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.
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Thousands of trans rights activists gather in London after Supreme Court ruling on definition of a woman
Thousands of trans rights activists have been demonstrating in central London days after the Supreme Court ruled the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.
Trans rights groups, trade unions and community organisations came together for what was billed as an “emergency demonstration” in Parliament Square in Westminster.
Activists demanded “trans liberation” and “trans rights now”, with some waving flags and holding banners.
Campaigners in Westminster. Pic: PA
Graffiti was seen on the statues of suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett and South African statesman Jan Christian Smuts in Parliament Square.
The Metropolitan Police said it had launched an investigation after several statues were vandalised and it was investigating the incidents as criminal damage.
Chief Superintendent Stuart Bell said it was “very disappointing to see damage to seven statues and property in the vicinity of the protest”, adding: “We support the public’s right to protest but criminality like this is completely unacceptable.
“We are now investigating this criminal damage and urge anyone with any information to come forward.”
Meanwhile, a rally and march organised by Resisting Transphobia has been taking place in Edinburgh on Saturday afternoon.
Graffiti was daubed on the statue by trans activists. Pic: PA
Graffiti on the statue of South African statesman Jan Christian Smuts in Parliament Square. Pic: PA
In a long-awaited judgment delivered on Wednesday, the UK’s highest court ruled the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”.
It essentially means trans women who hold gender recognition certificates are not women in the eyes of the law.
This means transgender women with one of the certificates can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”.
Demonstrators in Westminster
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, chair of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said on Thursday that the ruling means trans women can no longer take part in women’s sport, while single-sex places, such as changing rooms, “must be based on biological sex”.
The UK government said the unanimous decision by five judges brought “clarity and confidence” for women and service providers.
A Labour Party source said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had brought the party to a “common sense position” on the subject from an “activist” stance.
Among the groups supporting the London protest were Trans Kids Deserve Better, Pride In Labour, Front For The Liberation Of Intersex Non-binary And Transgender people (Flint) and TransActual.
Pic: PA
Keyne Walker, strategy director at TransActual, told Sky News the government needed to put equality laws back on a “sound footing”.
Speaking from Parliament Square, they said: “The mood is jubilant and also angry and also people are anxious… Right now trans people are coming together to demonstrate to the country, and to everybody else, that we’re not going anywhere because we don’t have anywhere to go…
“Queer people have been through worse than this before, and… we’ll suffer through whatever is to come in the next few years.”
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How Supreme Court decision has immediate real-world consequences
The activist continued: “The government needs to immediately clarify how they are going to protect trans people and what this ruling actually means for spaces.
“It does not bring clarity… businesses and venues at the moment don’t know what they can and can’t do… the government needs to step in and put equalities law back on a sound footing.”
Protesters in Westminster in support of the transgender community. Pic: Daniel Bregman
It comes as Bridgerton actress Nicola Coughlan announced she has helped raise more than £100,000 for a trans rights charity following the Supreme Court decision.
Following the ruling, the Irish star said she was “completely horrified” and “disgusted” by the ruling and added she would match donations up to £10,000 to transgender charity Not A Phase.
The fundraiser has since raised £103,018, with a revised target of £110,000.
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Gender ruling – How it happened
Why was the case heard in court?
The Supreme Court ruling followed a long-running legal challenge which centred around how sex-based rights are applied through the UK-wide Equality Act 2010.
The appeal case was brought against the Scottish government by campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) following unsuccessful challenges at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
FWS called on the court to find sex an “immutable biological state”, arguing sex-based protections should only apply to people born female.
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Campaigners react to gender ruling
The Scottish government argued the protections should also include transgender people with a gender recognition certificate (GRC).
The Supreme Court judges were asked to rule on what the Equality Act 2010 means by “sex” – whether biological sex or “certificated” sex as legally defined by the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
Delivering the ruling at the London court on Wednesday, Lord Hodge said: “We counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not.
“The Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender.”
A teacher who was upskirted by a pupil says women are being “specifically targeted” by misogynistic attitudes being expressed in classrooms.
Sally Rees, now the president of teachers’ union NASUWT in Northern Ireland, was visited by police officers in 2016 and told they had found a USB stick containing images filmed up her skirt by a pupil.
“You just feel so violated,” she told North of England correspondent Shingi Mararike.
“As a teacher, you give so much of yourself in the classroom, you want the best for your pupils and then to know that somebody has done that to you, it just completely shatters your sense of trust.”
Ms Rees was filmed multiple times over 14 months and after a “long drawn-out legal process”, the pupil was found guilty of five counts of outraging public decency.
Ms Rees spoke to Sky News as a new survey by NASWUT suggested nearly three in five (59%) teachers believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils’ behaviour.
At the union’s annual conference this weekend, members will debate calls on the union’s executive to work with teachers “to assess the risk that far-right and populist movements pose to young people”.
“We’ve seen the impact that Andrew Tate and other figures are having on… young boys’ reactions in the classroom,” Ms Rees said.
“One of the things we have to remember is that the majority of our workforce is female and so they are being very specifically targeted by these attitudes, specifically things around; ‘You can’t tell me what to do’, that a man has a right to dominate a woman and has a right to a woman’s body.”
Andrew Tate.
File pic: AP
The drama teacher said schools were now expected to deal with behaviour like this without enough support.
“We need to bring parents and carers into this because it starts in the home and then trickles into our schools,” she added.
“We end up with a blame culture that education is at fault, teachers aren’t dealing with it and yet teachers are the ones that actually end up being the victims of this type of behaviour.”
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When asked about the NASWUT survey, a spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE) said: “Education can be the antidote to hate, and the classroom should be a safe environment for sensitive topics to be discussed and where critical thinking is encouraged.
“That’s why we provide a range of resources to support teachers to navigate these challenging issues, and why our curriculum review will look at the skills children need to thrive in a fast-changing online world.”
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