ROLF HARRIS AND THORNY QUESTIONS FOR THE POLICE

IT WON’T restore Rolf Harris’s reputation, but last week one of that now unmentionable entertainer’s 11 convictions for indecent assault was quashed.

The Court of Appeal did so after private investigators hired by Harris found the main witness for the prosecution, David James, was a fantasist with convictions for dishonesty ( including a fictitious claim that he was a war hero).

Mr James had come forward to support the claim of Wendy Wild that she had been molested by Harris, after police made countless calls for witnesses: he was all they got. The Appeal Court also heard from Ms Wild’s stepfather, who said the assault could never have happened; and police admitted there was no evidence that Harris had ever visited the community centre in Portsmouth where it was alleged to have taken place.

Or as Lord Justice Treacy put it: ‘If Mr James is removed from the picture [the victim] is left on her own in asserting an encounter with Mr Harris at the community centre in circumstances where there was a body of evidence to the contrary.’

What will happen to the £22,000 that Harris had been obliged to play Wild in damages? By rights, she should repay him, in full: though she had complained this sum was too low to compensate her for what she described as ‘40 years of nightmares’.

Ms Wild — who is unusual in waiving her right to anonymity — forgot to mention the thousands she would additionally have received from the Criminal Injuries Compensation scheme. That is money paid by you and me, through general taxation.

At the time of Harris’s conviction in 2014 — he was 84 then — I wrote that it reminded me of what happened after Soviet show trials of former heroes of the Russian Revolution in the Thirties. Just as the accused then found their images permanently wiped from all official photographs, so Harris’s work has been entirely expunged from public view.

But I added that unlike the Soviet trials, the evidence against the formerly muchloved artist and entertainer had not been ‘fabricated’. It now appears that, at least in one case, it absolutely was.

So what action do the police propose to take against Mr James, whose false evidence led directly to an unjust conviction? And why did they not discover his history of fabrication? Or if they did, why did they not disclose it? Rolf Harris should not be alone in asking such questions.