Juror 'falls asleep' at Rolf Harris trial

A female witness at the trial of Rolf Harris had to temporarily halt her testimony today to alert the court that a male juror appeared to have fallen asleep.

Mr Justice Sweeney asked him if he was all right and if any of the evidence should be repeated, but the juror said 'no'.

The court heard earlier that TV star Harris groped a teenage girl after she saw him crouched on all fours barking at a dog while "playing up" to a crowd.

The woman, giving evidence from behind a screen at Southwark Crown Court, said she was working as a waitress at a celebrity event in Cambridge when she was 13 or 14 in 1975 or 1976, and went outside when she and her colleagues heard the animal noises.

"He was on all fours and there was a terrier-type dog in front of him and they were barking at each other," the woman said.

"There was a small semi-circle of people around him laughing and Rolf Harris was playing up to the crowd."

She said she felt "awestruck" at seeing the celebrity, who she recognised "instantly".

"It was quite a funny scene to behold."

The woman, who is now 52, told the jury of six men and six women that Harris put his arm around her, and moved his hand up and down her back, before squeezing her bottom.

With her voice wavering, she said: "I can't remember the exact words but he made some motion to me 'come up', and I can see it in my mind's eye as clear as if it was happening now. He came up and put his arm around my left shoulder.

"It was quite a firm hold. I just stood there. I couldn't believe what was going on, this famous person putting his arm around me.

"To start it was a very nervous but a good feeling, however his hand then moved and his hand went up and down my back and his hand went over my bottom and it was very firm."

She told the court she had her back to the white marquee where the event was taking place, and so the crowd could not see what was happening.

The woman said: "I was too young to really understand the term but it was basically like groping. It was very firm and he squeezed it a few times.

"I was just completely frozen. I knew it was wrong. I couldn't move."

She said she was "extremely embarrassed" and moved away as soon as Harris let go of her.

"I don't know why I was embarrassed. I think when you are a child and you have someone doing that to you it feels very awkward and you don't know how to react."

The alleged victim said a colleague remarked on how she looked "very red" afterwards, but she did not fully explain what had happened.

"It was the 1970s and things like that weren't really talked about. I think it would be very different if it happened today.

"I didn't want to talk about it, it was horrible."

The woman said she contacted the police after the revelations about Jimmy Savile in October 2012 and when it was publicly revealed that Harris had been arrested, because she wanted to back up any other alleged victims.

Earlier, the jury heard from another alleged victim who broke down in tears as she told the jury the entertainer assaulted her "out of nowhere" in a packed community centre.

The woman claims Harris molested her when she went to get his autograph at the popular site near Portsmouth at one point between 1968 and 1970.

She told the jury that when she got to the front of the queue, Harris crouched down, signed her piece of paper and then touched her bottom and private parts.

"He was looking at me, smiling, and I was smiling, looking excited, and suddenly out of nowhere I felt his hand go down the back and up between my legs," the woman told the court.

She said she thought the first time might have been an accident, but claimed he did it a second time "aggressively".

"It was very quick," the woman said. "In fact so quick that I thought: 'What's happened?'.

"The first time I thought, no, not deliberate. I thought: 'What's going on?', because there were a lot of people around and I didn't process what had happened.

"He seemed such a nice man, I thought probably it was just an accident."

But then Harris allegedly touched her again, "aggressively and forcefully".

"It didn't matter if it was going to hurt me or not. It felt very agressive and I knew that it wasn't an accident," she said.

The woman, who is 52, said she felt she had moved out of her body after the alleged abuse.

"I think I went into some sort of moment where you are just out of your body and you're just thinking: 'Whoa, I need to get away'," she said.

Breaking down, the woman told the court she "wasn't the same child" afterwards.

When asked how long she had memories of it, she said: "Forever. I can hear a song or something from that era and go straight back. I can shut my eyes and go straight back."

Harris, in a light grey checked jacket, with light grey trousers, a white shirt and yellow tie, listened impassively from the glass-walled dock as the woman gave evidence.

His wife Alwen did not attend court today, but other family members watched from the public gallery.

The woman said she remembered the alleged incident taking place around the time of the moon landing, and that Harris had performed Two Little Boys at the event.

She had not seen an autograph book before, but a friend gave her a piece of paper so she could queue up with other fans.

She said: "He leaned into me and wrote on it, and I took the piece of paper and the next I know I felt his hand.

"He was very, very close, he was leaning into me. I thought he was being accommodating to a small child."

The woman said she could not call out about what had happened.

"I understood that it was wrong. I wanted to scream out: 'What are you doing?', but it didn't come out.

"I didn't know how to put it into words. He scared me because he was looking at me all the time. His eyes were fixed and I kind of backed away, and I sat on a chair trying to process what was going on and looking at him carrying on as if nothing had happened."

She recalled Harris having "big hairy hands".

The court heard that the woman told her family, husband, friends and a counsellor about the claimed abuse.

She said when she told her husband, "I said Rolf Harris was a dirty old man because he had put his hand on my bottom and between my legs when I was a little girl."

Defending, Sonia Woodley QC put it to the woman that Rolf Harris had never been to the community centre in question, but the woman denied this.

Ms Woodley said if the alleged victim was indecently touched, that it was not Harris who did it.

She told the woman: "If it happened, I am suggesting to you it was not Rolf Harris who did it."

The witness replied: "It was Rolf Harris."

The court heard from a man called David Thomas James, who says he visited the community centre to get autographs for his children, who were aged 10 and 12, when Harris came there after opening a shop in around 1967.

Ms Woodley put it to him that Harris had only been there to open a shop in Portsmouth in 1978, and later visited in 1983, but the witness denied this.

A second man also said he remembered Harris visiting the area in the late 1960s, as well as various other high profile figures including actor Sid James, television presenter and musician Roy Castle and politician Margaret Thatcher.

Harris is accused of a total of 12 counts of indecent assault on four alleged victims between 1968 and 1986, all of which he denies.