A YOUNG girl was repeatedly indecently assaulted by Rolf Harris just metres from family members, a London court has heard.
The 84-year-old Australian yesterday sat in Southwark Crown Court impassively as the first of his alleged victims gave a graphic account of her years of her abuse at his hands that she said she submitted to out of fear, shock and shame.
But while it was his big celebrity status that once filled her with awe and prevented her from speaking out it was that same status that forced her to finally go to police in disgust.
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Revealing publicly for the first time why she never reported the alleged abuse that began when she was a 13-year-old schoolgirl, the now 49-year-old woman said seeing him on TV as a guest at the 2012 Queen’s Jubilee celebrity gala celebration was the turning point.
“I can’t get away from this bloody man’ and I burst out crying,” the woman said as she recounted what she thought when in 2012 she walked passed a TV and realised he was still “invading” her home.
“I decided not to have any more of it.”
The woman gave a full day of testimony at court, shielded from the public and media in the gallery by a large hospital-room style screen.
Rolf Harris arrives at court with his wife Alwen Hughes and daughter Bindi (left). Source: AFP
Speaking haltingly, the woman talked about how she was first abused when she was a 13-year-old travelling with the Harris family to Hawaii and Australia.
She said the first time she was abused moments after she stepped out of the shower in that holiday hotel and the “creepy” Harris put his hand through a split in the towel she was wrapped in and penetrated her with two fingers. At that time his wife Alwen Hughes and daughter Bindi, a friend of the victim, were downstairs.
But the second time the pair, Ms Hughes and Bindi, was sunbathing on the beach “just metres” away but looking in the opposite direction when Harris assaulted her again.
She was allegedly indecently assaulted again upstairs at her house in England while her family was below at a dinner party and also while she was sleeping over in Bindi’s bedroom, just metres from her sleeping friend, when Harris entered the room in the morning.
He allegedly pulled back the victim’s duvet, pulled her pants down and after licking his fingers, digitally penetrated her all the while looking over at his sleeping daughter.
“He didn’t feel inhibited, I think he got a thrill out of it,” the alleged victim told the jury.
“Just the look on his face, he looked over at Bindi and carried on.”
At other times during sleepovers the then child would wake to the clicking of a camera and see Harris over the children taking photographs.
She added later: “I felt it was all my fault what took place between me and Rolf because I didn’t stop him. I should have shouted and screamed and I just felt really low and I lost all my self confidence.”
She described how she was grabbed at a friend’s house and even though Harris was busted assaulting her with his hands down the front of her pants by a nine-year-old boy, Harris laughed off the boy’s query was to what he was doing with his hands and said he must have been mistaken.
Entertainer Rolf Harris ... at the Sydney Opera House.Source: News Limited
Didgeridoo & wobble board ... Rolf Harris at the height of his fame. Source: News Limited
The prosecutor had earlier said she believed the woman was conditioned to abuse and even as an adult would just submit to his advances.
The victim described a moment when while driving on the motorway with the girl, ostensibly giving her a ride back to London from the country, he pulled in at a junction carpark, unzipped his trousers and pulled his penis out and pushed her head down to force her to perform a sex act on him.
She said the incident lasted three minutes and there was no words spoken. She said it was always the same with Harris rarely saying a word during the abuse but rather just “moaning and groaning”.
Also as a young adult she was also forced to perform a sex act on him while he was in his dressing room preparing to take to the stage for a pantomime.
The court heard the years of abuse transformed a shy but happy child into a binge drinking alcoholic with the woman only stopping the drinking in 2000.
She confessed to having to drink glasses of gin every time Harris was about as she suffered a panic attack for the sexual encounter she was expecting.
She claimed to have later in adult life confided in Bindi Harris about the years of abuse.
The woman is to be cross-examined by Harris’ lawyers tonight.
The trial continues.
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