Like all British people of my generation, Rolf Harris was everywhere when I was growing up. Rolf's Cartoon Club, public information films about swimming, singing Jake The Peg (with his extra leg) and Two Little Boys, playing wobble boards, Stylophones, and didgeridoos. I saw him perform at Basingstoke carnival in the mid-eighties. It was an event for children but he made a joke about a Tasmanian killing his wife in a bath of acid.
As I became an adult he was still around. Painting the Queen's portrait, presenting Animal Hospital, and enjoying some kind of ironic revival that got him booked at Glastonbury. My dad appeared in a photo with him in a local paper when Harris turned up to open a branch of Staples in Reading. Later on, I'd top that by meeting Harris at WoMaD and posing for a selfie with him. That was AFTER a friend of mine who'd attended Keele University had told me what, in retrospect, was quite a disturbing story about him.
Harris was at the peak of his ironic revival (it was the time that student union bars were changing their names from Nelson Mandela to Keith Chegwin or the like) and had been booked to play an SU event. He'd been asked if there was anything he needed. Meaning tea, coffee, beer, or sandwiches. Harris requested the girl with the biggest tits be brought back stage for him. A girl (breast size unrecorded) was procured for Harris and it is believed he had sex with her.
She would have been of legal age and also been willing so that wasn't a crime. But it was, in the words of Phillip Schofield, "unwise but not illegal". I can see now that it was a complete abuse of his power and fame but as it turned out it was far from the worst thing Rolf Harris ever did. Rolf Harris:Hiding In Plain Sight (ITVX) looks at the scandals that came out and the man behind the scandals but, crucially, it also gives voice to some of Harris's victims. The fact it aired during the week of his death last month was an irony - but not a cruel one.
The show begins with Harris appearing on Jim'll Fix It (shudder, just missing Gary Glitter to complete the ultimate triumvirate) where a young girl is left in his "capable hands" as he hums away to himself while doing one of his paintings. Harris is described as creative, talented, kind, and safe. A man who touched millions of hearts. But it wasn't just hearts he was touching.
He first became a star in the late sixties and soon became one of the most famous people in the country, with due respect to Clive James and Germaine Greer, certainly the most famous Australian in the UK. There he is singing Music To Watch Girls By with a dance troupe, doing Jake The Peg, competing in Star Games. Everybody's "favourite uncle". A respectable man. A loving husband to Alwen and a devoted father to Bindi.
Karen Gardner was sixteen, appearing on Star Games, when she became one of Harris's victims. Older than a lot of his victims but still much younger than Harris who at forty-eight was ten years older than her dad. Gardner described Harris as being lovely for the first couple of hours they were together. Before he described her as "irresistible" and assaulted her three times in thirty-five minutes.
In plain sight of others. Gardner eventually told him to "fuck off". Others felt less able to do so. Soon we see Harris making a video called Kids Can Say No complete with a jaunty little ditty with the same title. He even flies off to Australia to take part in an international conference on prevention of child abuse.
The year was 1985 and make up artist Suzi Dent, 23, talks about being molested by Harris multiple times while he was attending that conference. Again in plain sight. Not one man in the room stood up for Dent. Harris had been given a green light to do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted.
Mark Lawson, one of the talking heads on the show along with Chris "Bear" Brosnan who was in Harris's band and once lived in his large Thames side house, talks about how there were huge numbers of rumours about Savile but virtually nothing about "cuddly and safe" Harris.
In 1994, Animal Hospital, which ran for over a decade and attracted over eleven million viewers, helped Harris become an even more trusted and loved figure. He came across as compassionate as he held old ladies hands as Tiddles was put down or Rover had a thorn pulled out of his paw.
Then came the ironic phase of his career. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction on a wobble board, Glastonbury, and THAT Keele incident. At home he'd kiss other women (regardless of whether or not they wanted to be kissed) in full view of Alwen and he'd make jokes to band mates like Bear about "fucking" fourteen year old school girls.
He was more brazen than ever but he really crossed the line when he started acting inappropriately towards Bindi's best friend, a thirteen year old girl referred to during this programme as Victim A. With her full permission her story is told by her psychotherapist Chip Somers.
The abuse she suffered, for FIFTEEN years, at the hands of Harris led her to have serious issues with alcohol. Harris went from touching her knee to touching her thigh to "a very overt sexual insertion into her vagina of a finger". He didn't stop there but we'd heard enough. It's worth repeating that this continued, in both her home and in the Harris family home, for FIFTEEN years.
Harris told Victim A it was their "little secret". The trauma thrived in the darkness and Harris made sure the lights never came on. In 2005, Harris again visited Australia and appeared on a television show called Enough Rope. On it he opened up about his father's death, about not telling his mother he loved her until it was almost too late, and he broke down in tears as he spoke about how he'd been an absent husband and an absent father.
What would have been taken at the time as admirable and courageous honesty and regret now looks like Harris trying to control the narrative. The fact that straight after the show he groped the producer Alison Jacoby suggests he wasn't feeling quite as remorseful as he had pretended to be in front of the cameras.
Back in the UK, he was given a CBE, a BAFTA fellowship (applauded by a room full of celebs), and he painted the Queen's portrait. National treasure status was assured - if it hadn't been already. His victims had to watch him constantly on television being treated almost as if he was a living saint. He was "lauded and loved". It was too much for some. One victim talks of turning off their television as soon as he appeared on it.
As an aside at one point he's interviewed by the loathsome hacker of dead children's phones Piers Morgan. Morgan says to Harris:- "you were once voted the world's most famous painter. Beating Rembrandt and Constable". I don't know how to break this to you Morgan you thick cunt but Rembrandt died in the 17th century and Constable in the 19th century. At least do some basic research.
The second of the two episodes focuses, quite rightly, on the victims and their stories as well as Harris's crimes coming to light. When Jimmy Savile died in 2011 he was lauded and his funeral was virtually a state event. In the summer of 2012, Harris played the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace. It was his last big gig.
Later that year the Savile allegations, that had existed for decades, got very very real. Operation Yewtree was launched and it soon became apparent that Savile was not the only paedophile/sexual abuser who'd been using their public profile to hide behind. Stuart Hall (famous for It's A Knockout), Max Clifford (famous for being a complete wanker), and the already convicted Gary Glitter were the big names that came out first. They were all arrested. In the case of Glitter, re-arrested.
Detectives working on Yewtree interviewed Harris, by this point eighty-two years old, but at first his name was not made public. He spent a huge amount of money on lawyers so that his name was not revealed and, at first, it worked. Detectives who worked the case describe Harris, at first, as being monosyllabic and "massively arrogant" but, quite bizarrely in the circumstances, singing a full rendition of Sun Arise to them in the interview room.
They talked to him about his music and about his career and that got him to open up. Victim A's story would be key to the case and Harris said he'd had a consensual sexual relationship with her but that it didn't start until she was eighteen. He claimed the relationship had ended badly and that now she was being malicious. That, people, is what we call victim blaming.
Many others came forward to report being abused by Harris over the years but Harris turned his trial into a performance. He boasted, played the wobble board in court (wtf?), denied all allegations, and presented himself as a wholesome family man. Supporters of Harris actually attended the hearings and all but cheered him on while his victims received abuse, often of a sexual nature, on social media.
But the jury, eventually, reached a verdict. Two of the jurors were in tears as the verdict was read out. Harris had been found guilty on all twelve charges of sexual assault and he was sent to prison. They weren't the last allegations or charges brought against him (though due to being unable to make a majority verdict he was not found guilty of later allegations).
In 2017, after three years in prison, he was released. Allegations continued to dog him throughout the last six years of his life but none of them stuck. Harris's career, though, was over and his reputation was damaged beyond repair. If Rolf Harris had died fifteen years ago there would have been an outpouring of grief and television programmes celebrating his legacy. When he died in 2023 there was nothing.
Jimmy Savile used to joke "my case comes up next Thursday". Harris had a catchphrase too. Not one of his most famous ones but he'd often turn to camera and say "I never touched her, your honour". But we now know beyond doubt that he did touch her. He touched many hers. Can you tell what he is yet?
No comments:
Post a Comment