http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28112605
The story behind Rolf Harris's child safety film
The TV entertainer Rolf Harris, who has been found guilty of 12 indecent assaults against girls, once made a video telling children how to avoid sexual abuse. The film is an extraordinary example of hiding in plain sight.
In 1982 Rolf Harris visited a youth theatre in Vancouver, Canada. A workshop taking place there addressed the issue of child abuse, in a way that was designed to advise the potential victims themselves.
The Green Thumb Theatre's Feeling Yes, Feeling No programme put into simple language the best ways to ward off unwanted attention, how to look for signs of inappropriateness and report sexual crimes. Harris, impressed by what he had seen, decided he would make a film along similar lines when he got home.
But Dennis Foon, who wrote the script for Feeling Yes, Feeling No when he was artistic director at the Green Thumb Theatre, did not know Harris had imitated his concept, formulated in the late 1970s, until he was approached for this feature following the guilty verdicts.
"It's amazing," he says. "I had no idea he'd done this. He plagiarised what we did here. What we set up here was a whole programme, designed to ensure everyone in the community was aware of the problem and how to deal with children's complaints. After all, it's a situation created by adults."
Harris's 20-minute video, called Kids Can Say No, came out in 1985. The last of the offences of which Harris was found guilty earlier this week was not committed until 1986.
"It's very significant that he wanted to do the film and actively pushed to offer his services," says David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University. "It was probably a reaction to the feelings of guilt about what he was doing at the time.
"It's also a case of hiding in plain sight. He was possibly trying to cover up what he was up to by doing a film about the subject. Perhaps, also, in his mind, it was a kind of penance for the abuse he was committing," says Wilson, a former prison governor responsible for a sex offender rehabilitation programme.
Kids Can Say No features Harris talking to a group of four, seven and eight-year-olds on London's Hampstead Heath. It was promoted as demonstrating "situations where children might be in danger from people they know and trust, as well as from strangers".
The film starts with a jingle. "My body's nobody's body but mine. You run your own body. Let me run mine," Harris sings with the children.
(continued,
never trust any man who likes brats...) 