Rolf Harris cleared of three sexual assault charges at Southwark Crown Court
The disgraced entertainer remains in prison after he was convicted of 12 other sex offences in 2014
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Your support makes all the difference.Disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris has been cleared of three sexual assault charges but he could face a retrial on another four allegations.
It took the jury at Southwark Crown Court just under a week to find the 86-year-old Australian not guilty of three of the seven alleged assaults said to have taken place over four decades.
He may be retried on four counts of indecent assault which the jurors were unable to decide on.
Harris, whose career has encompassed work as a musician, singer-songwriter, composer, comedian, actor, painter and television personality, did not react as the not guilty verdicts were read out by the jury forewoman.
The panel found he was not guilty of indecently assaulting a young autograph hunter when she visited him at a radio station in Portsmouth with her mother at the end of the 1970s.
The jury also decided he was not guilty of groping a blind and disabled woman at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London in 1977; and not guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in her 40s after the filming of a TV show in 2004.
Harris did not give evidence during the second trial. His legal team claimed his accusers had invented their attacks for compensation.
After the jury returned their verdicts, Judge Alistair McCreath QC ruled it would be “oppressive” to make them deliberate further.
The prosecution asked for one week to decide whether to apply for a retrial on the other four counts.
Harris, remains in prison after a 2014 trial saw him convicted of 12 sex offences against four female victims, one as young as seven or eight.
Judge McCreath told Harris he would be remanded in custody for next week’s hearing, which he must be present for but not necessarily in person, to which he replied: “Thank you.”
He is accused of putting his hand up the skirt of a 14-year-old girl at a youth music event in London in 1971. Another alleged victim claims he grabbed her breasts and slid his hand between her legs touching her crotch over her jeans while she was a volunteer at a celebrity sports events.
He also allegedly asked a 13-year-old girl, “Do you often get molested on a Saturday morning?”, as he slid his hand under her top after a children’s TV show in 1983 and accused of making a sexual comment while stroking the bare skin of a 19-year-old’s lower back at a London music studio in 2002.
For much of the trial Harris appeared in a “virtual dock” via a video link from HMP Stafford. He was transferred to the real dock near the end of the trial.
His wife and daughter, who supported him throughout his first trial, were not seen in court.
His defence team said he was expected to be automatically released from prison for the sentence he is currently serving on 19 July.
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