Police forces failed to "join the dots" and missed opportunities to apprehend Jimmy Savile, a critical report says.
The Inspectorate of Constabulary said forces had failed to understand the depth of his sexual offending, and had mishandled complaints and intelligence.
HM Inspector of Constabulary Drusilla Sharpling said she was "shocked" by the extent of his crimes and the paucity of information available.
The report reveals the earliest known complaint was in Cheshire in 1963.
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabularly (HMIC) also warned that failures to share intelligence on a prolific offender could happen again.
Ms Sharpling told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Savile's celebrity status had played a part.
"It's clear that because of Savile's celebrity status, people were looking for that extra piece of evidence, behaving with an extra sense of caution because of the power he wielded," she said.
The HMIC report was an attempt to find out how much police knew about Savile before he was exposed as a sex offender in 2012.
The former presenter of the BBC's Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It, who also worked as a Radio 1 DJ and received a knighthood in 1990, died aged 84 in October 2011 - a year before the first allegations were broadcast in an ITV documentary.
'Acting with impunity'The police watchdog said it had found five reports made to the police about Savile prior to his death and two pieces of intelligence, all of which had been mishandled in different ways.
"Start Quote
End Quote Drusilla Sharpling HM Inspector of ConstabularyThe findings in this report are of deep concern, and clearly there were mistakes in how the police handled the allegations made against Savile during his lifetime"
In the wake of last year's revelations, police have received about 450 allegations spanning several decades. Detectives have assessed 214 of them as being definite crimes, including 32 of rape.
A joint police and NSPCC report released in January outlined offences committed by Savile over 50 years at a number of venues, including BBC premises, schools and hospitals.
The allegations uncovered by HMIC include information passed to the Metropolitan Police's paedophile unit and a separate anonymous letter that detailed some of Savile's methods.
The earliest known missed opportunity to investigate Savile was in 1963 when a male victim reported to Cheshire police that he had been raped by Savile, according to the report. An officer told the victim to "forget about it".
Another man who reported to police in London that his girlfriend had been assaulted at a recording of Top of the Pops was warned that he "could be arrested for making such allegations" and sent away.
They were among eight people who tried to report Savile but failed to get the police forces involved to do anything. Other victims had contacted Merseyside Police, West Yorkshire Police, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Anonymous letterIn 1964 intelligence about Savile was entered into a ledger used by the Met's paedophile unit. It said the DJ had visited an address used by girls who had absconded from Duncroft Approved School in Surrey. There is no record of any investigation.
The Met received further detailed, but anonymous, allegations in 1998 in a letter that described Savile as a "deeply committed paedophile".
However, the classification of this letter as "sensitive" because of Savile's celebrity status meant "the intelligence was not readily available to be searched by later investigating officers", HMIC said.
Seven incidents in police records
- Met paedophile unit intelligence ledger
- 1998 anonymous letter
- 2003 Met crime report relating to a complaint about a 1970s incident
- 2007 Surrey report after complaints from three victims
- 2008 Sussex report after complaint from one victim
"In the light of what is now known, the 1998 MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) anonymous letter makes distressing reading," said the report. "Its detail provided the police with an opportunity to pursue enquiries that might have confirmed its veracity."
In 2003, the Met also compiled a crime report relating to a complaint about a 1970s incident.
In 2007 Surrey Police compiled a report after complaints from three victims and the following year a Sussex report focused on a complaint from one victim.
The HMIC report said: "Both officers (from Sussex and Surrey) appear to have alerted each other to the reluctance of their respective victims and both decided that neither was able to support the other. As a result, opportunities for mutual support were lost."
The watchdog said that police had systems and processes to enable forces to "join the dots" and to spot patterns, but these had been either used incorrectly or not at all.
Drusilla Sharpling, HM Inspector of Constabulary, said it would be wrong to claim the same failures could not happen again.
"Clearly there were mistakes in how the police handled the allegations made against Savile during his lifetime," she said.
"However, an equally profound problem is that victims felt unable to come forward and report crimes of sexual abuse."
She told the BBC that it must become an obligation on professionals of all kinds to report child abuse, and the use of the police database had to be "slicker" and "more comprehensive".
'Lessons to be learned'Home Secretary Theresa May, who commissioned the report - said it had brought into "sharp focus police failings that allowed Savile to act with impunity over five decades".
"The public rightly want answers to how victims' voices were ignored for so long. While we can never right this wrong, we must learn the lessons to prevent the same from ever happening again."
In a statement, the Met Police said: "Although we are satisfied our officers followed the correct procedures in place at the time, HMIC have rightly highlighted the complexities of managing police information nationally.
"There is a balance to be struck around ensuring sensitive information can be retrieved by investigating officers without compromising an individual's privacy and we continue to develop processes to ensure this can happen."
Chief Constable Mike Barton, who speaks on intelligence for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "We have a national intelligence system which is capable of being interrogated by any trained officer across the UK, to identify suspects, offenders and patterns of behaviour.
"However, our review has highlighted that the Police National Database currently has limitations and although many of them are capable of being addressed, this will have to be over a period of time rather than immediately and will require more money."
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