Watch: Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, faced questions on Tuesday about the corporation’s presenter row
By Mattea Bubalo
BBC News
Jeremy Vine has said the unnamed presenter at the centre of recent allegations should identify himself.
The Radio 2 host – who is unconnected to the allegations – said new claims about the presenter would “result in yet more vitriol being thrown at perfectly innocent colleagues”.
BBC News revealed on Tuesday that a young person has accused the unnamed presenter of sending them abusive messages after meeting on a dating app.
The BBC has suspended the presenter.
Vine is one of several high-profile stars at the corporation who say they have been falsely accused of being the presenter at the centre of the claims by people on social media.
On Tuesday, he said the BBC “is on its knees” over the claims, but added that the decision over whether or not the presenter should identify himself publicly is ultimately the presenter’s “decision and his alone”.
The first allegations against the anonymous BBC figure, which were first reported by The Sun, are that the presenter paid a young person for explicit photos beginning when they were 17.
The newspaper’s story is based on testimony from the mother and step-father of the young person – however, a lawyer for the young person, who is now 20, has disputed their version of events.
BBC News published a separate investigation on Tuesday, in which an individual in their 20s said they were sent menacing and bullying behaviour by the same presenter.
On Tuesday night, the Sun published another new story claiming the presenter broke Covid lockdown rules to meet a 23-year-old he had met on a dating site, and sent what they described as “quite pressurising” messages.
The newspaper says it has seen messages which suggest that as well as visiting the 23-year-old’s home, he also sent money and asked for a picture. He was sent a semi-naked photograph.
The Sun claims the presenter travelled to another county to meet them at their flat in February 2021, despite national lockdown restrictions.
The new allegations emerged hours after the BBC published an updated timeline detailing its response to the original allegations against the presenter.
It revealed that the BBC made just two attempts to contact the family of the young person at the centre of the presenter row after their complaint was made – despite judging it to be very serious.
The presenter was spoken to seven weeks after the initial complaint, the night before the Sun published the claims.
In its update on Tuesday, the BBC said it had been contacted by the family in May, but received no response to a follow-up email. A phone call also failed to connect.
The BBC said it had been asked to pause its investigations into the allegations after a virtual meeting between corporation executives and detectives on Monday.
The Met Police said it is reviewing the claims “to establish whether there is evidence of a criminal offence being committed”.
If the presenter obtained sexually explicit images of the young person when they were under 18, that could be investigated as a possible criminal offence.
A police force has confirmed it was contacted by the family in April and that “no criminality was identified”.
The family said their primary concern was stopping the alleged payments being made to the young person, who they said was struggling with a drug problem.
“Without the money, my partner’s child would have no drugs,” the step-father alleged to the Sun.
The Sun declined a request from BBC News for an interview with a representative, and did not answer a series of questions about the story, including what evidence it had seen for the claims.
BBC complaint timeline
The family of the young person first contacted the BBC on 18 May, when they attended a BBC building to make the complaint in person.
A day later, the complainant contacted the BBC again and the details were passed to the team responsible for investigations within the corporation.
The 29-minute phone call detailing the allegations “did not include an allegation of criminality – but was very serious”, Mr Davie said on Tuesday.
An email was sent to the complainant but no response was received, and a subsequent follow-up call on 6 June “did not connect”, the BBC said.
“No additional attempts to contact the complainant were made after 6 June, however the case remained open throughout,” the timeline added.
The presenter was informed of the allegations contained in the Sun story on 6 July – the evening before it was published – by a senior manager, seven weeks after the initial complaint was made.
The BBC made contact with the police regarding the complaint on 7 July, and suspended the presenter two days later.
This timeline of events laid out by the BBC conflicts with the Sun’s initial report that the BBC did not call the family after the initial complaint was made.
In the paper’s report on Monday, it was stated: “The family say no-one from the corporation rang them for a proper interview after the initial complaint.”
However, this appears to be contradicted by the Sun’s latest interview with the parents of the young person, in which the step-father is quoted as saying allegations were put to the BBC “for an hour”.
The corporation added that it had published an update to the timeline of events to address questions on how the complaint was initially managed, setting out key dates and adding some more information.
“The BBC has processes and protocols for receiving information and managing complaints when they are first made. We always take these matters extremely seriously and seek to manage them with the appropriate duty of care,” the statement read.
There have been questions over how the BBC has handled the complaint, which director general Tim Davie acknowledged was damaging to the corporation.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme on Tuesday afternoon – prior to the emergence of the new allegations – Mr Davie said the corporation’s investigations team “needed to balance the concerns of duty of care and privacy.”
He continued: “You don’t take that complaint directly to the presenter unless it has been verified.
“It is right to validate that and to have the specialist team talk to the individual before taking it forward.”
But he said he wanted to examine whether the BBC raises “red flags quick enough” about complaints of this nature, and said an internal review would take place.
In the same interview, Mr Davie also said he:
- Did not know if the presenter paid for the legal fees of the young person or whether they have spoken since the claims became public
- Has not personally spoken to the presenter about the allegations, but a “senior manager” has, and he is overseeing the process
- Declined to say if other complaints had been made about the same presenter
- Accepted it was a concerning time for male presenters at the BBC who have been wrongly implicated
At a virtual press briefing relating to the publishing of the BBC’s annual report, the director-general confirmed he has asked “for a review”, which will be internal, of how things are red-flagged.
He said: “Any affair of this nature is serious. Trust is absolutely fundamental to the BBC. It is too early to say how this impacts the BBC in terms of trust.”
