Rolf Harris: Hiding In Plain Sight: Episode 1 (ITV Tuesday 31 October 2023)

Rolf Harris: Hiding In Plain Sight: Episode 1 airs Tuesday 31 October 2023 on ITV.

What is this episode about

Using exclusive testimony from those who knew Rolf Harris best and never-before-seen archival footage, this two-part documentary reveals the extraordinary truth behind his meteoric rise and fall as a national treasure.

Harris was known and trusted as “the nation’s favourite uncle,” but he had been sexually assaulting children and young women behind closed doors for years, betraying his family and the British public who had grown up with him.

Even though it has been over a decade since Harris’ arrest, his alleged victims continue to speak out about the effects his assaults had on them and the pressures that led them to testify against him in court.

The films feature new, exclusive testimony that details Harris’ decades-long grooming of his daughter Bindi’s childhood friend beginning when she was 13 years old and show the evidence that ultimately led to his downfall.

Harris’s return home and the recent allegations of abuse in Australia raise pertinent questions about how the criminal justice system handles such cases. Is justice served in the eyes of his accusers?

Harris became a household name on Saturday nights in the 1960s and beyond, as shown in the premiere. Former BBC chairman Lord Grade says: “In those days, you didn’t get a primetime Saturday night slot on BBC One unless you were able to draw millions and millions of people, and Rolf was an absolute sensation. He was a big asset for the BBC… Because the audience very quickly trusted him, they knew that if they committed an hour to watch Rolf Harris, they were going to be entertained.”

Harris’s actions behind the scenes, however, showed something very different. At the age of 16, alleged victim Karen Gardner accompanied Harris to the Cambridge set of the television show Star Games in 1978. She carried his bag, and says: “For the first couple of hours, he was lovely. And you find yourself thinking, ‘Oh yeah, you know, that’s what Harris is like.’”

She says he assaulted her three times in plain sight in the space of 35 minutes: “He was paying me attention, he was saying how great I had been, and he hugged me, and that’s when it happened. And it was humiliating and degrading and awful and your blood turns to concrete. You can’t believe this is happening. And I have no doubt what was happening. My period was due, and my breasts were very tender, and I had no doubt what he’d done was deliberate.”

Australian make-up artist Suzi Dent claims he sexually assaulted her in 1985 while they worked together on a show on which he was a guest. At the time, he was also advocating for an end to child abuse. In the make-up room, she claims he groped her every time she came close to applying powder to his face: “When I looked into his face, he just looked back at me with such a lascivious look, that made me feel really uncomfortable because I all of a sudden saw who he was. He was letting me know that he was in full control, and he could do whatever he wanted. He knew he could touch me with impunity. He knew I wasn’t going to say anything back because [you] don’t upset the talent… That would have lost me my job and my career.”

Harris’s star continued to rise from the 1960s until the 2000s, even as the women and girls he assaulted felt silenced and powerless to speak out. His renditions of older rock songs brought him widespread acclaim and chart success in the ’90s. Chris Brosnan, or “Bear” as he was known to Harris, was a member of the band and later became his promoter. Chris learned that a rift in the family had been caused by rumours that Harris had an inappropriate relationship with his daughter’s close friend: “I actually took it up with Rolf and, you know, and he looked at me, cut me off, and he said, ‘Bear, we’ve all made mistakes in life, and I’ve made some pretty big mistakes, and let’s just leave it there.’”

Due to his fame and her friendship with Bindi, the victim (Victim A for legal purposes) delayed reporting Harris’ abuse of her from the age of 13 until she was an adult. Her psychotherapist, Chip Somers, says that she turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Chip claims Harris’s message to her became increasingly clear as their relationship deepened: “She is also quite clearly told, ‘This is something that you cannot talk about. Do not tell anybody about this. This is our little secret. I am a powerful person, I have money, so tread carefully.’”

This is an Optomen Television production for ITVX.

Rolf Harris

Series 1 Episode 1

When can we see the episode

Rolf Harris: Hiding In Plain Sight: Episode 1 airs Tuesday 31 October 2023 at 9:00pm on ITV

Featured Image Credit: ITV