‘Thank God he is dead’ – Rolf Harris’ victims tell of their joy at his death and recount abuse they endured
Victims of Rolf Harris have spoken out about the abuse they endured at the hands of the Australian sex offender after his death at the age of 93.
The disgraced TV star died of neck cancer and old age earlier this month after spending the last six years following his release from prison living as a near-recluse with his wife in their £5million riverside mansion in Bray, Berkshire.
News of the abuser’s death on May 10 and his subsequent secret cremation was revealed on Tuesday after it was registered with Windsor and Maidenhead Council bringing closure to some of his victims.
Dr Lin Berwick, who accused him of assaulting her when she was 27, screamed ‘Yippee, thank God’, while BBC radio host Karen Gardner – who claims she was assaulted by him when she was 16 – pointed to a statement where she described him as ‘evil’.
Broadcaster Vanessa Feltz recalled how she was assaulted by the entertainer live on national television and metres away from his wife when he appeared on The Big Breakfast with her.
In June 2014 Harris was convicted of 12 indecent assaults, after a trial exposed an avalanche of evidence showing his disturbing behaviour towards women and girls.
The entertainer was convicted of abusing a close friend of his daughter, Bindi Nicholls, over the course of 16 years as well as an eight-year-old girl seeking an autograph and two girls in their early teens.
Harris had strongly denied the charges against him, which took place between 19868 and 1986 but was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison after being convicted.
Upon his release in 2017 he lived as a near-recluse, with reports he was suffering from neck cancer and this had left him unable to speak, and was seen in a wheelchair when out of the house. An undertaker’s private ambulance was photographed outside his riverside home on May 11.
In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon by his solicitor, his family said: ‘Rolf Harris recently died peacefully surrounded by family and friends and has now been laid to rest. They ask that you respect their privacy. No further comment will be made’.
The cause of death was revealed as ‘metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of neck’ – the medical term for neck cancer – and ‘frailty of old age’.
The news was welcomed gleefully by some of his victims who still to this day have to cope with the abuse he inflicted on them.
Dr Berwick, who is blind and disabled, claimed Harris assaulted her when she was 27 – and despite the sex offender being acquitted of that offence, she remains convinced he was the perpetrator.
She told the Sun: ‘When I found out the news he was dead, I screamed ‘Yippee, thank God’.
‘No one has ever invaded my body the way Rolf Harris has. What he did to me as a blind person was vile.’