when was jimmy savile exposed

Jimmy Savile was publicly exposed as a prolific sexual predator in early October 2012, when the ITV documentary “Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile” was broadcast on 3 October 2012. Allegations and rumours had existed for decades and some complaints reached police in the 2000s, but the 2012 documentary is widely seen as the moment the scandal fully broke into public view.

Key dates

• 30 September 2012 – News breaks that serious allegations about Savile will be aired in an upcoming ITV documentary called Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile.

• 3 October 2012 – The documentary is broadcast, featuring several women describing abuse they say Savile committed when they were teenagers; this triggers a wave of new complaints and national outrage.

• 9 October 2012 – The Metropolitan Police say they are pursuing more than 100 lines of inquiry and describe Savile as a “predatory sex offender,” confirming the scale of the abuse.

Before the 2012 exposure

• Police in Surrey and Sussex had interviewed Savile over abuse allegations in the 2000s, but prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to charge him at the time.

• After his death in October 2011, further allegations began to circulate, but it was not until the ITV documentary and the subsequent police operation in late 2012 that the full pattern of his offending was recognised and acknowledged publicly.

Why it matters now

• The case has become a major reference point in UK discussions about institutional abuse, media culture, and how powerful figures can evade scrutiny for years.

• It continues to fuel forum discussion and true‑crime interest, especially around how Savile maintained his public image while abusing victims across several decades.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.