A FORMER York nurse who tried in vain to blow the whistle on “evil” Jimmy Savile in 1972 says she is sickened that he was able to go on to abuse so many more people.

June Thornton spoke out yesterday after a report into the “prolific, predatory sex offender” revealed that eight people now claim to have been abused by him in North Yorkshire, and another 16 at Leeds General Infirmary.

All the alleged North Yorkshire offences are understood to have been committed in the Scarborough area.

Scarborough Borough Council leader Tom Fox said yesterday a motion will go to to the next full council meeting calling for Savile to have the Freedom of the Borough of Scarborough honour removed.

The report by Scotland Yard and the NSPCC said a total of 450 people have now come forward alleging sexual abuse against Savile since October. This figure includes 34 rapes and 126 indecent acts, with 214 criminal offences recorded against him across 28 police forces.

Of Savile’s victims, 73 per cent were children, with the total victim age range between eight and 47 years old at the time of the offences.

Alison Levitt QC, legal adviser to the Director of Public Prosecutions, said Savile could have been prosecuted in 2009 if police had taken victims more seriously.

DPP Keir Starmer said: “I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for the shortcomings in the part played by the CPS in these cases. If this report and my apology are to serve their full purpose, then this must be seen as a watershed moment.”

Last autumn, The Press exclusively reported revelations by Mrs Thornton, 80, that she witnessed Savile molest a woman patient at LGI who was sitting in a chair after undergoing neurosurgery and was unable to resist.

Mrs Thornton said the incident happened when she was lying in a four-bed bay after undergoing back surgery in 1972. She claimed that when she told a nurse, she took no notice and nothing was done.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said yesterday it would look into any complaints made to police or the trust about this “extremely distressing subject.”

Mrs Thornton said: “I think Savile is the most evil thing that ever lived, I really do. I hope he is in hell.

“I keep thinking that if someone had listened to me in 1972, and maybe two or three other people, he would have been stopped and all those other people might have been saved from what has happened to them. It’s sickening.”