Rolf Harris will almost certainly be jailed and could die behind bars after being found guilty of indecently assaulting four girls, including his daughter’s childhood friend.
The 84-year-old is also facing fresh allegations and possible police investigations in both the UK and Australia.
Harris was labelled a “sinister pervert” during his eight-week London trial and on Monday, after eight days of deliberations, the jury unanimously backed the prosecutor’s assessment.
Harris will be sentenced on Friday but Justice Nigel Sweeney has already made clear he can expect to go to jail.
“Given the conviction on all 12 counts, it’s inevitable that the type of sentence uppermost in the court’s mind is a custodial sentence,” the judge said.
And the legacy of his decorated 50-year career is already being purged.
Harris has been stripped of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Fellowship he was awarded two years ago and will likely lose his CBE from the Queen.
In Australia, he’s been kicked out of the ARIA Hall of Fame and could lose his Order of Australia.
Harris’s hometown of Perth is moving to tear up monuments honouring the now convicted sexual predator and his old school has removed his paintings.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he was “gutted and dismayed” by the news of Harris’s guilt.
“It’s just sad and tragic that this person who was admired seems to have been a perpetrator,” he said.
There could be more to come.
A number of women have come forward since Harris first appeared in court and UK child protection charity NSPCC says it’s received calls from 13 people who claim they fell prey to the performer.
The Metropolitan police has confirmed a number of new allegations are being considered.
Harris is the second person to be convicted under the UK’s Operation Yewtree which was established after the Jimmy Savile sex scandal.
British tabloids are reporting Savile once took Harris on a tour of the Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.
Alison Pink, who was abused by the notorious BBC DJ there as a teenager, says the visit was timed as female patients were getting undressed at night “so he and Rolf could look at them”.
It’s claimed another Harris victim wrote to Buckingham Palace in 2005 when the artist was painting a portrait of the Queen.
The woman allegedly wrote: “He ruined my life. You need to know what kind of man you’ve let near the Queen.”
Harris sat unmoving in the dock at Southwark Crown Court on Monday as the foreman read out “guilty” 12 times.
Afterwards, the 84-year-old disappeared into a small room with his legal team before being joined by his wife, Alwen, and daughter Bindi.
The one-time royal favourite was crestfallen as he walked slowly from court holding hands with Alwen and Bindi.
He refused to answer questions or apologise to his victims.
Outside the court, deputy chief crown prosecutor Jenny Hopkins praised the victims who courageously took on the star.
“Rolf Harris used his status and position as a world-famous children’s entertainer to sexually assault young girls over a period spanning 18 years,” Ms Hopkins told a large media pack.
DCI Michael Orchard said Harris committed offences “in plain sight of people as he thought his celebrity status placed him above the law”.
The Australian even featured in an educational video warning against the dangers of child abuse in the mid-1980s when he’d already been a sex pest for 15 years.
The Kids Can Say No video featured Harris and kids singing: “You run your own body, let me run mine.”
Harris was convicted of 12 indecent assaults against four girls in the UK between 1968 and 1986. The main victim was a childhood friend of Bindi.
The jury rejected the entertainer’s claim they had a 10-year consensual affair that only started when she turned 18.
Harris was also found guilty of assaulting Australian woman Tonya Lee at a London pub in 1986 when she was 15.
He “forcefully” assaulted a seven or eight-year-old girl in the late 1960s at a community centre near Portsmouth and “firmly” groped a teenage waitress at a celebrity event in Cambridge in the mid-1970s.
Another six women gave supporting evidence during the trial that Harris abused them in Australia, New Zealand and Malta between 1969 and 1991.
Harris wasn’t charged over those alleged incidents because they occurred outside the UK.
Jurors didn’t get to hear from a further nine women who claim the entertainer harassed them, including one alleged victim who says she was groped on live TV.
After his conviction another woman went public.
Louise Anton, from Perth, said in 2008 she objected to being groped by Harris at a function and the veteran entertainer allegedly replied: “Yeah, but it feels good, dunnit?”.
Harris, who remains on bail, will return to Southwark one final time on Friday to be sentenced.
IMAGE: Rolf Harris found guilty of 12 indecent assault charges. (By: Ben A. Pruchnie, Getty Images News)
