but there were too many girls around me."

As soon as it was over she said she tried to tell the nearest member of staff what had happened.

She said: "I just found this man that had some sort of headset on, I don't know what he was doing, next to a camera, and I said: 'He's really filthy, he's putting his hand up my skirt and that', and he said: 'Oh no, don't be so stupid'.

"He said, 'That's just Jimmy Savile, go on get out of the way, out of the way, you're blocking a camera shot' or something.

"I had to move because this camera was coming around and I thought fine, ok, what do you say - once they've told you to get lost, I didn't think that maybe I could go to the police, I just felt embarrassed."

She said she was picked out of the crowd to sit next to Savile and quickly found herself hemmed in by other girls.

"All I could think of was to get his hand away, and my hand was pushing it, but he just seemed to go rigid and keep his hand there, and actually if you watch the tape you can see him moving where I'm trying to push it away and he was having none of it, his hand was going to stay there, and that was it.

"I was trapped, I felt as if I was just stuck and everyone was closing in around me because obviously they all wanted to get in the camera shot and I could feel them all around me. We had to just wait until they said we could move."

Mrs Edwards' case raises more questions for the BBC. She is convinced that some within the corporation must have known what was going on.

"I know that they knew about it because I told them years and years ago and they just brushed it under the carpet.

"That is what annoyed me and prompted me to come forward to say they did know. I don't know how anybody could say they didn't know it was going on."

A spokesperson for the BBC said: "The BBC cannot comment on individual cases. It has asked that anyone with allegations of this nature should report them to the BBC's Investigation Unit or the police directly."