I discovered that Ray Galloway who interviewed me in the Speaking Out inquiry is a former detective superintendent with North Yorkshire Police and may have had links to Savile.

A news article published in Whitby News states; -

One of the members of the investigation team is Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway (retired), formerly the Director of North Yorkshire Police Force Intelligence, who commanded its Force Intelligence Bureau I believe until his retirement in January 2013. He is internationally famous for his investigation of the disappearance of Claudia Lawrence

This is of interest because in July 2007 North Yorkshire Police received an enquiry from Surrey Police for any intelligence they had on Jimmy Savile. The Bureau sent back a negative response. However, in fact Savile was well known as an associate of the known paedophile Peter Jaconelli. Detectives from North Yorkshire Police had apparently questioned witnesses about Savile in the 2003 investigation referred to above.

The Surrey Police investigation was the best chance that existed of bringing Savile to justice. It failed because:

A police officer referred to as “Inspector 5” of West Yorkshire Police who was a member of Savile’s notorious “Friday Morning Tea Club” (a regular gathering for twenty years, of senior officers for tea with Savile while they were on duty, where Savile alleged “blackmail letters” i.e. complaints about Savile were destroyed) rang Surrey Police and arranged for Savile to be interviewed at Stoke Mandeville Hospital instead of being interviewed at a police station.

North Yorkshire Police Force Intelligence Bureau failed to pass on the intelligence they undoubtedly had about Saville and Jaconelli, to the Surrey investigation.   It should be further noted that the Force Intelligence Bureau features prominently in the series of articles on corruption and misconduct in North Yorkshire Police called Operation Countryman II which we will be running shortly.

I found it intriguing that an officer who had access to all force intelligence and therefore may have had knowledge of the original bungled investigation into Savile and Jaconelli was also involved in the present NHS investigation. I therefore asked the following additional questions of Mr Galloway.

·        At what date did Mr Galloway take up his appointment as Director of Force Intelligence?

·        Did he know or meet Jimmy Savile at any time either socially or through his duties?

·        Was he a member of Savile’s Friday Morning Tea Club?

·        Does he know if any officers of North Yorkshire Police were members of the Friday Morning Tea Club?

·        Did he at any time know Inspector Mick Starkey or any other member of the Friday Morning Tea Club?

·        Did he know or meet Peter Jaconelli, (NAME REDACTED) or Jimmy Corrigan at any time either socially or through his duties?

·        Was he involved at all in the investigation into Rutter and White in 2003?

·        Does he have any explanation for the failure of North Yorkshire Police to pass on information to the Surrey investigation?

I received the following prompt and courteous response from a Leeds Teaching Hospitals spokesman:

“I have put this question to Mr Galloway and he has confirmed he was not the Director of Intelligence for North Yorkshire Police in July 2007, nor has he ever been involved, in any way whatsoever, with any investigation or enquiry relating to Jimmy Savile. He does not wish to add any more to that statement. Reporting to the formal panel is an investigation team, their names and roles are spelled out on a separate public website set up specifically for the investigation, which is accessible via the link below:

http://www.speakingoutleeds.co.uk/

when you go on to that site click on investigation in the menu in the top left and then scroll down to the membership.

As you will see it includes brief biographies for the investigation team members, including Mr Galloway. This sets outs the why Mr Galloway is suitably qualified to be involved in the Leeds investigation, and you will also note that there are a number of other well qualified and independent individuals who are part of the same team.

I really don’t have anything else I can add on the matters you raised relating to Mr Galloway or North Yorkshire Police – as I said in my last message these are not questions for our Trust.”

Clearly, having a retired senior police officer on the team is an asset to the investigation. Having taken up an appointment to an investigation of this nature of his own free will, Mr Galloway has accepted a duty to behave openly and has voluntarily agreed to some degree of public scrutiny of his experience and credentials.

Given the public allegations that blatant corruption in North Yorkshire Police allowed Jaconelli and Savile to operate openly in Scarborough, because of Jaconelli’s position as Mayor and his close connections to the Police and the Council; that there is now potentially a link between Savile’s offending at the LGI (in the West Yorkshire Police Area, where one police officer has been referred to the IPCC) and Jaconelli and Savile’s offending in Scarborough (in the North Yorkshire Police area), it seems to me to be completely unsatisfactory that Mr Galloway refuses to answer these questions and carries on as a member of the investigation with this unresolved conflict of interest.

Under these circumstances, it appears to me that the integrity of the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust investigation is fatally compromised.

A spokesperson for the trust responded to this concern:

“We do not intend to answer the questions you raise whilst the investigation is underway. We do not accept that the investigation into Jimmy Savile’s activities is in any way compromised or flawed and are assured that it is being conducted with the utmost integrity.”

I can only pose the question: If indeed this is the case, why should Mr Galloway refuse to answer the above questions about any knowledge he or North Yorkshire Police may or may not have had about Savile’s close associate and fellow paedophile Jaconelli? Particularly as a simple answer confirming he knew nothing would resolve these concerns and add to the credibility of the investigation.

Full article published here http://www.real-whitby.co.uk/jimmy-savile-the-hospitals-investigation/

This report puts Ray Galloway under suspicion and therefore unfit to be part of the inquiry team. ,If as stated by the Speaking Out inquiry to my solicitor Liz Dux, the interview process was not intended to be confrontational. Why select Ray Galloway to conduct the interviews, when his general demeanour is confrontational.

I passed this information to the Ombudsman for consideration.

Mr Galloway was unfit to interview witnesses/victims.

More recently, The BBC have called into question Det Supt Ray Galloway’s handling of the Claudia Lawrence unsolved murder case. The testimony provided shows just what sort of character Ray Galloway was. It says, -

Joan (Claudia’s mother) has long been critical of the first police investigation. She says officers initially used a photo of Claudia with the wrong hair colour and that she wasn’t spoken to in the immediate aftermath of her daughter’s disappearance.

Ray Galloway came to see me once, a few days [later]. He never asked me what Claudia was like, what her hobbies were, he didn’t want to get to know her.

I told [police] that she didn’t look like that when she disappeared - her hair was much darker, but they carried on using that [photo] for a number of years.

By June, the case had taken a different direction. Its lead detective told BBC Crimewatch that investigators were now focusing on allegations made about the chef’s love life.

“Who was Claudia going out with? Who was she seeing?” Mr Galloway asked viewers. “Who was her boyfriend? Who was showing her maybe some unhealthy interest?”

In a second appearance on the show he made more direct claims, describing Claudia’s relationships as “complex and mysterious” - words that immediately became the subject of tabloid headlines.

“It set the rumour mill whirring,” says former Met detective chief inspector Clive Driscoll. He believes Mr Galloway’s comments turned public opinion against her and had a detrimental effect on the investigation.

“The way Ray Galloway went about it was wrong, he should have phrased it differently,” he says.

“It painted a picture that Claudia somehow deserved what happened to her. It had a big impact on how people viewed her and subsequently how the public responded to the investigation.”

Mr Galloway, who is no longer with the force, was contacted by the BBC about points raised in this article. He declined to comment.

Mr Galloway’s public comments about Claudia’s “secret relationships” were indeed seized upon by journalists.

“Claudia’s sex life, her alleged affairs, were represented in the press as being of key relevance to her case and status as a victim,” says Dr Charlotte Barlow, criminology lecturer at Lancaster University.

“Some of the main phrases used to refer to her were things like ‘scarlet woman’ or ‘home-wrecker’ and it’s this kind of narrative and language which has underlying, highly gendered assumptions.”

Dr Barlow says such wording is only really used to describe female victims and represents them as somehow responsible for their fate.

“However, the blame and focus here should always be on the perpetrator, ensuring that they are held to account, and never on the victim.”

Dr Karen Shalev-Greene, director for the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons, says there is often an element of “victim hierarchy” in how the press portray missing people.

“The most ‘innocent’ victims get an almost angelic coverage while those with more ‘complex’ lives are portrayed differently, without a thought to the victim or the family.”

Police suspected that Claudia had several lovers over a number of years - not unusual for a single woman of her age who was actively dating.

But when coupled with the suggestion that some of them were married, she was seen as “the other woman”.

The picture painted of Claudia in the press was not one her friends recognised. “If this was a man, this kind of behaviour would not have been an issue,” says Suzy.

“There was a marked change when the salacious stories started,” adds Jen.

“They didn’t mention Claudia the great friend, the loving daughter, the chef who went to work even if she was on death’s door.

“She might have been seeing someone, she might have been going on dates we necessarily didn’t know about but really, it was a non-thing as far as we were concerned.

“She wasn’t exclusive with anyone at the time. She wasn’t married or had kids to look after, she was just living her life - and why not?”

The allegations about their daughter’s love life were a surprise to her parents.

Joan was furious and dismissed Mr Galloway’s comments. Peter thought them insensitive but conceded he wouldn’t have expected to know every detail of his daughter’s private life.

“It was obviously difficult to hear and of course the media just went crazy with it,” he says. “But she was a 35-year-old single woman, it would have been more unusual if she hadn’t [had relationships].”

The investigation on the whole appeared to be hampered by a reluctant public wary of being implicated in what had been portrayed as a lurid scandal.

“The challenge is that you have to get people to come forward with information,” reflects Mr Driscoll. “But that was hindered because of how the case was handled.”

By the time Det Supt Dai Malyn had completed his review of the Claudia Lawrence case for North Yorkshire Police, he had reached a far blunter conclusion.

“I still strongly favour the theory that the person - or persons - responsible for Claudia’s disappearance was someone - or several people - who were close to her.

“It was either very well-planned or there was a huge element of luck to have got away with it, so far at least.

“In my view they have probably been helped by the fact that those closely associated with Claudia have withheld key information.”

The detective’s comments in 2016 spoke to the frustration of a case which had left his force with a black mark in its unsolved crimes column for years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/what_happened_to_claudia

In my opinion, Ray Galloway’s handling of this case shows us very clearly his personality traits. He is confrontational and does not listen to witnesses.

These facts, in my opinion, made him a wholly unsuitable person to lead the Speaking Out inquiry team.

The Speaking Out inquiry was set up to listen to and learn from victims and witnesses and would e handling testimony from them from up to sixty years ago.

These witnesses and victims had not been believed or had not felt they could come forward at the time because they would not be believed.

Witnesses from the staff of the hospital, who in some cases risked their careers by coming forward, as they were likely to be admitting to crimes of inaction, when they should have intervened, they were risking charges because of their testimony.

This inquiry needed sympathetic investigation, delicate handling, and careful listening by the team to stand any chance of success, but instead, they got Ray Galloway.