An alleged victim of Rolf Harris told a friend more than 30 years ago that the children’s entertainer was a “dirty old man” who “touched her up”, a jury heard today.
Southwark crown court was told the alleged victim made the startling confession to a classmate when she was in her teens.
Harris, 84, denies 12 counts of indecent assault against four women between 1968 and 1986.
Giving evidence today, the former classmate told of a conversation she had with the alleged victim, now 49, who knew Harris’s daughter Bindi.
The witness said her friend “described him as a bit of a dirty old man ... It was within the family home that he used to get her to sit on his lap and then touch her up. She didn’t go into a description about exactly what that entailed but she said he used to feel her up.”
The witness said she was about 16 when the talk took place. Asked by Sasha Wass QC, prosecuting, why she remembered it, the woman said: “It was a shocking conversation. He is well known and well loved ... one of those people you would never imagine in a million years. I just remember feeling quite horrified.”
Jurors heard that in the Nineties, when the witness was living in New Zealand, she received a call from the alleged victim: “She said she had been in counselling because we were aware she was having difficulty with drinking.
“Issues from the past had come up and she wanted to talk to me about it. She basically told me that Rolf Harris had been abusing her through her teens and beyond.” Abuse allegedly took place when her friend was 13 or 14 and “she said Rolf Harris had sexually abused her over many years”.
The alleged victim did not want to go to the police because she was “not in a good place” and did nor want to deal with a “media circus”.
Harris, of Bray in Berkshire, sat in the dock listening through a hearing loop. The trial continues.
