How Rolf Harris hid in plain sight
In 1985, a child safety campaign called Kids Can Say No! was launched.
Aimed to educate children between ages five and eight on how to protect themselves against sexual abuse, the instructional film was purchased by police forces, libraries and educational institutions across the UK and Australia, as well as being broadcast (twice) on the ABC.
WARNING: This article contains details of sexual assault.
The face of the campaign was Australian children's entertainer Rolf Harris.
It would take another 29 years for Harris to be convicted in the United Kingdom of sexually assaulting four underage girls.
The eventual court case revealed that, during the time he was filming this public safety video, he was also sexually abusing his daughter's best friend. Simply called Victim A in proceedings, she was 13 years old when the abuse began.
Rolf Harris was 84 years old when he was convicted of 12 charges of indecently assaulting four girls. (Supplied: ABC TV)
While Harris was convicted of those assaults, numerous other women from all over the world have come forward with similar allegations.
Since he died in 2023, they will never get a chance to prove it in court. But, as new ABC documentary Rolf Harris: Primetime Predator shows, the world did finally learn the truth of who really lurked behind the cheeky grin.
Friends in high places
Rolf Harris was born in 1930 in Bassendean, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia.
First gaining a teaching degree, Harris then went to study art in London, where he fell in with a group of other creative Aussie expats. There, he honed his entertainment skills, eventually writing the song that perhaps gained him most fame, Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.
Kathy Lette, the co-author of Puberty Blues, was a teenager when she met Harris, and says she was inspired to encounter this "groundbreaking" group of people that she labelled the "gum-leaf mafia".
"We had this incredible group of dazzling Aussie intellectuals and we would often get together and laugh at the English and kind of blow raspberries at the establishment," says Lette.
"Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer, and Rolf; they had to come and prove themselves to the parent country."
Harris spent his whole adult life in the UK and, although his entire schtick was as the larrikin Australian, he seemed determined to establish a career overseas.
After sniffing the scent of success through his hammy songs, including Jake the Peg and Two Little Boys, Harris made his way onto TV.
He spent years making a name for himself in Britain, including hosting TV series Animal Hospital, releasing cheesy covers of famous rock songs and performing a baffling seven times at the Glastonbury music festival.
Rolf Harris at the unveiling of his portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on December 19, 2005. (AP Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth)
But Harris's true validation came in 2005 when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth for her 80th birthday.
"Rolf Harris was very good at building contacts in very high places," says investigative journalist Meirion Jones.
"If you're connected at the top with the royal family, all this stuff gives you a lot of protection."
In 2012, Harris was once again honoured by the royal family, when he performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace.
But it was this performance that led Victim A to come forward, and for Harris's protected persona to start crumbling around him.
"I think that was too much for her," explains Chip Somers, a psychotherapist who worked with Victim A for many years before and during the time she exposed years of abuse by Harris.
"I think she felt like it was like a dam bursting. She just thought: 'This is enough. This is enough!'"
'Why would anyone believe me?'
In 2013, Rolf Harris was charged by British police with 12 counts of indecent assault against underage girls.
A part of Operation Yewtree, the police had been investigating a number of high-profile names after the crimes of Jimmy Savile were revealed. Harris pleaded not guilty to all charges.
There were four complainants against Harris, who had all been abused in the UK: Victim A; Tonya Lee; Wendy Wild; and an unnamed "Cambridge Victim".
There were four complainants in the case against Rolf Harris, as well as six character witnesses. (Supplied: ABC TV)
The long, brutal court case that followed the charges revealed that Harris's abuse of these girls was brazen, leveraging the influence and trust he had carefully built.
He abused Victim A in her home while her parents were there, or on family holidays while his daughter was nearby. Wild was assaulted at a community centre where she'd gone to get an autograph. Lee was assaulted when her Sydney youth theatre troupe was invited to visit the performer in the UK.
"If I had said anything back then, I really don't know if anyone would have believed me," Lee says, after keeping her abuse secret for almost 30 years.
There were also six character witnesses from Australia, New Zealand and Malta in the court case who helped to demonstrate a pattern of behaviour.
"It destroys people's lives," says Tonya Lee. "Not just six months or a year — your whole life. Nothing is the same." (AAP/Metropolitan Police)
And they are not the only ones to have come forward. In the years since his conviction, there have been innumerable accusations against Harris of kissing, touching, groping and assaulting girls and young women. In the Primetime Predator documentary, some women come forward for the first time with accusations against the trusted entertainer.
"I told my parents what Rolf Harris did to me, they didn't believe me," says Christine, one of the character witnesses in the court case. She alleges Harris abused her in her family home at age 11.
"They said, 'Oh, you and your stories Christine.' I thought, if my parents don't believe me, why would anyone else believe me?"
'The octopus'
The assaults detailed in the court case and the documentary are shockingly public and shameless, but Harris seemed confident that the web of influence, trust and notoriety he had built would protect him. He was right.
Meirion Jones says his wife experienced that firsthand when she started working at the BBC.
"Somebody senior came up to her and said: 'Rolf Harris is working here on his painting series at the moment, he's in the building. Do not get into a lift with him on your own, do not walk up stairs in front of him.'"
"Rolf Harris was accepted at the highest levels of British society," says investigative reporter Meirion Jones. (Supplied: ABC TV)
Jones says this was transferring the responsibility to the women.
"I think there was a very simple equation there. Got top talent who can bring in millions of viewers who are worth a fortune to the BBC: there's always been bulletproof glass protecting them. And it's BBC management that have put that bulletproof glass in place."*
Kathy Lette says she remembers similar things from her various interactions with Harris over the years.
"When I was a teenager, there were words amongst the girls not to be alone with him in the green room, that he was a bit handsy," she says, describing the "bear hugs" he was well known for, and how he would always try to kiss women and girls on the mouth.
"We just were thinking, 'Oh he's just [an] old, handsy, hippie'. We didn't know how dangerous he really was."
Make-up artist Suzi Dent had a similar experience when she was working in the Channel 7 studio in Australia on a production that featured Harris.**
As one of the character witnesses in the UK court case, she details Harris putting his hand up her shorts, grinding on her and touching her all over his body.
"I'm in a room full of men — the cameraman, the lighting guy, the sound guy — there's all these men there. Nobody said anything, not one man asked him to stop," she says.
"I was so excited I was gonna be working with Rolf Harris," says Suzi Dent, who was 23 years old when she alleges she was assaulted by Harris. (Supplied: ABC TV)
At the end of the day, she went and told another woman in the make-up department.
"And she said to me, 'Oh, I thought you knew.' And I'm like, 'Knew what?' And she said, 'Oh, his nickname is the octopus.'"
All those turned heads helped Harris build confidence, while he crafted a public persona of a dorky nice guy who could be trusted.
Filming the child safety video was the cherry on top.
"He felt that was his protection," says Detective Inspector Ben Markham, who led the Metropolitan Police investigation.
"You've got the guy who's the celebrity, who's the family favourite and he's actually a paedophile, he's actually a monster. It's insane, it's the ultimate twist ending, really."
Why Australian victims didn't get a trial
When Sasha Wass KC found out she would be prosecuting Rolf Harris, she was worried.
"I thought, 'I have absolutely no chance of getting a conviction,'" she says.
"He was universally adored."
Historical sex offences are always difficult to prosecute, "as it often boils down to one person's word against another", says Wass. But when it involves someone as high-profile as Harris, it adds a whole additional layer of difficulty.
"Your reputation now lies in ruins, you have been stripped of your honours, but you have no-one to blame but yourself," Justice Sweeney told Harris when sentencing. (Supplied: ABC TV/Priscilla Coleman)
"When celebrities are involved, there's a syndrome," she says.
"People think they know you. 'The nice Mr Harris would never touch up children.' And the danger was they simply would refuse to believe, whatever the evidence, that he was guilty."
And this butts up against well-documented institutional issues with the treatment of victims of sexual assault.
Tonya Lee, one of the four complainants, says Harris's legal team tried to dig up dirt on her before the case.
"They would send private detectives to my family, to my neighbours. They subpoenaed all my medical records, to make out that I was a nut case — you know, crazy, a liar — anything to put me in a bad light."
Christine was subjected to intense scrutiny from the defence when she gave character evidence in court.
Christine was 11 years old when she says she was assaulted by Rolf Harris. (Supplied: ABC TV)
She was asked "what was so bad" about being tongue-kissed and groped by Harris at age 11, and whether the pyjamas she was wearing at the time were provocative.
"And I looked at the jury and then looked back at [the barrister] and I said to him, 'I was a child'."
But despite attempts to discredit the victims, a London jury unanimously found Harris guilty of 12 charges of indecent assault against four girls in the UK between 1968 and 1986.
"When the verdict came in, I was so happy, and so relieved, and so grateful, after all those decades," says Lee.
"You can't get those decades back, but it sort of explained maybe why my life didn't go the way people expected it to."
Harris was sentenced to five years and nine months' prison, but half would be non-custodial due to his age. When he died in 2023, he still maintained his innocence.
Rolf Harris was prosecuted based on the law when his offences were committed, between 1968 and 1986. (Supplied: ABC TV)
He was never tried in his home country, and his Australian victims never got to prove their allegations.
For Sunny, who alleges in the documentary that Harris assaulted her in her early twenties on a commercial TV set, this was a huge let-down.
"Australian victims did not get a trial. They essentially got nothing. There's been no charges laid, there's been no consequences. It does feel like a failure of the Australian justice system."
There are many possible reasons no charges were ever pursued in Australia, including Harris's advanced age. But our legal system at the time also made it a lot more difficult to prosecute historical sexual abuse cases.
If Harris had been tried here, the case would likely have been split into four separate trials, and the character witnesses would not have been allowed.
Changes to the law were recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2017, in acknowledgement of how difficult it was to get convictions in child sexual assault cases.
Tonya Lee was a passionate actor in her teens, but she never returned to it after her assault. (Supplied: ABC TV)
One of those reforms is to allow the use of character witnesses, referred to as "tendency evidence" in Australia, to prove a pattern of behaviour.
This has been adopted in most parts of the country, except for Victoria, where the law is under review.
Lee hopes her success in the Harris case, and the changes in the law, will empower other people to tell their stories.
"We will never know the full scale of his abuse. I shudder to think of how many people's lives he actually destroyed, but stories are coming forward more and more," she says.
"Actually being believed … made me much more powerful. That power comes from being heard."
Rolf Harris: Primetime Predator is on ABC iview now.
*NOTE: In response to the allegations in the documentary, the BBC told the ABC: "It is not possible to comment on a conversation that may have happened nearly 25 years ago. We take all complaints about conduct and behaviour extremely seriously and encourage anyone who may have concerns to raise them with us directly. We do not tolerate any behaviour that falls short of our values."
**Seven Network declined to comment on the allegations in the documentary.