The 87-year-old, wearing a grey suit and dark tie, appeared by video link on Monday in Southwark Crown Court before Judge Deborah Taylor for a trial set down for two weeks.
Harris faces four charges of groping teenage girls at public events in England between 1971 and 1983, with three complainants involved.
He has has been granted the right to appear by video-link due to his age and state of health.
As prospective jurors were called Harris waved his hand to indicate he had no objections to them being selected after seeing them on a video screen.
Judge Taylor told the empanelled jury that they must start the case “with a blank page in your mind” and must avoid seeing or reading media reports on Harris or seeking information on him on the internet.
“The only material you can consider is the evidence given in this courtroom,” she said.
Two of the indecent assault charges relate to allegations Harris groped the breast of a 16-year-old girl and ran his hand up between her thighs in the back of a taxi at a celebrity sports event in Cambridge in 1978.
Another charge is that he put his hand up the skirt of a 14-year-old girl and touched her on the vagina as she sought his autograph at a music festival in London in 1971.
The other charge is that he groped the breast of a 13-year-old girl at the BBC Television Centre in 1983 and said to her, “Do you often get molested on a Saturday morning?”
Rolf Harris slipped his hand up a schoolgirl’s skirt after she asked for an autograph during an awards bash at the Lyceum Theatre, a court heard today.
The entertainer, 87, used his celebrity status to molest fans as young as 13 in a string of sexual assaults against women and girls, jurors heard.
The musician allegedly groped four young girls, aged between 13 and 16, during sex attacks at locations including the West End’s Lyceum Theatre, during filming for ITV’s Star Games and in the green room of the BBC’s Saturday Superstore.
He pulled the 14-year-old girl onto his lap and slipped his hand up her skirt as her father stood nearby at the Lyceum, in London’s West End, on 10 July 1971, it was said.
Harris, awarded an MBE in 1968, an OBE in 1977 and a CBE in 2006 – also sexually assaulted a 16-year-old schoolgirl following an appearance at TV show Star Games in Cambridge between May and July 1978, it is said.
The Australian is further alleged to have groped a 13-year-old girl who had been invited to join youngsters in the audience of BBC show Saturday Superstore on New Year’s Eve 1983.
Harris listened to proceedings via video link at Southwark Crown Court.
He denies four indecent assaults against three teenage complainants.
Prosecutor Jonathan Rees, QC, told the court the allegations were all similar in nature, with each complainant alleging that Harris ‘groped them briefly at public events’.
Harris does not dispute being at the events where the indecent assaults are said to have taken place but ‘denies deliberately touching any of the complainants in an indecent manner’.
Source: Rolf Harris faces groping trial in London | Perth Now
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