Susie Elelman reveals Rolf Harris preyed on her, too
The TV host reveals how the ‘dirty old man’ groped her, and hounded the work experience girl
As a young presenter at regional TV station WIN in the ’80s, Susie Elelman was excited they’d managed to book Rolf Harris to appear on the show. “He was a big-name guest, so naturally it was so exciting,” she tells Woman’s Day. However that excitement soon turned to horror when the Aussie icon, then in his 50s, is said to have preyed on both Susie and a teenaged co-worker. “Alongside my on-camera role, I was also guest liaison, so I’d
greet the guests and look after them,” explains Susie.
“Right from the beginning he was very, very touchy-feely. I also noticed he was besotted with the work-experience girl we had at the time.
“She was about 14 or 15 years old. He was constantly asking her to do things for him – and at one point he asked her to take him to the bathroom,” says Susie, 63.
After a couple of incidences, the girl thankfully approached Susie and the head of makeup to explain she felt uncomfortable.
“He kept saying things to her like, ‘ You’re so lovely,’ and would touch her arm and then brush over her breasts,” Susie reveals.
“So we rallied together and I got the staging guy to take him to the bathroom and got her doing other jobs away from him after that. We thought, ‘He’s a dirty old man so let’s keep our distance,’” she recalls.
Susie was still in charge of looking after Harris for the rest of his time at the station, but when she escorted him out at the end of the taping, he leapt at the opportunity to fondle her.
“When he gave me a hug goodbye, he put his arms around me and then slid his hand down my back to try and insert it down
below,” she says. “Someone doing that automatically makes you push your hips into their crotch to get away. He got me in a position where no one could see what he was doing to me. He was very experienced in that, for sure.”
After the event Susie reported his behaviour to management, however no action was taken.
“They were most concerned,” Susie remembers, “but nobody thought, myself included, that it was worth reporting or going to the police about because it was those sort of times.
“Back then they were just the sort of things you copped as a woman in the business.”
Susie is coming forward now and talking about what happened because she believes it shows Harris had been getting away with this type of thing for years.
“I didn’t really talk about it after the event – it’s not a badge of honour, so I didn’t go around telling people – but when it first came out in the media after he was arrested, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, so that wasn’t a one-off.’”
Susie believes there are more victims out there. “I think a lot of women haven’t come forward because they don’t want to go through the whole process. They know their name is going to be besmirched, not to mention what [Harris’s] lawyers are going to do to them in court.
“By me coming out and saying that this happened to me – as minor as it is in comparison to everybody else – it’s another voice saying, ‘That creep did do those things,’ and it shows his pattern of behaviour.”
Susie says she’s also keen for people to understand the difference between the public and personal persona of the formerly beloved star.
“I want Australians to know that the Rolf Harris they saw on television is not the man – that’s the performer. The man behind that performer used his fame to satisfy himself at the expense of his victims.
“He preyed on people because he had the ability to do so, and he used that intimacy to get close to people for his own sexual gratification. He’s a sick man – sick in the head.”
Susie is looking at this current trial with the hope that he’ll finally be held to account for the lives he’s ruined.
“I know he’s a man in his 80s, but it doesn’t matter how old you are to be brought to justice.
“I hope he’s found guilty again and I hope he rots in jail. He doesn’t deserve to live out the rest of his life in opulence.”
‘He put his arms around me and slid his hand down my back’