Anger as Rolf ’s girl claims: My sweet dad’s a victim of witch hunt
ROLF Harris’s daughter has demanded that her ‘sweet, honest’ father be released from prison – sparking fury from his victims yesterday.
Bindi Nicholls has dismissed her father’s imprisonment for child abuse as a ‘witch hunt’.
Along with warped fans of the 85-year-old, Mrs Nicholls claims he was convicted with ‘no evidence’. They have called for the case to be reviewed as a miscarriage of justice.
But victims said Mrs Nicholls, an only child, needed to accept that the entertainer was a ‘serial sex abuser’ and move on with her life.
Harris was jailed for five years last July for molesting four girls as young as seven between 1968 and 1986. One victim, a childhood friend of his daughter, was groomed from the age of 13 and abused by Harris as ‘his little toy’.
Last week it emerged that prosecutors have now been handed a raft of fresh allegations against him.
Mrs Nicholls was a witness for her father at his trial, but had not spoken since. Now she has backed a petition for a case review, saying: ‘Rolf Harris is my father. I have known him all my life.
‘He is a kind, sweet, honest man on stage and off. He has worked tirelessly all his life to bring joy, laughter, inspiration and happiness to all he meets. He lives to enter- tain. I have never witnessed him being interested in children in that way, EVER. In public he is more interested in getting groups of people singing or telling jokes than skulking off with one person.
‘He is just nothing like the man the press have been portraying him to be. All of his dear friends are shocked and desperately upset that he has been tarred by the propaganda out there. He has been swept up in a witch hunt because of his high profile and celebrity! A total travesty at his age.’
Mrs Nicholls, an artist who lives in North London, backed the petition on change.org, which was set up by a female fan who said she had ‘deep concerns’ over the verdict.
Liz Dux, an abuse lawyer for Slater & Gordon, which represented Harris’s victims, said: ‘The Harris victims will be deeply angered by this. They all found giving evidence at court last year very harrowing and they want to move on.
‘It must be very hard to accept that your father has been proved to be a serial sex abuser and a highly controlling manipulative individual, but he was convicted on every allegation after a long contested trial.
‘If any of the convictions had been unsafe he would have been given leave to appeal, but he was not. The evidence was overwhelming. It’s time his daughter accepted the findings and moved on with her life – just as the victims are attempting to do.’
Mrs Nicholls, 51, had spoken of her lonely childhood, with her father often away. Images of her and mother Alwen, 83, gripping Harris’s hand on their way to court became a daily choreographed show of unity.
In court, she vowed Harris ‘would never’ have abused her friend, but broke down in tears speaking of finding out about the ‘affair’, saying she had told Harris: ‘How could you? It’s my best friend.’ She insisted her friend had been 18, not 13.
Harris abused the girl as his daughter slept in the next bed. The victim told the court she ‘felt dead’ from the repeated abuse, saying in a victim-impact statement: ‘He made me feel like a sexual object, he used and abused me to such a degree that it made me feel worthless.’ She said he had made her feel ‘dirty, grubby and disgusting’.
As well as the petition, there is also a website and a Facebook page, which Mrs Nicholls praised as ‘ presenting some of the anomalies of the case’.
Harris’s niece, Jennifer Harris, said: ‘Bindi is very frustrated and has been encouraging people to sign her petition.’
‘It’s time she moved on’