Rolf back in dock 3 days after getting out of prison
Accuser tells of quest for ‘justice’
ROLF Harris was in court yesterday – three days after leaving jail – to hear a woman he allegedly molested tell how she was seeking “vindication and justice”.
Harris, 87, is accused of groping the then 13-year-old schoolgirl after appearing on Saturday Superstore in 1983.
He allegedly asked her, “Do you like to be molested on a Saturday morning?”
It was the first time in the trial that the jury at Southwark Crown Court had seen Harris in person.
His niece Jenny looked on as the entertainer, who previously appeared via video link from jail, sat in the dock.
The complainant – who gave evidence via video link – was quizzed on her motives for coming forward 30 years after the alleged incident.
Asked by prosecutor Jonathan Rees if she had made a claim for compensation, she said: “No, I haven’t, and I don’t intend to. This has never been about compensation, it’s been about vindication and justice.”
She said coming forward was “the hardest thing I have ever had to do”.
The alleged victim’s husband told the court that compensation had never been a goal for his wife.
He said he first became aware of what his wife was claiming when she shouted “pervert” at the television in her flat when Harris appeared on it, at some point before 2000. He was then “shocked” as she went on to tell him she had been touched by the entertainer on Saturday Superstore.
Mr Rees asked whether he and his wife “cooked this up between you, saw an opportunity, saw pound signs in your eyes”.
He replied: “No, she said from the start she did not want compensation.”
Defence counsel Stephen Vullo QC admitted Harris may have said something “along the lines of, ‘Do you like to be molested on a Saturday morning?’” but said it had been in a “jokey fashion”.
The woman said she failed to see how it could “be misconstrued as a joke in any way”. Harris denies four charges of indecent assault against three women between 1971 and 1983.
The trial continues.