It do say here, “Dear Jimmy, I have always wanted to see Ron Paris doing one of his paintings. Please, could you fix it for me? Love, [applause] [applause] you see this young lady, sir? She wishes that she could help you with one of your paintings. Good idea. Do you think I may leave her in your chart? Safely. Leave her in my capable hands here. Right.
And a bit up there. He just seemed completely safe, completely kind, fascinating, creative, talented. Enjoy yourself. Give him a big smile while we Is it cuz I only see the back of your head otherwise? You see it? Ralph was a star. He was pure unadulterated. Safe family viewing. I can remember watching Ralph on TV when I was a kid.
He was a charismatic, harmless looking figure and he touched millions of hearts. She anxious to rush away. She is. I’ve got fuss all over. Stay here and enjoy it, girl. He said to me, “You’re irresistible.” I was . He was . Welcome to the stage, Mr. Ro Paris. He knew that he could get away with it.
He knew he could do whatever he wanted. He was given the green light. to have fun with me. Ralph Harris is the fourth to be charged under Operation New Tree launched after the Jimmy Savile scandal. Ralph Harris faces counts of indecent assault. Can I ask you for your reaction to the reports that you’ve been arrested on suspicion of sex offenses? No comment. Harold.
Ralph Harris had a sexual interest in underage girls and a tendency to use his celebrity status with impunity. The entertainer Rolf Harris is facing a jail sentence after being found guilty of counts of sexual assault, nearly all on girls aged under . Um, so the thing is can’t go back and do anything again.
What are you two paying attention? Concentrate on me. I’m talking to you at the moment. I’m not just pointing at him over. Oh, you know somebody out there, do you give them a quick wave then? Right back to me. U, what was I going to say? Yeah, the important thing is it’s it’s a happy sort of show is supposed to be. So, if you see anything that you think is supposed to be funny, laugh like mad and I’ll explain it to you later. Is that all right? Everybody loves Saturday night. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody.
Everybody. In those days, you didn’t get a prime time Saturday night slot on BBC unless you were able to draw millions and millions of people. Saturday night. And Ralph was absolute sensation. He was a big asset for the BBC [applause] because the audience very quickly trusted him.
They knew that if they committed an hour to watch Rol Harris, they were going to be entertained. Gives me a chance to introduce the man who choreographs the whole show, keeps us all in trim, and cracks the whip over the dancers every week. Douggee Squires. One of our most [cheering] My very first impression of him that he was eccentric, a multi-talented, eccentric, um, with a warm personality.
The boys watch the girls while the girls watch the boys who watch the girls. He worked bloody hard. He was always willing to try anything. He could sing in his way. Watch a guy watch a d on any street in town and he was surrounded by young eager dancers. We’re trying to expand the fact that Ralph was surrounded by youth and energy.
He was a daddy if you like of the group and he loved the kids. He was very good with them. but never personal. They’re making music to watch. [applause] Success is a having what you want in life and doing what you want and having go correctly. Did you know when you were a child that you were going to get there? I’ve never had any doubt about it.
I’ve always u been supremely confident about everything that I did. Probably because I found uh most things that I did fairly easy to do. [cheering] [applause] I’m Jake the Pegle with his extra leg. Wherever I go through rain [music and singing] and snow, the people always let me know. There’s Jake. Many years before I came to work with Rolf, he was the man who I watched when I was growing up.
I’m Jake. [music and singing] Ralph Harris was unique because he was appealing to all age ranges. There was something for everybody in the shows that Ralph did. He was like that sort of favorite uncle that you look at and think, “Oh, there’s Ralph.” Well, they all added to, I suppose, a a subconscious level of trust for the person that you’re watching on television.
this person who was in your house every weekend in that position of trust and and power. I suppose you would never have questioned that they were anything other than the person that you saw relating to you on screen. [applause] [cheering] joining the first leg.
Their captain Rob Harris [screaming] I was uh . There was a note put up on the notice board at school saying that there was going to be this uh event called Star Games being filmed and they were looking for people to go along and help with the filming and there would be some celebrities there and I, you know, loved that sort of thing. So signed up for it straight away.
Team number three in the Star Games final is the theater team. For each celebrity, they had somebody with them to carry their bags cuz it was all sports gear. I was assigned to Ralph Harris. I remember carrying his bag and he said, “Please and thank you. ” And he was smiling. He was very chatty with everybody.
Well, it’s my first time here. I’m looking forward to it. I was going to say exactly what you said, a great fighting chance and whether we win or lose, we’ll be thrilled to take part. How is it? For the first couple of hours, he was lovely. And you you found yourself thinking, “Oh, yeah. You know, that’s what Harris is like.” Uh I didn’t see any signs of what was to come at all. Nothing.
In the space of I guess about minutes, he assaulted me three times in plain sight. And it was horrible because you’re surrounded by people. and he had a method of operating. I won’t talk about the actual details, but he was paying me attention. He was saying how great I’d been and he he hugged me and that that’s when when he happened. And it was humiliating and degrading and awful and your your blood turns to concrete.
You can’t believe this is happening. And I had no doubt what was happening. My period was due and my breasts were very tender. And I had no doubt what he’d done was deliberate. And he did it he did that twice in the space of I don’t know or minutes. And then it was midafter afternoon.
and they had organized a couple of taxis and one of the cars came to get in and I had to get in the backseat of the car. The taxi driver was talking to someone and Ralph Harris got in beside me and assaulted me again. Uh, and maybe cuz there wasn’t anyone there, I I did tell him to [ __ ] off. And he said something which makes still makes me feel sick now.
He said to me, “You’re irresistible.” I was . He was . He was years older than my dad. I cannot explain to you what his eyes look like. The triumph in his eyes. You knew that he’d won and you’d lost, but you hadn’t even had a chance to defend yourself. It didn’t occur to me to tell anyone because he had enormous power and status.
And I was a little -year-old clearly there because I was a bit starruck by some of the people there. and you feel so small and then you start to berate yourself for not defending yourself, letting it happen and you think there’s something about me that deserved that and I bloody didn’t. Our guest this morning is Ralph Harris. Good morning. Good morning.
I I watch your program. I know it’s supposed to be for kids now. Can I just say how lovely you look? Just you. Isn’t it smooth, isn’t it? What a smooth top. But the outfit is absolutely gorgeous. I thought I thought Australians were weren’t like that. I thought Australians were a bit, you know, beat them around the head and, you know, drag them off into a cave. I know. What? Oh, well, yes.
I we better change the subject, haven’t we? Because I don’t know what all the rest of the Australians are doing, but that’s a silly approach, isn’t it? I mean, you look so lovely. How come you still seem so Australian? You You’ve been here for what, years now, haven’t you? On and off. Yeah. Racing back and forth. You seem to have this amazing rapport with children.
And on a more serious note, you’re off to Australia soon, aren’t you, for a world conference on child abuse. And before we talk a little bit more about that, let’s take a look at the video you made last year. It’s called Kids Can Say No. Attended to alert children to the dangers of abuse. Nobody’s [music and singing] mine. You run your own mine.
[singing] But mine, let me run. Isn’t it good to be alive on a day like today? Good one, isn’t it? Have a seat there. Breathe that air. You feel it all over your skin. It’s good. And it’s sort of feeling you want to give somebody a big hug like that or one of those little pats makes you feel good. And it’s that sort of touching I want to talk about today because it helps you to understand the sort of touching that doesn’t make you feel too good. That’s me.
as I choose not to be threatened or abused. My body’s mine to be used as I choose not to be threatened or forced or abused. I would have been nine coming up when I did it. It was just a really happy day. And again, [music and singing] I remember talking with him in the room where we’d done the filming for the song.
It’s like, “Wow, it’s him.” He was fun. And he did autographs for everybody. Cuz obviously you don’t work with Rob Paris and come away empty-handed. I was literally on cloud nine when I come home. To me, now I look at it, it feels twisted. You’re doing this film when behind closed doors you’re doing what you’re doing and he’s got hold of your neck and he’s hanging on tight and he’s perhaps he’s tucked his head in there and it feels you want it to go on for a long time.
It feels good that it really upsets you to think you were part of something like that while that was going on. Just because he’s a grown-up does not mean that you have to do what he says. You could say, “Go away.” Please say it. Try saying, “Go away.” Very firmly.
Go away. What we’re trying to do is not to scare kids, but uh let them know that there’s um a lot of nice feelings and a lot of nice things in the world, but there are also a few really weird and nasty things that are happening. You’re giving them uh advice. Go and tell an adult that you trust.
And a lot of cases, you’ll find that adults maybe don’t believe you. They say, “Oh, don’t be so stupid.” Or, “How dare you tell such lies?” But these problems are a lot more widespread than anybody believes. A lot of it’s being pushed under the carpet because people don’t know how to handle it. You mustn’t be ashamed to tell people that you were touched where you didn’t want to be touched.
When he was at school, Paris had been known as a weird guy. He was surprising in so many ways. He actually was hung in our most prestigious art awards in Australia at the age of with a self-portrait. And I think when he found celebrity, he found his place in the world. Scene one, take one.
Where do I I’m Jake the lump with my extra leg and I think he worked out where the best way was to take his career. Hence going to the UK where he was universally accepted and really celebrated for all his talents. Is this what you set out to do to promote Australia? No, not consciously. Promote R Paris? Yeah. You know, in the entertainment game, as in every other game, it’s publicize or perish.
When he married, he became even bigger. Australians universally loved him and they were really proud of him as somebody who is a great performer and as a human being, as a father and as a husband. I was .
I’d really started to hit my stride as far as getting more work in television commercials uh and in TV shows. I was told in advance that I was meeting Ralph Harris. So I was very excited to be working with him. Told my mom and dad because they were fans of his. Um told some of my friends, “Wow, I’m going to be working with Ralph Harris. How very cool.
” And um when when Ralph arrived at um Channel Studios, he was greeted by what I call the powers that be. Uh all the men that ran the studios. He was a like he was given the red carpet treatment cuz he was a superstar. Please welcome Mr. Ralph Harris. [cheering] I took him into my makeup room which consisted of a chair which is a bit like um an old barber’s chair and you had a foot rest and a even a headdress uh so you could they could relax the talent can relax.
I had to um we used to call it powdering your nose. So, you’d walk up with a powder puff and blot the sweat off their face. Uh, which is what I had to do quite regularly because he sweats and because the lights are hot each time, however, that I walked up to him to do that, he touched me.
He slipped his right arm down there while I was standing towards him and he put his hand all the way up my leg and up my shorts and just ran his hand up my leg and up my shorts. And I would grab his hand and give his hand back to him. Please don’t do that. He would grab the belt around that was hanging down.
And twice he pulled he pulled the belt towards him to try and crotch grind me while I was standing there trying to blot the sweat off his face. It was very disappointing that this man that I’d grown up with as a young girl was behaving in this way. When I looked into his face, I he just looked back at me with such a such a lascivious look that made me feel really uncomfortable because I all of a sudden saw who he was.
He was letting me know that he was in full control and he could do whatever he wanted. He knew that he could get away with it. He knew he could touch me with impunity. He knew I wasn’t going to say anything back because don’t upset the talent. The talent is the most important in the whole shoot. that would have lost me, my job, my career.
It could have affected all the crew in the room. It could have affected the director. Channel , for all I know, could have lost millions of dollars. Uh, so I felt a really big sense of responsibility because of the other people in the room with me. However, not one man in that room stood up for me. Not one man said, “Hey, keep your hands off her.” Nobody did.
He was, I don’t know, given the green light to have fun with me. I just think you’re a shining example of success and continued success. [laughter] Ron Harris, ladies and gentlemen, hello there and welcome to some more Super Jiml Fixits. [applause] First, a letter from Syhole in the West Midlands.
Dear Jim, could you please please try to fix it for my gramps? He is an Australian dig, but can’t play it. The one and only Mr. Ralph Harry. [applause] Jimmy Savile and Ralph Harris were part of the showbiz firmament as very popular entertainers. The fact that one could be star guest on the show of the other does tell you that they were uh pretty equal figures at the time. I mean we go back a long time.
What was it? Several weeks ago, wasn’t it when we first met? Several weeks. I was a newspaper journalist. So I had access to a lot of gossip and there really were huge numbers of rumors about Jimmy Savile. Grab that position about there. That’s good. That’s good. But there was very very little about Ralph Harris at all.
May I present that to you, Sir James? Is it Sir James or Sir Jimmy? No, it’s Jimmy. Because he was seen as cuddly and safe. Welcome to the first of a series of live programs from the RSPCA Harmssworth Hospital here in North London. We’ll be following the stories of a variety of animals from cats and dogs to birds, reptiles, and rabbits.
I didn’t know Roth Harris beforehand, but they couldn’t have picked a better person. [laughter] You know, people from generations past would have remembered him. And here he was being introduced to a whole new audience because obviously children were loving the program as well.
When I met him, he was he was just a lovely guy, really nice man to to work with. I’m in the outpatients waiting area, which is as busy as ever. animals of all ages, including Rosie the rat here and and these puppies who’ve come in for a checkup. Aren’t they delightful? He was really really happy. And I think he knew as well, you know, Animal Hospital was was going to be a hit. You’re as mad as I am.
You certainly do your best for him. We’ll do absolutely everything we can. Don’t you worry. He turned that show into a nationwide success. And what was then coming through Rolf was this very very compassionate, very heart-c centered type character who was really in touch with people’s feelings when they brought an animal into the animal hospital that was sick. Sorry.
Oh, but because I was in the inner circle with the family with Ralph and Owen and Bindy, my perspective was completely different to many other people’s who were around him. I was privy to far more predatory behavior than a lot of other people would have ever seen. There was this shadow that began to creep in and crept in more and more and more.
Rob Harris one, two, one, two, three, four. Hop in, will you fellas? Lovely. Love it. I can’t get no satisfaction. I can’t get no satisfaction cuz I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried. I CAN’T GET NO. I ended up promoting Ralph as an artist as well as playing in the band.
satisfaction, you know, being somebody who was organizing shows. I started working more and more from their house and using the phone and stuff like that to speak and talk to people and organize all kinds of stuff. So my relationship with Ralph and Owen started to grow. Bindy would come back on a Sunday normally. So it would be Ralph and Owen and Bindy and me.
And they seem like a regular family if you can remove Ralph Harris from being Ralph Harris from the picture. When it came to women, it was impossible for Ralph to think about his wife and his daughter. I mean, he would on a regular basis, this would be in front of Alwin. He’d take a woman’s hand and then hold their hand and pull them in closer to him and then he’d start kissing them all the way up their arm and then he’d get up to their neck and he’d be kissing their neck.
It was like he was pushing a boundary and it was habitual. It was it was I can’t stop myself doing this. I remember I was driving Ralph back from the BBC and there were two school girls in uniform walking along. I’m driving the car and Ralph out of the blue just says, “Jesus, couldn’t you just [ __ ] the pair of them?” And and when when he said it, I mean, I’m driving along and he and he said it and it was it was shocking to hear him say it and I and I looked at him.
I said, “What?” And he said, “Well, just look at them. Aren’t they just [ __ ] lovely?” I’m driving a car. Ralph’s looking out of the window and he’s thinking about [ __ ] two y olds, two little girls.
And so for me, the impact of that, not only was I furious, I was not only was I angry about it, I fully expressed the anger that I felt and I pulled the car over and I said, “I can’t [ __ ] believe that you’ve just said what you’ve said. ” And he immediately went into, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in front of you.” And in the months that followed, it became apparent that it wasn’t some kind of sick joke that had just slipped out.
I started to notice resentment from Bindy towards her dad. She said it was to do with his behavior towards one of her friends, something that her friend had revealed to her. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to I didn’t want to expand on it. I didn’t want to say, “Well, what do you mean?” I knew what she meant, you know, and and I actually took it up with Ralph and he looked at me, cut me off, and he said, “Bear, we all make mistakes in life, and I’ve made some pretty big mistakes,
and let’s just leave it there. ” And he walked away. He turned around and walked away. My name is Chip Summers. I’m a psychotherapist. In the second half of the ‘s, a woman came looking for help for an alcohol problem. And it became apparent that there was a huge secret that she was holding on to, that she was having an enormous amount of difficulty talking about, that she had experienced several prolonged incidents of sexual abuse from the age of . and she’s given me permission to talk about
those experiences. What happened to her was extremely traumatic and I think anonymity allows her to lead some sort of life that isn’t forever tarnished by this experience. She said, “This person is very well known. I’ve been part of their kind of family circle for some time. and I don’t know whether or not I should say the name.
And I reassured her and she said, “It’s Ralph Harris.” She starts to tell me that her family and Ralph Harris’s family were very, very close. Bindy Roth Harris’s daughter was her best friend. They had grown up together. They were going around a lot together, visiting each other’s homes.
And over a period of time, that started to morph into something very different between her and Ralph Harris. She started to experience innocent physical contact. Somebody touching your knee or even your upper thigh isn’t that unusual. But that when she and Ralph were on their own, the boundaries were pushed a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further.
Then then there is a specific point when it changed completely from anything that could be perceived as being innocent into a very overt sexual insertion into her vagina of a finger and that changes the game completely. It then gradually got more intimate. There was a request for masturbation. There was a request for oral sex.
These things were happening both in his home, in her home where opportunity presented itself, becoming more intense, more frequent. And she is also quite clearly told this is something that you cannot talk about. Do not tell anybody about this. This is our little secret. I am a powerful person. I have money. So tread carefully.
She was having to carry this incredible secret, this incredible burden, incredible sense of guilt and disgust and hatred of what is happening to her. Trauma thrives in darkness. And Ralph Harris made quite sure that she was shrouded in darkness. She told me that she had been sexually abused by Ralph Harris from the age of .
And this went on for a number of years. And her choice was to not say anything about it. But it caused her a lot of trauma and was instrumental in causing her to misuse alcohol as a way of aniththetizing that trauma. A momentary restbite from having to carry that burden all the time. Good evening and welcome.
Tonight, enough rope hits the road again. Traveling to London. And unless you’ve spent some time in the UK in the last decade, you’re probably unaware just how big a star my special guest tonight is. He is of course Ralph Harris. Ralph, welcome to Enough Rope. Thank you. It’s good to see you again. And you.
In , I was working as the executive producer for Australia’s leading interview show and uh we were given the opportunity of interviewing Ralph Harris. The host, Andrew Denton, and I expected that we’d get an interview with a kind of a pretty daggy uncle kind of character. I need to liberate my inner Ralph. This is my self-portrait.
Well, you could do it better. Uh-huh. And then it kind of descended into a roller coaster of emotions. He started talking about his father. The tears welled up very very quickly in the interview. Towards the end of his life, we got to a situation where I could give him a really good hug and he would hug me back and you know and I and uh I was able to say to him, I really love your dad.
you know, he started talking about visiting his mother in hospital. So I went in and I said, “I really love you, Mom.” And she was absolutely amazed. She said, “Do you really I realized I’d never told her before, you know, he actually started talking about how deeply deeply selfish he’d been in his life, that he was not present as a father and as a husband.
Lindy said, “You spend more time with total strangers and give them more of your love and attention than you do with mom and I. And I went, “What a shocking revelation that was.” And you think it’s bloody true. You know, you’ve got to change. And it was almost like when we were watching and listening to this that there was something else driving that confessional.
I’m conscious of the fact that I I do want people to like me. I’m still fiercely self-centered. It’s all me me. Change. Hard to hard for a leopard to change its spots. He seemed to be extremely happy after the interview finished. Almost like he’d nailed it and he would have people’s sympathy.
I think he wanted to put on the public record something which showed that he had had some demons and there were some dark times, but that he’d moved on. He was controlling the narrative. We finished the interview and Andrew Denton and I went into an adjoining room. Ralph suddenly came in, walked straight over, said, “I I need a hug.” And then he immediately grabbed me into a bear hug.
He pulled my whole body, including my my lower body, onto his groin and pulled me right against his body. And I immediately recoiled and I pushed him away and I said, “That’s not a hug. That’s a grope.” And I looked at him. There was no remorse, no reaction, no apology.
I had heard that when he’d worked in television studios that he was a bit of a lech, but I never for one moment uh realized that I would be on the receiving end of that behavior. All together, there’s an old Australian stockman lying, dying. What a memory. Whereas some really good television presenters were effectively finished when they became too old, Harris was able to go on It was mindblowing. He was at an absolute high.
The evunular lovable Ralph was a lucrative brand to have. [cheering] And then the most extraordinary aspect of his career was when he painted Her Majesty the Queen. I can hardly believe it but up there in the palace the queen of England is expecting me.
Buck in Palace were quite careful about who was allowed to do a portrait of the queen because they worried about respect. The trouble is you see yourself aging in front of you. Does that upset you? Nah, not really. Ralph Harris was seen as a safe hand with a brush. They knew that he was respectful enough of the monarchy to do a favorable portrait. Do you get fed up with getting your portrait painted? No, not really.
It’s quite nice just usually one just sits and people can’t get it to cuz they know one was busy doing nothing. And so he was very useful to the palace. The palace was very useful to him. Nice to meet you. That’s lovely. CBE. How was that today then? Well, it was very good. Five decades on, you are still far more popular than you ever were.
Really? What is the secret of Ralph Harris’s success? I don’t know. I guess it’s cuz I’m real. I’m I’m not putting putting over a huge phony sort of facade. The bloke you see up on the screen is the same bloke you meet around the corner of the stage door or whatever. He was an old man to us at that time and it was quite remarkable that he was still going uh at that stage in his life.
How were we to know what was going on in the background? if he came on TV, I’d turn it off or I’d turn it over. I just didn’t want to see him. And I knew that he worked with children. And the fact that he worked with children really disturbed me. It really made me wonder what he was doing to them. Ladies and gentlemen, IT’S RALPH HARRIS.
It has all these implications all the way down your life because the man’s always there. Please welcome Mr. Rolf Harris. [cheering] You can’t get away from it. And I just felt this man is a deceiver. He’s a social hypnotist. He gets away with this. He presents this persona. It’s shaming all over again if you talk about it, so I didn’t talk about it.
Will you say hi to Rob? [applause] His public persona during all that period was one of being an incredibly kind, incredibly thoughtful, incredibly safe person who you could leave your children with. She found it very difficult to to know how to deal with it on a weekly basis. She was seeing her abuser on television in front of her, lorded and loved by everybody.
A poll in Time magazine had you in the top five entertainers of the th century. She found it very difficult to to know how to expose that. She wanted to address it because anybody who’s been abused wants some justice. But what’s going to happen if I do this? Am I going to be believed? Vetin broadcaster Jimmy Savile has died at the age of .
The police currently have eight formal allegations against Sir Jimmy Savile. It became apparent very quickly that it wasn’t just Savile. Ralph Harris has reportedly been questioned by police investigating allegations of sexual abuse. We were up into the hundreds of allegations. I rang Utree and said, “I’ve got information that can help you.
” Ralph Harris is the fourth to be charged under Operation Utree launched after the Jimmy Savile scandal. Ralph Harris was gathering information about victims to undermine them. They thought there’s no way. There’s no way they’re going to get him. He was too famous, too powerful. It meant he was untouchable.
There was a real worry he was going to get away with it. What do you got to say for yourself, Harris? Ladies and gentlemen, what else can you say about Ros Harris? [applause] After all those years of being an entertainer, being an artist, he got the BAFTA fellowship, we were all, I suppose, watching that thinking, “Oh, wow.
He really deserves it because he’s been around for decades and he’s made us all so happy.” And I remember watching this room full of celebrities, TV people were on their feet applauding him. And no one more deserving than Ralph Harris at that time. [applause] Thank you so much. That’s uh very moving.
I was going to say um can you tell what it is yet? No, but look, perhaps I won’t. The BAFTA fellowship in TV terms is probably beyond a nighthood. It’s like becoming a lord really. And that’s what he’d become. Thank you. Thank you all so much. And thank you to you to to you the public. You’ve always been so supportive, just wonderful, just like friends.
But I’d also like to say a big thanks to my daughter Bindy and uh most importantly to my incredible, beautiful wife, my soulmate Alwin. I am a very lucky man. Thank you. That’s Thank you. It has all these implications all the way down your life because the man’s always there. In the space of about minutes, he assaulted me three times in plain sight.
Each time that I walked up to him, he touched me. He slipped his right arm down there while I was standing towards him and he just ran his hand up my leg and up my shorts. I would never talk about this unless the person concerned had given full consent. What happened to her was extremely distressing, extremely traumatic. It’s really important that people hear her story.
She had to go up against enormously powerful opposition and truth won out. I lived in Ralph’s house. Living with Ralph was like a dream come true. That was my home for best part of years. Jenny Agoda walked through the door, you know, Kate Bush, Ernie Wise, and you know, like amazing Michael Parkinson and like like I sit in awe.
And then there were other times it was just really conflicting. I was last here in . That was the last time that I visited the house. It’s very strange being back. You know, a big thank you to Shining Bear and his magical digy do players. Can we swap back again, Miss G? Let’s give her a lovely welcome back.
He was always super charismatic. It was like charisma being turned up when it came to women. He would do things that I was told was that’s just Ralph being Ralph. But they made me feel uncomfortable when I was around them. Bringing friends to the house was interesting because you were never quite sure how Ralph would behave.
Ralph the entertainer got switched on and you know he’d be incredibly charming and very flirtatious if it was women and that was the norm. A friend of mine used to come to the house. Ralph would turn on the character. You’d be wonderful as a nude model. You I’d love to paint you naked. I’d be like oh god here we go. Because I knew what that meant.
I knew that that meant the subject would obviously be naked and the photographs of them would be taken rather than just use them so that he could paint a portrait. I know that he would, you know, look at the pictures and I know that there were times when he shared photographs with other male friends of his. Ralph’s like at the time and the woman was his daughter’s age, by the way.
Ralph started an affair with this particular woman. That that was the that was the point where I knew that I had to get out. I couldn’t deny anymore that Ralph was enormously selfish. It was all about what Ralph could get from it and how he got off on it. I have to leave the house. I left planet Ralph.
I thought I’d got away from the storm, but what I didn’t know was that the storm was actually on its way. [cheering] One of the country’s best known broadcasters, Sir Jimmy Saddle, has died at the age of . Flags at half mast outside Leed’s general infirmary where he’d raised so much for charity. But the mood was less ferial, more top of the pops, too. The response to Jimmy Savile’s death is quite extraordinary.
I remember a reporter said, “Many people here regard Jimmy Savile as a saint and they have come today to thank God for him. ” That was perhaps an overstatement, but that was certainly the tone of the funeral. If Jimmy Savile had been described as a saint immediately after his death, round about the same time in , Ralph Harris was being treated as a sort of living saint. Mr. Rolf Harris. GOOD DAY.
Do you like this shirt? I painted it a couple of nights ago. True. True. , he’s in his s. He would inevitably be thinking about his legacy. Wouldn’t want to worry what the weather woman’s talking about, singing about, nagging about, thinking about. Going to be a fine day. He took part in the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. I hope you feel that outpouring of love.
Ma’am, he received that BAFTA fellowship and there’d been a retrospective of his art. He was at an absolute high at the time that Jimmy Savile fell. First tonight, fresh allegations that TV icon Sir Jimmy Savile abused young girls during his career have emerged today.
Child protection charities have seen call volumes to their helplines go through the roof. The allegations are completely appalling and I think are shocking the entire country. The police are also looking into allegations about people who are still alive. It became apparent very quickly that it wasn’t just s within uh the first few weeks we were up into the hundreds of of allegations.
So potentially hundreds of victims and potentially hundreds of offenses. I understand you’re ringing with concerns about a child. Is that correct? Would you just like to tell me the age of the child, please? Woman contacted the incident room. She knew someone who alleged that she had been a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Ralph Harris.
This was the first time that his name had come to light in the investigation. I was in my private practice in London and I got a call from the police investigating an allegation of abuse. They were trying to establish whether or not she was telling the truth. I was able to tell them that she had told me some years ago that she had been sexually abused from the age of by Ralph Harris.
I was able to give them a very clear timeline of when I first met her in the late ‘ s. We had developed a close relationship probably because for the first time somebody was actually hearing what she had to say. We weren’t just talking about an individual incident. This is something that was perpetuated over and over again over many years.
What we were dealing with here was years of gradual grooming when it started. She was too young to know what was really happening. It would continued into her ies and it was in no way something that she was consenting to. [applause] The fact that it was Ralph House brings with it an enormous amount of pressure because you’re being abused by somebody who has got a lot of power.
[applause] What are you thinking as you sit down to do an interview like this about your entire life? cuz it’s such an extraordinary life. What are you thinking? I’m just wondering where you’ll go because it has been an extraordinary life. You were once voted the world’s most famous living artist, beating Rembrandt and Constable.
Well, can I just say that you see Rembrandt didn’t have a weekly television program where he The first time I heard about the allegations against Ralph Harris was in when I was asked to work on the case. In sexual cases generally um you are dealing with people who have suffered something which touches their emotions, their feeling of selfidentity.
Quite often shame and embarrassment all that can make it difficult to come forward. Victim A was an incredibly vulnerable individual. She was somebody who had suffered greatly and the effects of that suffering were writ large on her. When there was first contact with with victim A, there was a lot of concerns. It was at the very serious end of of abuse.
It appeared different from many of the allegations that we were getting in at that time. This victim had been involved with the family from a child. Challenging him and outing him was going to be very dependent on whether she was believed or not. I thought it was obviously going to be a very risky thing to do, but I I wanted her to get justice.
What can I do for you children? WHEN’S YOUR BIRTHDAY? BIRTHDAY. FATHER CHRISTMAS. We like to know for [music and singing] sure. ON YOUR BIRTHDAY. MOTHER CHRISTMAS. We’ll be waiting around your present for your birthday. And we hope it rings a bell till your birthday. It’s a [snorts] secret. A secret that will never ever ever tell.
In the late ‘s when the abuse starts, Ralph Harris is very popular, particularly with children. He is a safe person. And yet, she is experiencing it completely differently. Can I take all this stuff off? It’s so hot. Oh, hang on to that sausage. Where’s my real glasses? In , when she was years old, Victim A was invited to go on holiday to Australia by Roll’s daughter, Bindy. She was alone. She didn’t have her family.
She didn’t have any other friends. She was miles away. She was with the Harrises over the Christmas period. Victim A was in in a hotel room on her own and Ralph Harris had entered the room. He had hugged her and digitally penetrated her. That was the start of the sexual abuse. She didn’t tell her parents. She had been to all intents and purposes on the holiday of absolute lifetime.
She could never have done that unless she had been with the Royal Harris family. She told me that the abuse started when she was years old. That then continues through , , onwards from there. The sexual offending continued past adulthood. She was about when she finally managed to find a way of breaking loose from his control and his coercion and the idea that somehow this was just something that had to happen. The very first interview that we did with Ralph Harris, he wasn’t under arrest.
It was a voluntary interview under caution. He was generally a fairly monoselabic and quiet individual. I remember Ralph Harris started humming to himself when we just finished an interview. We’re sitting there and then he just breaks into singing Sunrise. The whole song all the way through to Gary and myself. Sunrise.
She bring in the morning. Sunrise. It was massively surreal. I remember Gary and I looking at ourselves kind of like what do we do now? Yeah, that could have been nerves. It could have been anxiety. Or maybe that’s his way of of relaxing. But as soon as I started talking to him about the record and about him as a performer, he just changed. He became animated and [gasps] interested.
There was always a falseness about him. There was nothing about him that was natural or or honest. To me, he came across as massively arrogant. The biggest concern he had wasn’t the actual nature of the allegation, but it becoming public and the damage it would do to his credibility.
He had been maybe convinced by himself or other people around him that this could very quickly just go away. Police brought Gary Glitter out of his home in central London and took him into custody. He was arrested on suspicion of sexual offenses as part of operation utree. The PR executive Max Clifford has been arrested by detectives investigating sexual offenses.
Stuart Hall was arrested by police at his home in Wilms in Cheshure this morning. He spent the day being questioned at a police station nearby. The fallout from Savile was huge. people that we had grown up with in the s,s and s. Suddenly they were all being investigated for sexual abuse allegations and it was a huge shock to a lot of people because some of the names were so iconic.
Inevitably journalists started drawing up lists and there were astonishing um rumors about who was going to be done next. We had heard that Ralph Harris had been interviewed under caution. We rang the police and we asked them to confirm that it was Ralph Harris, but they wouldn’t.
They would only stick to the story that they had arrested an y old man from Barkshire under Operation Utri. There was a kind of hysteria at that time in which anyone who was named, it was assumed that they were guilty. There was a strong sense of the risk of false accusation, which did happen to a number of people. Ralph Harris spent quite a sizable chunk of his fortune on expensive lawyers.
They were writing to newsrooms, sending us very strong letters trying to get us not to reveal his name. And there was a period of time when he was the only celebrity who had been arrested under Utri who hadn’t been publicly named. We became aware that a letter existed that had been sent by Ralph Harris uh to victim A’s father.
And what it did was cement the fact that there had been a sexual relationship between victim A and Ris. We then received a pre-written statement stating that there had been a relationship with victim A. The relationship had been consensual and had taken place when she was over the age of .
The relationship had ended badly and as a result these allegations were malicious. Ralph Harris answered no comments at all questions put to him. What I found particularly telling the look on his face and his body language is this has finally caught up with me. I haven’t managed to get away with this. There’d effectively been a news blackout for months.
We knew that Ralph Harris had been questioned, but he hadn’t been officially named. months later in April, I remember waking up one morning and seeing that the sun had splashed on this story. This was the biggest name under Operation Utree since Jimmy Savile. Can I ask you for your reaction to the reports in the Sun newspaper this morning that you’ve been arrested on suspicion of sex offenses? No comment.
It ran on the news for days and days after that headline. Last November, police investigating allegations of sexual offenses searched his home here beside the rivers in Barkshshire. He was later questioned at a police station and formally arrested. He’s not been charged with any offense and is currently on bail.
That did lead directly to a number of other allegations. Hello, I’m Tracy Grimshaw. Welcome to this special edition of A Current Affair. Ralph Harris is an icon of the entertainment. My mother came over to my house to tell me that Ralph Harris was being investigated.
I thought, “No, too much money, too rich, too powerful.” And around the same time, um, this young woman in Australia came forward. She had worked with Ralph Harris and she was I think at the time and she had told her story and it happened so fast and before I knew it he was touching me and then next thing I know his hands back out he’s giving me a hug and I saw her face and I thought I know you’re not lying because I’ve had my experience with him but I really wanted to come forward and support this woman who was a little girl when he molested her. I found
operation tree and I contacted them. There were a number of other people who came forward. Those allegations then form part of the case in order to support the central allegation from victim A. But that account was nothing to do with Rol Harris being a celebrity. She gave an account of being groomed by Ralph Harris from the time that she became a friend of his daughter. I interviewed Bindy Harris.
For us, she was going to be a key witness. She was Ralph Harris’s daughter. She was Victim A’s best friend. Following the birth of Bindy Harris’s son, victim A had come to visit, Bindy had informed victim A that she believed her father was having an affair with a friend of Orwins, Ral’s wife. She was surprised by victim A’s emotional reaction.
At that point, victim A had told her that she had been involved in a sexual relationship with her father. Bindy was completely traumatized, but one thing she was quite firm about was that victim A had told her she was over when this had taken place. Also present was Bindy Harris’s then husband, Malcolm Cox. It was a bit of a cold call knock on his door.
The first thing he said to me was, “You’ve come to talk to me about Ralph Harris and underage girls. I’ve been waiting for you to come and speak to me for the last years.” He was very clear that victim A had alleged that she was underage when this sexual abuse had taken place. He pinpointed it as a start of his deterioration in his marriage with Bindy to their subsequent divorce.
He had real concerns about Ralph Harris having access to his child, Ralph Harris’s grandson, because he believed that Ralph Harris was a pedophile. A huge star for more than years. Ralph Harris is the highest profile celebrity so far to face sex abuse charges. The entertainer is the fourth to be charged under Operation Utri launched after the Jimmy Saddle scandal.
Ralph Harris faces counts of indecent assault involving four girls. He denies them all. These are historical allegations and he’s charged under the indecent assault law in place during the s. The trial was going to be huge. There was no doubt about it. This is one of the biggest entertainers. Giving evidence in a case like this is incredibly hard.
Everything you say, what you look like, how you present yourself, your demeanor, your reactions, they’re all scrutinized. This child was centered on victim A and a lot of her suffering had been because she wasn’t sure she’d ever be believed. It is important to realize that conviction rates are still very very low in historical cases of sexual offending in particular.
With his daughter Bindy on the left and his wife Alwin on his other arm, the year-old entered court this morning for the start of his trial. Ralph Harris admitted himself. He loves to entertain the public and we saw this every single day when he turned up to court. He would do a very slow long walk and it was very much meant to give us the sort of message that this was a wholesome family man.
There’s no way he could have been guilty of the crimes that he was being accused of. So this is Roth when he was in the dock on the first day. He was quite jolly and friendly and wanted to look around and look people in the eye and just be his own sort of performing self. I think he was sort of treating the whole court as if it was uh one of his productions.
Two rows of the courtroom would be taken up every day with Ralph Harris’s supporters. You’d hear them sometimes very subtly muttering under their breath as they heard their evidence. They would look towards the witnesses and the message was that this was a man who was very loved. He talked about doing the portrait of the queen. He played the wobble board during his evidence. I It was quite an act.
And you could see that he was enjoying it, laughing and looking at the jury trying to get them on side. This didn’t look like a man who was worried. So, we look at the next one with this listening to one of the victims and he’s just staring up ahead as if it’s nothing to do with him. Well, there was people everywhere and they were all looking at me and um all of a sudden I started sweating. I’ve always said that I was groped.
I was groped by a dirty old man for I don’t know six, seven hours. He would have he would have touched me two dozen times. He literally couldn’t keep his hands off me. His barristister, her last words to me, I put it to you that you’re lying. And when she said that to me, it was like being punched. And I said no words. I literally like the emotion said out of me.
When I did get off that stand, the only person I looked at was Ralph Harris. I stared at him. He did not make eye contact with me once. He was on a swivel chair. He turned his entire chair around like this while I stalked past the sway.
When all of these allegations were put to him, he was very adamant in his defense. I wasn’t there. I didn’t do it. It is not true. He was very dogged about that and he stuck to that. Ralph Harris has gone to trial and I’d avoided it like the plague. I said to myself, I can’t add anything to this. I’m not as harmed as those girls were. I wasn’t as young as some of them. You know, I don’t need to get involved.
My sister rang me and said, “He’s saying in court he was never in Cambridge.” And then I knew I had I had to. So I rang Utree and left a message on their aunt’s phone. I can put Ralph Harris in Cambridge. Welcome to Cambridge [cheering] on what will be enshrined [screaming] in the local history books as the battle of Jesus Green.
The Star Games video was one of the turning points of the trial. This was the point when we thought, hang on, this isn’t necessarily going to go the way Ralph Harris wants it to go. Here with the officers producing this television footage showing Ralph Harris in Cambridge. Well, it’s my first time here. I’m looking forward to it.
I was going to say exactly what you said. A great fighting chance. And whether we win or lose, we’ll be thrilled to take part. Here he is doing exactly what he said he hasn’t. He tried to say, “Oh, well, sorry. I must have been confused because it was years ago. I’m chauffeered there and I’m chauffeered back out.
I didn’t even know what city I was in. Prosecution listened to all of this and then accused him of ducking and diving and their implication was quite clear. If he was lying about this, what else was he lying about? Victim A’s testimony was clearly going to be a very important point in the trial. I was nervous on that morning for her and realized what it would take.
Here was a young woman who but for what had happened to her would be very very different. She found it very hard giving evidence. She found it difficult to go back over these things. It was really quite harrowing listening to her. She said all of her dreams were shattered by the awful abuse that she suffered at the hands of her best friend’s dad.
There were seven charges that related to allegations that victim A made. Six of them took place when she was . She gave two examples of him going up to her bedroom. Her mother or and or her father were downstairs. Ralph’s wife was downstairs and he’d uh touch her physically and he’d put his fingers into her vagina.
And she gave two examples of when she went and had a sleepover at Ralph Harris’s house, sharing a bedroom with Ralph’s daughter. Once when Bindy had left the room, and once, in fact, when Bindy was asleep in the bed beside her, him coming in digitally penetrating her, licking her vagina, and really very serious sexual assaults.
The last allegation took place when she was years old. They were at a swimming pool at Ralph Harris’s house. Again, he digitally penetrated her, putting his fingers into her vagina. No one in the jury could have been left in any doubt as to how serious what had happened to her was. Victim A didn’t feel she could say no. That was her evidence.
She said that before she would face Ralph Harris, she had to drink shed loads of gin. Although he claimed to have been in a consensual relationship with her for all these years, the prosecution said that she had been groomed and made to perform like a pet. In the witness box, although he was talking about victim A being over the age of , some of the sexual acts he alluded to quite freely.
He stated that on one occasion he was staying at Bindy’s house. Victim A had come to the house. It was quite cold and they were all sat on the sofa together. They had a large blanket across their legs and whilst watching television, Ralph Harris had got victim A to masturbate him under the blanket whilst he’s sat next to his daughter.
It just peels away these layers of celebrity and actually reveals the true person he was the controlling party. She felt she was unable to refuse. One of the bits of the evidence that was crucial in this case was although Victor May hadn’t gone to the police until , before that she had told people that he had sexually assaulted her.
The court heard how in the late s the female struggled with alcohol problems. So she told her father about the alleged abuse. He was so appalled he wrote a letter to Ralph Harris in disgust. Mr. Harris replied. And today in court that response was read out as the star listened from the dock.
It was one of those moments in the trial when your jaw just dropped listening to it and you just couldn’t believe what you were hearing. It shone a completely different light on his testimony. It was a sort of confession if you like and to hear that read out in court was just astonishing. There were bits of it that just didn’t seem to make sense unless he understood he did something wrong and that couldn’t be a consensual adult relationship.
So for example he says when I see the misery I have caused I am sickened by myself. I realized the enormity of what I had done how I had affected her whole life. I begged her forgiveness. I would like to apologize for betraying your trust and for unwittingly so harming your darling. What it says is clearly that he needs forgiveness for something.
He had acknowledged that it was wrong. The only thing that wasn’t contained in it was the daughter’s age. The letter was used in conjunction with the photographs of her in her bikini. She says admiring her and telling her she looked lovely in her bathing suit was just the same as physically molesting her.
I didn’t know there was a clear understanding in this that he admired her at that age in that state of undress. He had to accept that he had found her physically attractive at the age of . That really was a moment where everybody was still and they really did listen. You could have heard a a pin drop.
It was over a week that we were waiting for that verdict and then suddenly we were called back into court and I remember how incredibly tense it was. It was completely quiet in the courtroom. When the jury came back in, two of the women were crying. And I remember saying to Gary sat next to me, I said, “Either this is really good or really bad.” Good evening.
The entertainer Rolf Harris is facing a jail sentence tonight after being found guilty of counts of sexual assault, nearly all on girls aged under . Ralph Harris had a sexual interest in underage girls and a tendency to use his celebrity status with impunity. The man whose lawyers tried to prevent the media from even revealing his name now having to face the cameras knowing that the full extent of his crimes can finally be revealed.
This was Ralph Harris, the Rolf Harris who had been found guilty on all charges. It was a huge moment for Operation Utri, for him personally, for his career, for all of us who had grown up with him, who knew him throughout our childhoods. The year old was given a sentence of years and months. Say something. He ruined the childhoods of a handful.
Now Ralph Harris has trashed the memories of millions. What you got to say for yourself, parent? I was glad to see him found guilty to try and give the women he’d really damaged some support and some recovery. And the next thing I knew, I had more officers come and see me to take more details.
They were already in contact with other women who’d come forward during the case. He was going to be charged with more assaults, including mine. Those of you who can’t swim yet, then if you just wait over in the shallow water. Kids in water, they love it. Rivers, canals, even the lily pond in the garden. You can’t keep them away from it. Water has a fascination for children.
And if they can’t swim and they go off by themselves to play by the side of some water somewhere, you know only too well what might happen. One of the things about his conviction is that it makes you re-evaluate all of the things that he was involved in in the past. Or if you can swim yourself, why not teach him yourself? It’s fun.
Team it made you look back on all the shows that he’d ever been involved in in a completely different light. I had a curious catchphrase that I used at every available opportunity. If there was a loud bang or somebody said, “Hey, you.” or “Just a minute.” I would say without thinking, “I never touched her, your honor.
” There’s no way that he would ever be able to get his reputation back and make any sort of comeback at all. Police are now talking to other potential victims. This call center run by the NPCC was contacted by up to others, all claiming that they too had been abused by Ralph Harris. In the days after his conviction, all sorts of stories were coming out.
There was a question of how many more women were going to come forward and would he face further charges. Victims choose to come forward at all different times and there can be all different kind of prompts. One of the further allegations that came forward was Lin Beric. I conducted a recorded interview with her.
I was doing the radio program called Lyn Beric Meets at Morfield’s Eye Hospital. R Harris came to the studio one Saturday afternoon. No decision like this is easy. But personally, I have absolutely nothing to hide. I’ve chosen to relinquish my anonymity because I wanted people to understand and to hear in my voice. If I don’t have the courage to speak out, then people will never really know the truth.
When I met Rolf Harris, I put my hand out to greet him and he said, “Has anyone ever told you you are a lovely looking woman?” He started putting his hands all over my back. And the more I tried to get away from him, the more he pushed harder and harder on the seat that I was sitting on so that I just could not move.
And then he gets uh his hands over my breast, his fingers between my nipples, and he starts squeezing. He grabbed hold of his fingers and I bent his fingers right back. And I said, “Now get your hands off me.” Then he grabbed a hold of my dark glasses, took them off my face, and he went, “Ah, now I can really see your face. ” The dark glasses were the thing I hid behind.
I felt very vulnerable and uh a bit lost. Then we, you know, did the interview and played the music just making the best of it for the rest of the patients. But I just felt like screaming when people were coming forward to um tell their stories. I thought, well, I’ve held it in my heart for over years and I’ve not said anything.
So, I thought, well, now now’s the chance to say something. I realized that I wasn’t on my own with this situation. So when Ralph was in jail, I I got a letter from him. I was shocked at what I was reading. He says, “Dear Bear, well, I’m finding it extraordinarily difficult to write. But at last, the inner rage has come to the four.
I’ve started writing a song about all of the injustice.” And here’s how it goes. Climb up out of the woodwork, babe. From years ago. The climate’s great in Britain now for making lots of dough. You festered down there long enough. Time’s right to grab your chance. Clap eyes on rich celebrity and make the bastard dance. So Ralph is now the victim. For me, it was repulsive.
It made me absolutely realize that there was no remorse. And in it, there’s also a tone of revenge. Harris had private detectives working. so hard to find every bit of evidence. I mean, they turned up at the houses of girls I hadn’t seen since I was . They tried everything. I had to tell everybody and and the trolling and the men ringing work asking me how big my tits were and the Twitter messages and the email suggesting I was lying.
And I have asked myself if id known that it would end up in me being in court, would I have done it? And I would have done, but I think but not because I’m noble, but because you’re sort of on a train track by then. This time ambushed by the system rather than by a man. It’s hard. There will always be the person who says, “Oh, this isn’t true.
You know, you’re just wanting the money or or whatever.” And that’s the awful thing because I was made to look in that courtroom like as though I was a greedy moneygrabbing [ __ ] All I was looking for was justice. And that was my prime objective. One of the main strands of defense was that I wanted to make myself a spokesperson for women who’ve been assaulted.
I sort of am now, but not that’s not what I set out to do by any means. I came out of there feeling the defense barister dissected me and disembowed me, laid my family life out on the floor of that courtroom for people to stomp over. I was at work when the verdict came through and Ro Harris was officially found not guilty. But he wasn’t found not guilty by the jury. They just couldn’t get a majority verdict.
The police asked me to write my victim impact statement, even though it was never used because we didn’t get a guilty verdict. It was very cathartic but incredibly difficult to write. Um, and I I can read you some of it. In the moments after he assaulted me, which he did three times, it dawned on me that the people around us were not seeing what I was seeing. He held aside any question of consent.
He’d shattered a very young woman’s burgeoning sense of autonomy over her own body. I’d watched him on TV for many hours, learned the words to his songs, asked for his stylophone for Christmas. It would never have occurred to me or any other young woman not to trust him. Can you get back? How do you feel being prison?
