Rolf Harris 'slipped his hand up 14-year-old's skirt', court is told

Accused: Rolf Harris
PA
Eleanor Rose16 May 2017

Entertainer Rolf Harris slipped his hand up the skirt of 14-year-old girl who approached him for an autograph at the Lyceum Theatre, a court has heard.

On another occasion, he groped a 13-year-old girl after filming a children's TV show and asked her "do you often get molested on a Saturday morning?", jurors were told.

He also twice molested a third teenager, the jury at Southwark Crown Court heard.

Harris, dressed in a grey suit, with a white shirt and a dark blue tie, listened with his arms folded as one woman, who was 14 in 1971, gave evidence by videolink.

She told the jury that when she approached Harris at an event attended by families and under-18s at the Lyceum, he used both hands to pull her onto his lap.

She said: "He pulled me onto his knee. I stood up and he put his hand up my dress."

She added his hand went "between her legs".

When Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC asked how that had made her feel, she replied: "Terrible."

Mr Rees told the jury of seven women and five men that Harris had approached another girl in the green room after filming an episode of the BBC's Saturday Superstore in 1983.

The lawyer said: "She recalls him sliding his open right hand across her back over her clothes and touching her breast.

"He then said, 'do you often get molested on a Saturday morning?', which the prosecution suggests clearly shows the sexual nature of the touching."

The musician and artist is also accused of twice groping a third teenage girl after being paid £100 to appear on ITV celebrity show Star Games in 1978, and telling her she was "a little bit irresistible", the court heard.

Mr Rees told the court: "The prosecution suggests that it offends common sense to suggest that these three women, independent of each other, should choose to fabricate stories of a similar nature.

"We say Harris had an appetite for touching young females."

Harris, who appeared by videolink, denies four charges of indecent assault against three women between 1971 and 1983.

Additional reporting by the Press Association

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