Harris fails to overturn sex charges
SHAMED entertainer Rolf Harris was cleared of groping an eight-yearold girl yesterday... but failed in his bid to overturn 11 other convictions.
The 87-year-old’s conviction for molesting the child at a community centre in 1969 was quashed by the Court of Appeal.
Three judges ruled the conviction was “unsafe”.
The evidence of a key prosecution witness was dismissed as “fantasy”.
A former soldier claimed he remembered children queueing for Harris’s autograph at the centre in 1969.
Leave
The ex-serviceman said he was home on leave after a tour of duty in Korea. But the Korean war had ended 15 years before the alleged incident.
In a judgment released yesterday, Lord Justice Treacy said: “The information now available about his military service and employment history tends to suggest that his account of recent service in Korea was a fantasy.
“In our judgment, this was a significant failing.”
Harris, of Bray, Berks, was found guilty of 11 sex attacks on three teenage girls in the 1970s and 1980s.
The former entertainer was jailed for five years and nine months in 2014.
He was freed earlier this year after serving half his sentence.