A woman who was sexually assaulted as an ill teenager by Jimmy Savile in a hospital basement wants reassurances such abuse can never happen again. Jamie Grierson reports

JANE was just 16-years-old when she was assaulted by the now-deceased entertainer in Leeds General Infirmary in 1973.

She spent decades believing she was the disgraced presenter's "chosen one", not realising hundreds of others had suffered like her.

The now 57-year-old says she felt "utterly disgusted" after Savile forced her to perform a sex act on him and was "shocked" when the full extent of his abuse was revealed nearly two years ago.

The married mother-of-one, who has wed three times, says the assault followed what she now realises was a short period of grooming by radio and TV star Savile, who was volunteering at the hospital.

As the findings of a series of investigations into Savile's abuse at NHS hospitals are published, Jane, who lives in Yorkshire, says she wants an apology from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, who she accuses of "betraying" her.

Jane was an in-patient of the LGI, being treated for the effects of a nervous breakdown when Savile assaulted her. She describes herself as young-looking with a pixie haircut and wearing a short, cheesecloth dress.

"I had seen Jimmy Savile around the hospital, everybody had," she says. "From time to time, he came up on to the ward and he chatted to just about everybody."

In late 1973, Savile struck up a conversation with Jane on the hospital ward, when he was volunteering as a porter.

"We got talking, he'd ask where I came from, I told him it was a little village near York.

"He said 'oh right, I know that very well'. He said 'I do a lot of walking, charity walks, and I actually know someone from the village'. That was his opening line."

A few days after their first conversation, Savile asked Jane to accompany him out of the hospital.

"He must have cleared it with staff that they were happy for me to go off the ward," the 57-year-old says. "He took me down the stairs, out of the hospital, across the grounds and out to a newsagent shop, which was just outside the front steps. I don't think it's there now.

"I always remember this - the whole Jimmy Savile thing is like a snapshot in my mind - he actually cleared the whole counter with his arm. So there were magazines, papers, sweets, you name it, on the counter and they were delivered to the ward that afternoon."

She adds: "At that time, it was like I was the chosen one. Down the line, it's obviously grooming, we know this."

A few days after her trip to the newsagent, a porter approached Jane and said Savile wanted to see her.

The porter took the then teenager down some stairs into "depths of Leeds General Infirmary", along an underground passage with huge heating pipes along it, before approaching a door.

The mother-of-one says: "He knocked on the door, not a word was said, he knocked on the door and opened the door. And there was Jimmy Savile leaning up against the wall."

Savile was dressed in a T-shirt and jogging trousers, Jane says.

She went on: "He gently pulled me in, there was no grabbing hold of me and screaming or anything like that. He gently pulled me in, where the door finished he was there. He held me to him and he started to kiss me.

"At the same time, his left hand went on to my thigh underneath my dress because I was fully clothed. His right hand went on to my left breast, outside the clothes.

"The whole thing only happened five or six minutes, this was how long the whole thing was."

Jane said Savile "came up for breath" and asked if she was taking the contraceptive pill, to which she replied "no".

He then forced her to perform a sex act on him.

"It didn't take very long, at all," says Jane. "And then he said 'you've got to go'. He knocked on the door, a normal knock on the door, somebody else opened it from the other side, not the porter, a third person, who I have since identified and made a statement about."

Jane, who went on to work as a nurse, says she was taken back to the bottom of the stairs leading back to the ward.

When she attempted to explain what happened to the nurses, she was cut short with laughter.

"I said to the nurses 'you wouldn't believe what's just happened'. I got as far as 'Jimmy' and they just laughed and that was the end of the episode."

Jane said she has always been honest and open about what happened with friends and family.

She says: "My mother believed me, she said 'but the thing is, he's such a celebrity, who's going to believe you, love?' And she was right."

Jane says she wants an apology from the hospital and its trust.

She adds: "I want an apology and to have assurances put in place that it won't happen again - no, that it can't happen again."