Dani Garavelli: Shame of an era that turned a blind eye ESTHER Rantzen may have been left reeling by last week's allegations about Jimmy Savile, but I wasn't shocked to find out he was a hebephile and I'm slightly suspicious of anyone who says they are. The dogs in the street - as underworld parlance would have it - realised there was something unsavoury about the ­eccentric DJ's sexual interest in young girls, but in the UK we cut our eccentrics a degree of slack, particularly if they are famous and raise money for charity. So people queued to file past Savile's gold coffin more than 30 years after he admitted keeping a teenage runaway overnight "as a reward" for finding her and paid homage to the philanthropy of a man who had pawed a 14-year-old Coleen ­Nolan on national TV. And if we, the general public, had a good idea what was going on, then why would the BBC be in the dark? The corporation insists it had no hard evidence of abuse, but rumours were rife. Some former BBC employees - Paul Gambaccini and Janet Street-Porter, for example - were brave enough to admit they had been aware of them, though not brave enough to have spoken up at the time, when it might have made a difference. What would have been the point, Street-Porter said last week. At that time inappropriate behaviour was tolerated in the male-dominated light entertainment industry. No action would have been taken. And that's the truly shocking thing - not that there was a cover-up, but that there wasn't. A cover-up is when a handful of people are aware of wrongdoing and orchestrate a campaign to keep it hidden from others. But, at the height of his career, Savile did nothing to disguise his penchant for young girls, and no-one really batted an eyelid. For a man with all the charisma of one of his shiny shell-suits, he seemed to have an enormous hold over those in power. But he was hardly the only culprit. In the Seventies, in the world of popular culture, there was a climate of sexual amorality. Don Johnson dated 14-year-old Melanie Griffith, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and David Bowie dated teenage model Lori Maddox. None of them seemed to be disturbed by their consciences, nor by a knock on the door from the police who, back then, seemed far more interested in busting celebrities for smoking pot than with checking the age of their sexual ­partners. Savile might have been at the more ­sordid end of the spectrum (since many of the allegations against him involve non-consensual sex), but even amongst DJs there was an anything-goes ­atmosphere. Young Girl and My Sharona were chart hits and stars seemed to believe the groupies who gathered at their door were fair game. As John Peel - who married his first wife when she was 15 - once said of the girls who queued up outside his studio: "Well, of course, I didn't ask for ID. All they wanted was for me to abuse them sexually, which of course, I was only too happy to do. Savile, it seems, used the sheen of ­celebrity to ensure there was a steady flow of girls visiting his dressing room or touring caravan. Indeed, one of the creepiest things about watching ITV's Exposure documentary was seeing teenagers being letched at by Savile and Gary Glitter on Clunk-Click and realising I must have watched such goings-on as a child and ­accepted them as normal. Even if the BBC had no proof of abuse, it must have known Savile's behaviour was inappropriate - last week a former press officer claimed former Radio 1 controller Douglas Muggeridge had asked him to check if the newspapers were working on an exposé. Yet it didn't launch an inquiry or try to edge Savile out of the door. The Seventies were a terrible, exploitative decade when "stars" were given ­licence to do as they pleased and child protection was non-existent. No-one in their right mind would want to return to it. But I'm not sure how smug we should be about our own times. It's true that Aids put an end to the laissez-faire approach to sex (though not before Bill Wyman had seduced 13-year-old Mandy Smith). It is impossible to conceive, now, of a television programme in which underage girls are encouraged to wear skimpy clothes and dance provocatively on stage as cameras placed at low levels effectively upskirted them. But even in Savile's later years - when time had diminished his status and a succession of scandals had hardened ­society's view on child abuse - no-one had the courage to act. A spoof Have I Got News For You transcript, dating back to 1999, may have mentioned girls" schools, his dressing room and even the caravan; Louis Theroux may have made sly reference to the rumours in his documentary, but it wasn't until Savile's death removed the risk of a libel suit that the floodgates opened. Nor should we congratulate ourselves that such a state of affairs couldn't happen again. After all, what was Rochdale but a story of abuse which everyone knew about but ignored because the authorities decided the girls were complicit in their own fates and weren't really worth bothering about? With Savile gone, raking over the past can't bring his accusers justice and finding one or two individuals to blame for the licentious environment which allowed him to carry on unchecked seems slightly unfair, given the amount of time that has elapsed. If the saga serves any purpose, it should be to remind us of the dangers of turning a blind eye to exploitation; and of our responsibility to speak out against wrongdoing, even when it means ­swimming against the cultural tide.