Convicted child sex offender and former internationally renowned children’s entertainer Rolf Harris has died at the age of 93, his family confirmed on Tuesday.
Harris, a native Australian, had a successful, lengthy career in Britain as a children’s entertainer, making his first appearance on the BBC in 1953, The Guardian noted. He became a household name for generations of British families, and earned multiple chivalric honors between the years of 1968 and 2006 for his contributions to entertainment in the Commonwealth.
All of that was before he was arrested in 2013 serial sexual abuse of young girls. In 2014 he was sentenced to five years and nine months in jail on convictions related to 12 indecent assaults on four young women and girls, though he was accused of abusing many others, including an eight-year-old girl, BBC reported.
the fact the sun just flat out calls rolf harris a paedo in their news alert 😭 anyway he can rot. pic.twitter.com/KSe6NPdVCz
— ethan 😼 | 🇱🇺 (@LlZTRUSS) May 23, 2023
Other victims included two girls who were in their early teens and a friend of his daughter, the outlet continued. The abuse against his daughter’s friend reportedly went on for more than 16 years, per Bloomberg.
He was said to have shown “no remorse for his crimes at all” during his trial, the judge stated. (RELATED: Shocker! Jeffrey Epstein Was Apparently Pals With Woody Allen!)
“This is to confirm that Rolf Harris recently died peacefully surrounded by family and friends and has now been laid to rest. They ask that you respect their privacy. No further comment will be made,” the family’s lawyer said in a statement.
Harris’ cause of death is unknown, but it has been reported that he had suffered from ill health for many years. He was stripped of all his honors prior to his death.