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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Entertainment
Kate Lally

This Morning's Vanessa Feltz says she was groped by Rolf Harris on live TV

Vanessa Felt told This Morning viewers of how she was groped by Rolf Harris on live TV during her time on Channel 4's The Big Breakfast.

Vanessa, 61, said she cut to an advert break in a desperate bid to get away from the convicted paedophile. She retold her harrowing experience to hosts Alison Hammond and Craig Jones on Wednesday's This Morning, after the news of the disgraced children's TV presenter's death this week.

Harris died aged 93, after being diagnosed with neck cancer.

READ MORE: ITV Dancing On Ice issue presenter update after Phillip Schofield axe

The Australian-born TV presenter was a family favourite for decades before being convicted of a string of indecent assaults in June 2014. These included one on an eight-year-old autograph hunter, two on girls in their early teens and a catalogue of abuse against his daughter's friend over 16 years.

Harris was jailed for five years and nine months after being convicted of 12 assaults which took place between 1968 and 1986. In May 2017, he was formally cleared of four unconnected historical sex offences, which he had denied.

Later the same year, one of the 12 indecent assault convictions was overturned by the Court of Appeal. Harris was released on licence from HMP Stafford on May 19 2017, less than three years after his sentence began.

Vanessa said he was on The Big Breakfast bed beside her back in the 90s. She said: "The noise [that can be heard] was my dress being crunched between Rolf’s fingers as he started at my ankles and began to bring the dress further and further and further up.

"I'm on live TV and his wife is right there, and what could I do? I can't tell him to stop, I can't bat his hand away".

Vanessa also said she knows "lots and lots of famous women" who confided in her that they had similar experiences with Harris. She said he spent his career "hiding in plain sight".

This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV and ITVX

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