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The TV host, artist and musician was convicted in 2014 of a string of indecent assaults between the late ’60s and mid-’80s.
By Alex Ritman
U.K. Correspondent
Rolf Harris, the Australian entertainer who became a beloved fixture on British TV in the 1980s and 1990s only to be put in prison after a string of indecent assaults, has died. He was 93. The BBC confirmed news of his death.
Following a trial in 2014, Harris was found guilty of a string of assaults on four girls between 1968 and 1986. He was imprisoned for five years and nine months. He was released in 2017, having served three-and-a-half years but never apologized to his victims.
Before his crimes became public, Harris had been a well-known and hugely popular figure in the entertainment industry in Britain and his native Australia for more than half a century.
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After arriving as a 21-year-old in London in the early 1950s, he would go on to host a number of children’s TV shows — including Rolf’s Cartoon Club — and became a regular performer at the Glastonbury music festival. He would famously paint a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II to mark her 80th birthday and was made an OBE, MBE and CBE, alongside being awarded a BAFTA Fellowship over the years. All of these honors were stripped following his convictions.
“You have shown no remorse for your crimes at all,” the judge said during the trial. “Your reputation now lies in ruins, but you have no one to blame but yourself.”
After his release from prison he returned to the U.K. home that he shared with his wife, Alwen, whom he had married in 1958. Harris would never appear on TV again.
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