Rolf Harris: Convicted paedophile who used his fame to groom young girls dies aged 93
Disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris, who became one of the UK’s biggest TV stars but was later jailed for using his fame to groom and assault young women, has died after a long illness, aged 93.
Harris was jailed for sexual assaults on young girls, one a childhood friend of his daughter, another an autograph hunter.
He denied all the accusations but was convicted after a high-profile trial of a dozen historical indecent assaults against four girls and four charges of producing indecent child images. It wrecked his career and ruined his reputation.
Sentencing him in 2014 to five years and nine months in prison, the judge said Harris had taken advantage of his celebrity status and shown no remorse.
Harris arrived in Britain aged 22 from his native Australia in 1953 and became a national treasure who had several of his own TV series, and appeared as a guest on many others from the 1960s onwards.
He had a string of hits with songs such as Jake the Peg, Two Little Boys, and Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. He also appeared several times at Glastonbury Festival.
He was awarded many honours, including an MBE, OBE and CBE, a BAFTA fellowship and honorary university doctorates, all of which were revoked after his conviction.
Queen Elizabeth II sat for him for an 80th birthday portrait which was hung in Buckingham Palace.
Harris performs with his wobbleboard at Glastonbury Festival in 2010
‘He had a darker side to him’
Leading publicist Mark Borkowski said: “When the accusations sank in you began to feel cheated, that all those emotions you’ve had for an icon were false.
“He had a darker side to him that overshadowed all the fun and games he had broadcast for decades.
“People will remember him as an entertainer, unique, [who] lived in the heart of the nation and was good at reinventing himself – but he will be remembered for his crimes.”
Harris, married with a daughter, was among a dozen celebrities arrested during Operation Yewtree, one of a series of police investigations into historical sex abuse allegations against high-profile figures – including BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, a prolific sex offender exposed only after his death.
At the start of his trial, the prosecutor described Harris as “a Jekyll and Hyde” character with a hidden dark side to his personality.
Harris pictured in custody. Pic: Met Police
A childhood friend of his daughter Bindi was his main victim, telling the jury he had groomed and indecently assaulted her repeatedly between the ages of 13 and 19, once when his daughter was asleep in the same room.
She called the police about Harris after the wide publicity surrounding Savile’s exposure, though there was no connection between the two men’s crimes.
Harris said he’d had a relationship with the woman but claimed it began after she turned 18. He later wrote to her father insisting nothing illegal had happened.
‘Parents believed their children were safe’
Mike Hames, former head of the Metropolitan Police’s paedophile squad, said: “Children loved him and parents were willing to leave their children with him because they believed they were safe.
“That’s the perfect way to operate from the point of view of a child abuser because they are able to get the child by themselves and because the child is in awe and most unlikely to say anything.”
Rolf Harris recording an album in 1997
Australian Tonya Lee, who waived her right to anonymity, said Harris abused her three times on one day when she was 15 and on a theatre group trip to the UK.
She later said she contemplated taking her own life because of the abuse.
Other victims told the court that he touched or groped them, sometimes at public events or charity performances.
Jurors were also told of indecent assaults on women in Australia, New Zealand, and Malta – although Harris wasn’t charged with overseas crimes.
Peter Watt, of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), said the charity had helped police build the case against Harris after 28 calls to its helpline, including 13 women who said he had abused them.
Mr Watt said after Harris’s conviction: “His reckless and brazen sexual offending, sometimes in public places, bizarrely within sight of people he knew, speaks volumes about just how untouchable he thought he was.”
Wife stood by him in final years
In 2015, Harris was stripped of his CBE and of honours in his native Australia.
In 2017, while he was still in jail, he was put on trial a second time, over four allegations of indecent assault on three teenage girls. He denied the charges and was found not guilty after the jury failed to agree verdicts.
The Queen meets Harris and Kylie Minogue backstage at the Diamond Jubilee Concert in 2012
In a statement read out by his lawyer, Harris said: “I feel no sense of victory, only relief. I’m 87 years old, my wife is in ill health and we simply want to spend our remaining time together in peace.”
Harris was freed from jail halfway through his second trial after serving three years. One of his convictions was overturned on appeal.
He spent the rest of his days living reclusively with his sculptor wife Alwen, who had stood by him, at the couple’s Thames riverside home in Berkshire.
Entertainment
‘I felt really scared and I felt alone’ – Wicked star Jonathan Bailey on growing up gay in school
“I felt scared and I felt alone and I felt entirely limited at various points in my life”, actor Jonathan Bailey says of growing up gay in school.
While promoting Wicked: For Good, the actor donated one of his interview slots to talk about the charity he is a patron of: Just Like Us, which works with LGBT+ youth in schools.
“That’s something that I would have really benefited from when I was young,” he said, talking exclusively to Sky News about his charitable work.
In surveys of thousands of UK pupils, Just Like Us found that LGBT participants aged 11 to 18 were twice as likely to suffer anxiety, depression and to be bullied, and that only half felt safe at school on a daily basis.
“I experienced all of that,” he said. “It became clear quite early on that something that was very specific and clear to me about who I was, it wasn’t safe and it wasn’t celebrated.”
Whether as Lord Anthony in Bridgerton, being crowned sexiest man alive and as the Winkie Prince Fiyero in Wicked: For Good, Bailey has broken through an outdated stereotype.
Historically, it was considered a career risk to be out – a heterosexual romantic lead’s career was at risk if his sexuality was public.
For the Winkie prince actor, education can play a role in defying limitations.
While promoting Wicked: For Good, Bailey talked about a charity that works with LGBT+ youth in schools.. File pic: Just Like Us
“This is beyond sexuality,” he said, “it’s race, it’s class, it is where you’re from, we are all given limiting narratives that we have to break free of.
“I thought not only was I not going to be able to play these sorts of parts because of my sexuality, but that I wouldn’t be able to do Shakespeare because I didn’t go to drama school.
“They’re the sort of stories that we need to be reminded of is that actually standing up and being safe enough to be able to say who you really are, and to be vulnerable at that age… these formative years, is inspiring to everyone in the classroom.”
But classrooms in the UK are facing tightening budgets due to “spiralling costs” that threaten to outstrip the growth in school funding.
Citing budget and time pressures on teachers, Just Like Us has made its talks free in schools. Does the actor think the government should be doing more?
He said: “I’m a very proud brother of an incredible teacher who works in the state system, and I know how much she cares about her school, her pupils.
“The resources are being crunched, and the problem is that it will be the arts and it will be really important conversations that Just Like Us bring into the schools and these… things that are going to go, and that’s just really sad.
“But I’m not the person to come up with solutions other than I can do my bit.”
Bailey, Cynthia Erivo and Bowen Yang are among Wicked’s LGBT cast, and in Wicked: For Good, openly gay actor Colman Domingo joins them as the voice of the Cowardly Lion.
But not everyone is encouraging the onscreen representation: A “warning” by conservative group One Million Moms said that the Jon M Chu-directed films are “normalising the LGBTQ lifestyle” to children and takes aim at the cast.
The alert urges people to boycott the sequel “even if you have seen Wicked: Part One”.
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When asked about the pushback, Bailey is resolute: “I don’t even acknowledge… the thing that’s important to me is how do I chat to little Johnny in all this.
“I’m thrilled to be living in a time where I can play the Winkie Prince and where Just Like Us is doing the extraordinary work that they’re doing.”
Entertainment
Donald Trump confirms he will sue the BBC over Panorama edit – despite broadcaster’s apology
Donald Trump has said he will sue the BBC for between $1bn and $5bn over the editing of his speech on Panorama.
The US president confirmed he would be taking legal action against the broadcaster while on Air Force One overnight on Saturday.
“We’ll sue them. We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion (£792m) and five billion dollars (£3.79bn), probably sometime next week,” he told reporters.
“We have to do it, they’ve even admitted that they cheated. Not that they couldn’t have not done that. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
Mr Trump then told reporters he would discuss the matter with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer over the weekend, and claimed “the people of the UK are very angry about what happened… because it shows the BBC is fake news”.
The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this month that an internal memo raised concerns about the BBC’s editing of a speech made by Mr Trump on 6 January 2021, just before a mob rioted at the US Capitol building, on the news programme.
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BBC crisis: How did it happen?
The concerns regard clips spliced together from sections of the president’s speech to make it appear he told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell” in the documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.
Following a backlash, both BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness resigned from their roles.
‘No basis for defamation claim’
On Thursday, the broadcaster officially apologised to the president and added that it was an “error of judgement” and the programme will “not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms”.
A spokesperson said that “the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited,” but they also added that “we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim”.
Earlier this week, Mr Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn unless it apologised, retracted the clip, and compensated him.
The US president said he would sue the broadcaster for between $1bn and $5bn. File pic: PA
Legal challenges
But legal experts have said that Mr Trump would face challenges taking the case to court in the UK or the US.
The deadline to bring the case to UK courts, where defamation damages rarely exceed £100,000 ($132,000), has already expired because the documentary aired in October 2024, which is more than one year.
Also because the documentary was not shown in the US, it would be hard to show that Americans thought less of the president because of a programme they could not watch.
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Newsnight allegations
The BBC has said it was looking into fresh allegations, published in The Telegraph, that its Newsnight show also selectively edited footage of the same speech in a report broadcast in June 2022.
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC holds itself to the highest editorial standards. This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it.”
Video footage has shown the moment singer and actress Ariana Grande was accosted by a fan at a film premiere.
Ms Grande was in Singapore for the debut of Wicked: For Good when the incident unfolded on Thursday.
The video captured the moment the fan scaled the barricade and pushed past photographers towards Ms Grande.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
He then threw his arms around her, before co-star Cynthia Erivo intervened and security swoops in to stop him.
The man, now identified as Johnson Wen, 26, is reportedly a notorious red carpet crasher.
Wen, who has since been charged with being a public nuisance, goes by the nickname Pyjama Man, and gloated as he shared footage of the intrusion online.
“Dear Ariana Grande, Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You,” he wrote on Instagram.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
In video stories posted to the site beforehand, he was seen at the Universal Studios venue, revealing his intentions.
In one, he said: “I feel like I’m in a dream, that’s my best friend, Ariana Grande, and I’m gonna meet her. I’ve been dreaming about that.”
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The Australian has ambushed several performers on stage, according to reports, including Katy Perry and The Chainsmokers at concerts in Sydney, and The Weeknd in Melbourne.
It has been reported that Wen intends to plead guilty and that he could face a fine of more than £1,000.
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo at the London premiere for Wicked: For Good
Ms Grande took a moment to gather herself in the aftermath of the intrusion, visibly shocked by the incident.
She didn’t address the incident on her own Instagram, but shared some photos with the caption “thank you, Singapore”, adding “we love you”.
The singer battled post-traumatic stress disorder after her 2017 concert in Manchester was bombed, leaving 22 people dead.
She told Vogue in 2018: “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe, tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing.
“I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well. Time is the biggest thing.
“I feel like I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience – like I shouldn’t even say anything. I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”
In the same interview she also addressed her own anxiety, saying she has “always” had it.
Ms Grande plays Galinda Upland in Wicked: For Good, the character who becomes Glinda the Good Witch. Ms Erivo plays Elphaba, the character who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.
The film is released in UK cinemas on 21 November.
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