Harris groped me like an octopus, says blind woman
ROLF Harris was likened to an ‘octopus’ for groping a blind woman who he also ‘slobbered’ over while kissing her neck, a court heard yesterday.
The 86-year-old also touched his alleged victim’s bottom and breasts while visiting her eye hospital, jurors heard.
He had been asked to meet patients and sign autographs at the hospital 40 years ago.
On entering a small room where the 27-year-old woman was sitting, he is said to have asked her: ‘Has anyone told you what a good-looking woman you are?’
Southwark Crown Court has already been told about Harris’s five year, nine month jail sentence in 2014 for sexually assaulting four women between 1968 and 1986. He is now accused of assaulting the blind and disabled woman after being asked to visit Moorfields Eye Hospital in London in September 1977.
The complainant – who also suffered from cerebral palsy and walked with the aid of sticks – said Harris preyed on her like a ‘hawk pouncing on his prey’. The woman said she felt the entertainer’s goatee beard tickling her neck before he put a hand down her skirt and groped her bottom and then her breasts.
She shouted at Harris to ‘get off’ and even bent back his fingers in a bid to stop the assault, the court heard. The alleged victim – who is now in her 60s but cannot be named – contacted police after Harris’s previous convictions for sexual assault.
Referring to the past allegations made against Harris, the woman said: ‘One lady described him as an octopus... I thought yeah that’s exactly how he felt with his hands.’
Jurors yesterday heard a tape recording of an interview she gave to an investigating officer from Operation Yewtree on July 21, 2014.
In the recording, the woman said: ‘Rolf Harris arrived and suddenly the door opened and in he walked and he came over to me and he said, “Does anyone tell you what a good-looking woman you are?”
‘I said, “Some people have – but thank you for your nice comments,” and I put my hand out to shake hands with him.
‘He went, “Oh I can’t be doing with all that,”... and within seconds he was behind me and he
‘I can feel hot air down my neck’
was obviously crouching on the floor. Suddenly he appeared from nowhere... he came from behind and he [was] leaning right across me, and he starts by kissing me on the back of the neck and I can feel the hot air from his nostrils coming down my neck and he’s obviously getting more excited by the rapidity of his breathing.
‘And I can feel his beard tickling the back of my neck and he’s saying, “Oh, you are gorgeous, you’re a lovely woman” and he starts slobbering all over me. I said, “Get off, you know I don’t like this sort of thing”.’
She then said Harris put a hand ‘down the back of my skirt and the other hand underneath my bottom’ as she continued to plead with him to stop.
The court heard Harris took off the woman’s dark medical glasses and said, ‘I want to see your face,’ before he groped her breasts with both hands.
Mr Harris, who is held at HMP Stafford, denies seven charges of indecent assault and one of sexual assault against seven complainants. The trial continues.