The death of the convicted sex predator and entertainer, Rolf Harris, brings to an end another sordid chapter in the history of celebrity child abusers, written alongside that of contemporaries, such as Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter, to name but the most notorious. And these are just the ones we know of: there are many more, who either can’t be named for legal reasons, or that we simply don’t know of yet.
What we do know, however, is that Harris used the inherent power imbalance of his influence, wealth and fame to sexually exploit and abuse children as young as eight years old. As with all sex offenders, Harris’s charge sheet is brutal, and includes a total of 12 charges, with other multiple allegations not pursued, on account of the victims being in other countries and not available to UK law:
* Seven charges of having a sexual relationship with one of his daughter Bindi’s friends. Six charges when the victim between the ages of 13 and 15, one when she was 19.
* Three charges of sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl in 1986.
* The sexual assault of an eight-year-old girl 1968 or 1969.
* Indecent assault of a 14-year old.
Convicted of all twelve offences at Southwark Crown Court in 2014, Harris was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison - the maximum sentence available to law and with permission to appeal denied - of which he served three years, before his release in 2017. During the time of his imprisonment, Harris faced numerous other allegations from victims, including the TV presenter Vanessa Feltz and the singer Linda Nolan, and girls from around the world.
Throughout all this, Harris displayed no remorse whatsoever, in fact quite the opposite, maintaining his innocence and mocking his victims in written letters to a friend. Despite the volume and severity of his offences Rolf Harris died free and wealthy, and now, in death, is offered a dignity he denied his victims, courtesy of a private wedding arranged by his family. Lucky in life (mostly) and lucky in death, it strikes me that Harris - and those like him - deserve no formal burial at all, but rather buried in a mass or unmarked grave of some kind.
As the righteous defacing and removal of Jimmy Savile's grotesque headstone showed, there should be no dignity afforded people who abuse children.
Nick Jordan.
Image by Reuters.