PAEDO ROLF’S FREEDOM BID Fresh evidence to clear him of sex attacks’
Trouble when you walked in
TAYLOR Swift looks far from crushed despite her reported break-up with Thor’s Tom Hiddleston. The singer, who was at a NewYork Fashion Week show with pal Martha Hunt to support model Gigi Hadid, looked incredible at the afterparty as she danced to ex Calvin Harris’s hit This Is What You Came For. Tom who? SHAMED Rolf Harris is returning to court in December in a new bid to convince a judge that he should be freed.
The disgraced entertainer will claim his convictions for historic sex offences against women and young girls should be quashed.
Harris, 86, says that a new team of private investigators working for him have uncovered vital new evidence.
He will also attempt to have fresh charges thrown out at the appeal hearing at Southwark Crown Court on December 15. Those cases are currently due to be tried in January.
A source close to Harris said: “This really will be D-Day. Rolf has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds preparing this appeal. Despite everything he still maintains his innocence.
“He believes his legal team have now uncovered new evidence to have his previous convictions re-opened and overturned.
Hopes
“And he says that the new private investigators he hired since his last trial have found new witnesses to help prove his innocence.
“Rolf knows it’s his last chance to clear his name. He’s counting down the days and pinning all his hopes on it.”
Harris was jailed for nearly six years in 2014 for 12 indecent assaults, one involving a girl aged seven or eight.
If his appeal is unsuccessful, the comic, artist and musician will go on trial in the New Year on eight new charges involving seven females.
The allegations, all denied by Harris, date from 1971 to 2004. He was charged earlier this year under the Operation Yewtree inquiry.
There are seven counts of indecent assault and one of sexual assault. One charge is understood to involve a girl who claims she was assaulted in 1977 while under the age of 13.
The earliest complaint alleges former Animal Hospital presenter Harris indecently assaulted a girl aged under 16.
A third teenage girl, also under 16 at the time, is alleged to have been a victim of Harris on New Year’s Eve in 1983.
Four other women have made claims against Australian-born Harris relating to incidents in 1977, 1978, 2002 and 2004.
The alleged sexual assault is an alternative charge from 2004 and jurors are expected to try Harris on this.