Get insight “Rolf Harris dead” Rolf Harris’s fall from fame to infamy came after he was jailed for $exual assaults on young girls, including a childhood friend of his daughter and an autograph hunter.
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 at the age of 93.
Harris died of neck cancer and “frailty of old age” at his home in Bray, Berkshire, on 10 May, according to his death certificate.
In a statement, his family said he “recently died peacefully surrounded by family and friends and has now been laid to rest”.
Rolf Harris dead: Disgraced star dies aged 93 after battle with neck cancer
Rolf Harris has died aged 93. The disgraced TV star died at his home, it’s understood.
As of October last year, the former singer and artist was receiving round-the-clock care for neck cancer. He could reportedly no longer talk due to his condition and had to be fed through a tube.
The disgraced entertainer and convicted sex offender’s death was confirmed by a registrar at Maidenhead Town Hall to the PA news agency.
Australian-born Harris was a family favourite in the UK for decades before he was convicted of 12 indecent assaults at London’s Southwark Crown Court in June 2014. His victims included an eight-year-old autograph hunter, two girls in their early teens and his daughter’s friend over 16 years.
Following his conviction, Harris, was stripped of his CBE – which he received after painting the Queen’s 80th birthday portrait. Harris was jailed for five years and nine months and released from Stafford prison on licence in May 2017.
Rolf Harris: Convicted paedophile who used his fame to groom young girls
He was formally cleared of four unconnected historical $ex offences, which he had denied. Later the same year, one of the 12 indecent assault convictions was overturned by the Court of Appeal.
A statement from the family of Rolf Harris released by their solicitors said: “This is to confirm that Rolf Harris recently died peacefully surrounded by family and friends and has now been laid to rest.
“They ask that you respect their privacy. No further comment will be made.”
Harris began his career in the 1950s, releasing his top 10 hit Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport and a recording of Two Little Boys. He’d appeared on some of the biggest shows on TV, fronting BBC programmes including Animal Hospital and Rolf’s Cartoon Club. As a result the entertainer, who was born to Welsh parents in Australia, soon became a national treasure, loved and trusted by millions.
But all that came to an abrupt end in 2014, when his vile crimes were brought to light. The former star was arrested on historical $exual abuse allegations.
Following an eight-week trial at Southwark Crown Court, he was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison in June 2014. He was convicted of 12 indecent assaults on four teenage girls between 1968 and 1986, although one of those was later overturned.
He served nearly three years at HMP Stafford before being released on licence in May 2017. While still in prison in 2016, he was charged in relation to seven unconnected historic allegations of indecent assault but was cleared on three counts and the jury was discharged before reaching a verdict on the remaining four.
He was later retried for three offences and one new charge but was acquitted after the jury could not reach a verdict. At the time, he said in a statement: “I feel no sense of victory, only relief.”
Harris, who lived in a £5 million mansion in Berkshire, shared his home with wife Alwen Hughes, 91, to whom he was married for 65 years. The couple share a daughter, Bindi, now 58.
ITV has recently released a new documentary telling the story of Harris’ rise and fall through interviews with his victims, the police who investigated him and colleagues who worked alongside him. Made by TV production company Optomen, Hiding In Plain Sight will document his “public persona of a non-threatening eccentric who was devoted to his wife while revealing that actually, within the industry, Harris was increasingly known as a creep”.
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Operation Yewtree arrest
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.
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.”
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.”
Harris Wife stood by him in his final years
In 2015, Harris was stripped of his CBE and of honors 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.
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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