Napac, the child abuse support charity, has insisted that patron Esther Rantzen has its full backing and that her image will be returned to its website shortly.

Pete Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, admitted that he ordered Esther’s picture be removed from the website earlier this week after The Sun carried a story alleging that she had been told about the abuse perpetrated by Jimmy Savile years ago, but did nothing about it.

Rantzen, who is also the founder of ChildLine, has strenuously denied this is true. She said she could not remember ever meeting Shy Keenan, the founder of the Phoenix Survivors charity, who claims she told Rantzen about the Savile rumours 18 years ago.

The Sun reported on Saturday that Saunders planned to ask Napac trustees to reconsider whether Esther was an appropriate patron for the charity.

However, when civilsociety.co.uk followed this up with Saunders this week, he said: “She hasn’t been asked to stand down. She remains a valued patron. Her face will reappear on the website shortly.”

He said he had asked a colleague to remove all reference to Rantzen from the site because he had been advised that concrete evidence would emerge that might damage the charity. “My primary concern is that our charity be able to support survivors, as 2,000 have come to us in the last fortnight,” Saunders said.

“No concrete evidence has emerged pertaining to any of our patrons or trustees so I hope we are now all allowed to get on with our work.”

He also used the opportunity to issue a plea for funding: “If you know of anyone who might be interested in giving us some funding we would be eternally grateful because our lottery funding runs out in February and they are not supporting us again. They don’t consider we have demonstrated there is a need for our service. Would be interested to know what the millions of survivors across our nation think about that?”

Napac’s homepage makes repeated reference to the fact that demand for its services has soared since the Savile claims emerged, and that it does not have the resources to help everybody. In one section it states: “Napac provides the only national freephone support line for adults who have suffered any type of abuse in childhood. Because of the large volume of calls we are sorry that many people are unable to get through. Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to call you back which also means that any answerphone messages cannot be answered.”