I suspect he was a psychopath. Some of the things he said, did and lack of emotion suggest so.

Sorry, either you are trolling or I hope you have a nasty accident with a loofah and some WD40.

Not trolling at all. Just completely unconvinced by the statements the alleged victims have made.

If Harris had genuinely interfered with kids then I'd be happy to hear of his death in jail. On reading the accounts in the newspaper from the victims I don't think he should have even faced trial.

If you've heard compelling arguments that prove that Harris is deserving of his shaming as a paedophile then please share them. I haven't seen it in the articles I've read.

No doubt the jury didn't just read a newspaper report of the proceedings....

Aye, maybe.

It'd be pretty radical, a jury basing a verdict on evidence as opposed to what's been written in The Daily Mail.

Might happen...

One of his guilty verdicts was his alleged groping of a 13 or 14 year old girl in 1975.

Harris said he was unaware of ever being in Cambridge until 4 years ago.

Video evidence was then shown of a TV show IN 1978 of a Star Games show taped in Cambridge. That proved him to be a liar and proved her claims, according to the prosecution.

She said the show was It's a Celebrity Knockout in 1975. He was alleged to have felt her ass.

She couldn't remember whether she was 13 or 16 when her ass was felt in broad daylight by a TV star with hundreds of people around. She couldn't remember that it was Star Games and not It's a Celebrity Knockout.

Just how do you prove that you didn't feel the ass of a 13 year old girl, who actually turned out to be 16, 40 years ago?

If you're happy with this conviction then that's your right. I think it is utter BS. If he punched the girl in the face and broke her nose the statute of limitations would say there's no way he could be placed on trial. Touching her butt though, hell yeah that's serious.

I can totally understand murder, rape and GENUINE child abuse always being open to prosecution. But this 5hit is utter effing nonsense.

So a number of very similar accusations by totally unconnected women doesn't mean anything? You may have a point if it was one case - but it wasn't.

you'd be surprised..no shocked at some outcomes from jury's even given firm concrete evidence.
An example this year was when a jury were swayed by the 'guilty' person being a church go-er and cancer specialist and the person killed an 'inexperienced' 'foreign' cyclist.
Yes, not guilty was the jury's decision, yet the killer was overtaking on a blind bend at speed and ploughed straight into her & her fiance (whom was seriously injured) whiilst they were cycling along minding their own business.
The defendants team had the disgusting temerity to partially blame the fiance for buying her a new bike..then the defendant said the girl 'wobbled' (though was still on the correct side of the road). The judge nor CPS questioned vital aspects and the jury basically said it was the girls fault for wobbling that killed her



So as much as I don't know what the true evidence was in the Harris case (An apology letter to a father of a victim apparently came up) & personally I have zero feelings about the case and those involved as a whole I still do not think that the jury system we have is absolutely without its faults and/or fallibilities.
Conscious bias has being shown time & again in courts, even by judges confirmed by their innacurate/bias words.

As for the CPS, not fit for purpose.

Ok so that's one of the twelve charges you've dealt with and a fairly minor one at that. Where do you stand on the charges that involved digital penetration of, and oral sex with, underage girls ?

Okay, if you look at the charges closely you'll see that he doesn't have charges of that with underage girls, there is just the one girl, his daughters friend. All the other charges, apart from one, are "fairly minor".

The other one was an allegation of putting his hand in the crotch of an 8 year old girl.

IMO that charge is so serious that he shouldn't have been tried for that while he was tried with the utter BS merchants. If he's genuinely guilty of that crime then TBH I'm a willing advocate of leaving him in a crowded room for 15 minutes while all the guards fill in their paperwork.

But IMO they wouldn't have been able to secure a conviction in a standalone trial for that, so instead they bury this ultra serious charge under a pile of compensation seekers and get the conviction that way.

On his daughters friend, which took up 7 of the charges. She says he molested her when she was 13 and it carried on until she was 19. He admits he had a full sexual relationship with her that started when she was 18 and carried for nearly a decade until he moved on to some other woman he was having an affair with.

I can't defend him for having an affair with his daughters friend. He's an utter c*** for doing that. But I do have a problem with believing her claims of being molested by him on holiday when she was 13 and then going on to have a seemingly consensual full sex affair with him when she was an adult. She admits asking Harris for help over a family argument when she was an adult and that simply seems unbelievable given that she's now claiming he abused her for nearly all her teenage years.

Like I said in my first post, he's painted as an evil paedophile in the papers and on TV. IMO neither the charges nor the words of the alleged victims support that. My suspicion is that rather than this being the unmasking of an evil serial child molester it's simply a miscarriage of justice by accusing a group of men of 40 year old crimes that it is simply impossible to defend themselves against.

IMO every single woman claiming to be out for justice will end up with compensation settlements in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds. Genuine survivors of real sexual abuse deserve payouts like that, along with sympathy and compassion. A 16 year old girl who possibly had her felt for 2 seconds simply doesn't.

It isn't impossible to defend themselves against though, or else Bill Roache and DLT would have been convicted. They managed to mount successful defences against their accusers. In the Harris case there must have been evidence shown to the jury that hasn't yet been made public. The judge's full sentencing remarks will be published sometime tomorrow which will contain much more details about the offences. Until those full details are published its difficult to say what the weight of evidence was against Harris.

Wrong choice of words on my part. It's not impossible to get a jury to give a not guilty verdict. It is impossible to prove that you didn't commit the crime though.

Is there anyone who really believes DLT was innocent of everything he was charged with?

On Harris. The charge in Cambridge from what I read was that he was guilty of an offence that took place between 1/1/75 and 1/1/76. From video evidence that emerged during the trial, and was reportedly crucial, it emerged that the alleged offence took place in 1978. Is the English legal system so loose that it can convict a man of a charge in one year which is that proved to be out by 3 years? I'm not a lawyer, my total experience with the law is appearing as a witness over some trivial nonsense, but that seems to be a blatant error that convictions get thrown out for. I doubt it will be thrown out for a convicted "paedo" like Harris though, even if it is completely unsafe.

I just wish the awesome CPS and we have now were around for all the kids who were murdered by the satanic cults in the 80s when I was growing up

Rolf Harris must've retained the est legal counsel in the UK

[url=http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sentencing-remarks-mr-j-sweeney-r-v-harris.pdfJudge's sentencing remarks. [uNot[/u a newspaper report[/url

no, he cant be convicted Lord God AHole said so!

5years and 9 months is 20 years too few for me, he stole the childhoods and innocence of so many, the fact he'll be out in 2 and a half years disgusts me, I am sure he'll have some new frineds inside.

Amazing isn't it, defraud the VAT/HMRC officers and you get 8 years plus, touch up children and you get a few years...!

No you don't, not if you do it now - if you read the judges comments then that is highlighted very well.

have missed that part, care to expand?

It's got to be based on the law and sentences as they were at the time though.

Yes it's probably not enough, but he's 84, ill according to the judge's remarks (and his records and a report will be sent to the Prison Service, suggesting it isn't a minor thing) so I'd guess he's unlikely to see the light of day again.

does that make any difference, the fact he might die in jail just means he's going to be more expensive to keep, he should have to pay for his day to day care and needs, sorry, but child molestation is the absolute lowest. I can almost forgive murder as a crime of passion, but touching up kids, there can be no reasonable mitigation.

He was sentenced based on when the offences took place. Had they have happened more recently he may well have been looking at a much larger sentence.

It should also be noted that sentencing guidelines are just that - guidelines for the judges to decide upon the length of the sentence, the sentencing guidelines for magistrates for example is available to browse on the web, search for "the bench book" and you'll find that it contains dozens upon dozens of pages of guidelines for sentencing all sorts of offences with all sorts of variations depending on the circumstances of each individual case, its not as simple as "He carried a knife therefore its five years" despite what the tabloids would like everyone to believe.

I would imagine that the guidelines for High Court judges would be similar and reading the judgement its obvious that he took into account quite a bit of mitigation and that he was a little frustrated that he couldn't apply today's tariffs.

All in all I think its a reasonable result.

So, if it was one of yours, you'd feel the same?

Whether it's 5 years or 25 years, his life outside of prison will be a sentence in itself. If he lives to see the day he is due for release that is. No one will want to be associated with him, his reputation is now in tatters.

A friend of mine who owns an art gallery only commented the other day that a woman had been in to buy a painting to replace an original Rolf Harris painting she'd taken down in light of the trial. We were looking at Rolf Harris artworks for sale on ebay today and one seller has added to his listing of 3 prints - *** REDUCED IN PRICE - THESE NEED TO GO ***

Nope, but thats not how the law works, victims statements are a small part of sentencing and can be taken into account but will still not affect the overwhelming reason why historical sex abuse trials result in what some perceive to be small sentences - the fact that they are sentenced according to guidelines prevailing at the time of the offences is the overwhelming reason.

In the case of Rolf Harris I must admit to being slightly in agreement with LGJM in that one of the victims has claimed in her statement that the whole of her life has been ruined by what Harris did to her, her alcoholism and the fact that she has never held down a job in her life so far is all blamed on what Harris did to her - and yet she allowed the abuse to continue for several years and on several occasions and on into an age when she certainly could act for herself as an adult - for me that doesn't seem to add up and your mantra of "personal responsibility" could easily be applied here.

I agree and the victim statement from the one who was 7 or 8 at the time is hard to believe as it apparently at took away here childhood, left her an angry child and unable to trust men. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't but how you can connect the two is hard to see. She was at most 8 years old, what happened was a one off (and yes highly improper and disgusting) grope but I can't help thinking if you are asked to say how it affected you then you will think of something to say.

The judge has treated the statement as the gospel truth though which I also find disturbing as a general principle. Because the accused has been fond guilty the victim's impact statement is taken as read without challenge.