rolf harris trial: entertainer accused of lyin

I think he is guilty but I have this feeling he will beat it.



Rolf Harris trial: Entertainer accused of lying to jury after new evidence emerges



Australian entertainer Rolf Harris has been accused of deliberately lying to the jury after the emergence of new evidence at his trial in London on charges of indecent assault.

The jury was played a video on Monday, which had surfaced since the trial began, of Harris taking part as a team captain in a celebrity show, Star Games, in Cambridge in 1978.

One of the complainants in the case alleges Harris assaulted her in the city in the 1970s at a celebrity event, but the defendant previously told the court he first visited Cambridge only about four years ago.

Harris denies indecently assaulting four girls in the UK between 1968 and 1986.

Prosecutor Sasha Wass QC said the footage proved Harris was lying when he said he had not been to Cambridge until recently.

"That was a deliberate lie, wasn't it?" Ms Wass asked the artist and singer.

Harris replied: "No ... a lapse of memory."

The 84-year-old said he had no memory of the event until he saw the video and did not know he was in Cambridge at the time.

Ms Wass appeared incredulous, asking: "You didn't know where you were?"

Analysis: Barbara Miller at the trial

This goes to the prosecution's case that Harris is tailoring his defence depending on what evidence he knows the prosecution has.

So the prosecution makes the case that where there is photographic evidence, for example, or documentary evidence of Harris at the scene of an alleged assault, he says: 'I must've been there but I don't remember it'. Or where in this case with Cambridge, where that evidence did not exist until this point, he says: 'I simply wasn't there at all'.

So what we are seeing the prosecution doing now is going through all the other alleged assaults from the complainants in this case, as well as the bad-character witnesses, and saying: 'Oh really, is that a lie as well?'

Harris appeared quite irritated and at one point was cautioned by the judge, who told him it was not a verbal joust he was engaged in with the prosecutor and he should not ask her questions.
"I don't think any of us [in the show] did," Harris replied. "We all went on a bus to get there. We were deposited on the green. I was in Cambridge but I didn't know it was Cambridge."

But Ms Wass told Harris there was no way he could have forgotten participating in Star Games.

"You deliberately tried to mislead the jury," the prosecutor said.

The alleged victim initially said she had been groped by Harris at what she thought was a celebrity version of It's A Knockout in Cambridge in about 1975 when she was 13 or 14. She turned 16 in early 1978.

During her evidence in mid-May the woman told the court: "The incident is bright red in my mind and everything else is grey."

She said Harris groped her after she had been drawn to a crowd which was watching Harris on all fours barking at a dog.

Harris on Monday was asked whether he now accepted that Star Games was filmed at Cambridge.

"It was a suburb of Cambridge," he said.

Harris cautioned over 'verbal joust'

Ms Wass asked Harris whether he often did not know where he was when he worked.

Harris appeared irritated and replied that the prosecution did not understand show business. He said he would sign contracts assuming that his agent had organised everything.


AUDIO: Rolf Harris accused of lying to jury in trial (AM)
Harris was later cautioned for engaging in what the judge called a verbal joust with the prosecutor.

"That's enough," Justice Nigel Sweeney warned Harris, adding he was not to ask questions of Ms Wass but rather answer them, "It's not a verbal joust."

Earlier in the trial the court heard police could turn up no evidence of Harris ever having been at such an event in Cambridge.

The police were doing their research with the BBC, but the video that was shown to the court came from Thames Television.

The prosecution says the celebrity event shown in the video is similar to the one the female complainant described, but has a different name.

Bindi Nicholls denies lying for father


VIDEO: Rolf Harris's daughter breaks down in court (ABC News)
Meanwhile, Harris's daughter, Bindi Nicholls, has denied lying about a childhood friend's relationship with her famous father to help him in the trial.

Ms Nicholls cried in court when speaking about her former best friend who claims Harris abused her from the age of 13.

Ms Nicholls backed her father's claim that the pair had a consensual "affair" which started after the family friend turned 18.

Ms Wass asked Ms Nicholls if she was telling the truth or helping her father.

"This isn't about helping my father; it's about me telling the truth," the 50-year-old replied.

The alleged victim claims Harris first indecently assaulted her when she joined the family on an overseas trip in 1978.

But Ms Nicholls said the two teenagers were inseparable and she never saw any inappropriate contact.

This isn't about helping my father; it's about me telling the truth
Bindi Nicholls
She broke down when recalling how "devastated" she was when her family shifted to Bray, west of London, in 1980.

The exact timing of the move away from her friend in south London is in dispute.

Ms Wass asked Ms Nicholls why she had initially told police the family relocated "straight after" her mid-year exams, but then told the court it was December.

The prosecutor said Harris argued the later date because it was closer to the complainant's 16th birthday and meant there was less time for any underage assaults at Bray.

"I'm suggesting you and your father have colluded to give the same evidence," Ms Wass said.

But the entertainer's daughter insisted: "No, we hardly talk, my dad and I. It's not really something we sit down and talk about."

Oral sex claim 'laughable', Bindi says

Ms Nicholls said it was "ridiculous" and "laughable" for her childhood friend to claim Harris performed oral sex on her when she was 15 with Bindi asleep in the next bed.

Ms Wass also grilled Ms Nicholls on why she had had a solicitor - paid for by Harris - present when interviewed by police.

"You've seen the films, everyone always has a solicitor don't they?" Ms Nicholls said.

Ms Wass told her suspects usually did, but not witnesses.

The prosecutor went on to suggest Ms Nicholls was financially dependent on Harris. She admitted he provided a "monthly income".

Ms Wass read a mid-2012 email from Ms Nicholls to her father in which she asked if she was the sole inheritor of his $19.9 million estate.

She said if that was true she needed to help run the company.

Bindi and complainant discussed affair in 1990s, court hears

Earlier, the court heard Ms Nicholls first discussed her friend's sexual relationship with Harris in the mid-1990s.

The pair had been talking about Ms Nicholls's suspicion that her father was having an affair with a "spiritual healer".

The complainant, then in her early 30s, called the woman a "cow" and asked what Harris saw in her, Ms Nicholls said.

"It felt like she was in love with my dad."

Harris's daughter asked her friend if she had been seeing her father, to which she reportedly replied: "It's been going on since I was 18 or 19."

The alleged victim insists she told Ms Nicholls her father had abused her since the age of 13.

"No, she never said that," Ms Nicholls said.

The 50-year-old told the court she later rang her dad and accused him of having an affair with her friend.

She admitted telling police that when she heard about the affair she was so distraught she was "bashing her head against the wall" and "wanted to stab myself with forks". Later she was "suicidal".

Ms Nicholls has refused to release her therapy notes which Ms Wass argued could reveal whether the alleged victim told her friend she had been abused by Harris or rather had an affair.

Harris's daughter said the counselling notes were "private".

She did reveal, however, that she was frightened her parents "might die in the middle of this court case".

That prompted Ms Wass to ask if she ever thought about her former friend.

Ms Nicholls insisted: "I love her very much."



http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-03/rolf-harris-accused-of-lying-to-court-during-london-trial/5495144


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rolf-harris-trial-recap-updates-3635278