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Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris performing at Glastonbury in 2010. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters
Rolf Harris performing at Glastonbury in 2010. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters

Rolf Harris trial shattered image of avuncular entertainer

This article is more than 9 years old
Australian TV star's fame had several phases, and it was his professional longevity that led to his downfall

If it is a given that the cuddly, avuncular reputation built up by Rolf Harris over a 60-year entertainment career is in tatters following his conviction for indecent assault, it is also the case that this demolition job was already well under way before the verdict, mainly owing to his own defence case.

The majority of the counts on which Harris was tried related to claims that he began grooming and abusing the childhood best friend of his daughter, Bindi, when the girl was 13. Even if Harris had been acquitted it would have proved the most mixed of courtroom victories, given that his version of events involved confessing to a long sexual relationship with the damaged and vulnerable girl while insisting that the affair began when she was 18.

The Australian-born TV star had no option but to concede the point given that the victim's father kept an abjectly contrite handwritten letter Harris sent him in the 1990s, after she told her family, apologising for the "misery" he had caused the woman.

Under dogged cross-examination from the prosecution QC, Sasha Wass, Harris was apparently at a loss to explain why, as he wrote in the letter, he felt "sickened" by himself over the affair. What he failed to spell out was surely evident to everyone else sitting in the courtroom: even if it is not illegal to have sexual contact with an 18-year-old friend of your daughter, 35 years your junior, who is staying at your home and whom you have known since she was two, for most people it is nonetheless a gross abuse of trust.

Harris tried to characterise the relationship as "loving" as well as mutual, but even his censored version, when picked apart by Wass, appeared stark and mechanical: eight mainly fumbling sexual incidents in 11 years, with barely a conversation otherwise, let alone expressions of interest by the older man in the woman's eventually chaotic and alcohol-fuelled life.

Some of the courtroom exchanges were withering for Harris. "Your relationship had been sexual for 10 years and the only conversation you can remember is about cleaning your sperm off the sheets?" Wass asked him. Harris agreed, somewhat reluctantly summarising the relationship as "sex with no frills, now and again".

The truth, of course, was more damning: he groomed and groped a child, his daughter's friend, gaining a sexual hold over her that lasted till she finally broke away in her late 20s, while also assaulting a series of other young women and children.

What the jury was not told was that during the time of his relationship with Bindi's friend, Harris hosted an educational video highlighting child abuse issues. Kids Can Say No, filmed in 1985, has the entertainer talking to a group of primary school-aged children about what he calls "yes feelings" and "no feelings", with one role play portraying a young girl being improperly touched by the father of her friend.

"Some people don't act right with kids, and they need help," Harris tells the children. "You can't protect them from trouble that they themselves have caused, and it's better to say something so that you and the family can get the help you need."

The case brings to a close a showbusiness career that began when the then 22-year-old Harris, a budding artist and former national junior backstroke champion from the sleepy Perth suburb of Bassendean, arrived in London in 1952 to study painting and was diverted into cabaret and then children's TV.

Next came novelty music hits such as Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport and association with the pop stars of the early 1960s, among them the Beatles. In his thorough if sometimes soporific 2001 memoir, Can You Tell What it is Yet?, Harris portrays himself as an enthusiastic flirt but a sexual innocent. He recalls being surrounded by willing young women on packaged pop tours during the early 1960s but, in his 30s and married, feeling left out. "A part of me wanted the courage to get involved, but I was petrified," he wrote.

Harris's fame went through several phases, and after each of them he could easily have faded into obscurity but for his restless energy and willingness to innovate and change. The novelty pop star became the face of Saturday night prime-time TV, then a presenter of children cartoons, and then the host of animal programmes and a reborn musician with his wobble board-accompanied version of Stairway to Heaven. Finally came the respected artist, painting a portrait of the Queen and taking centre stage at her diamond jubilee concert.

One curiosity of the case is that it is precisely this professional longevity that led to his downfall: the catalyst for Bindi's friend to become the first complainant to police was seeing Harris's jubilee performance on television.

"It was like he'd invaded my home every time I switched the telly on," she told the court, shielded from Harris by a curtain around the witness box. "You flick over and there's his mug. That's when I decided I wasn't going to have any more of it."

Harris's long career was built on incessant travel and a backbreaking schedule of live performances, something he confesses in the memoir took a significant toll on Alwen, a sculptor whom he married in 1958 after proposing on their second date, and Bindi.

In the book, Harris nonetheless gives a positive overall assessment to his life and career, one that reads all too jarringly now: "If I do have a high purpose, I think it's to bring a little happiness and make people smile. I might not change the world, but hopefully just a tiny piece of it."

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