London: Caroline Moore was a paralysed 13-year-old in a wheelchair when Jimmy Savile abused her.

She is still haunted by the assault as she recovered in a children’s ward at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1971 following an operation to fuse her spine.

Moore, now 53, said she was sitting alone in her wheelchair in the corridor, by the doorway to her ward, when Savile approached in silence.

She recalled: “I was quite shy and lonely. I don’t remember him saying anything to me but he leant down and I was excited because I thought he was going to give me a wee peck on the cheek.

“But he took my face in his hands and rammed his tongue down my throat. I was shocked.

“I had never been kissed and I didn’t really know what had happened - only that it made me absolutely shudder.

“Afterwards he just walked off as if nothing had happened.”

Mother-of-two Moore, who is paralysed from the chest down after a car accident when she was 20 months old, said: “It was a horrible experience. I can still see his face - it has haunted me to this day.

“What really angers me is that this man was allowed to prey on disabled people. It is the lowest of the low.

“My suspicion is that they let him do what he wanted because he brought in the money.”

Moore, of Clarkston, East Renfrewshire, added: “I told all my friends what had happened, I have never kept it a secret but, because of how respected he was, I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I went to the police.”

The former businesswoman, who used to run her own shop selling baby clothing, said she now intends to add her name to the police’s growing list of Savile victims. “I would like to see him stripped of his knighthood,” she added.

Another former patient, Tracey Brown, 39, from Milton Keynes, said Savile thrust his tongue in her mouth when she was 15 as she recovered from an operation at the hospital. She said: “He asked for a kiss - I thought he meant on the cheek. I’ve been waiting years for it to come out that he was a pervert.” Another woman said Savile molested her in the 1970s after he went to watch her choir at the hospital, while John Gibbin, now 49, claims Savile fondled him in his Rolls-Royce at a Stoke Mandeville fundraiser when he was nine.