Rolf Harris trial: Jury discharged after failing to reach verdicts on indecent assault charges

Entertainer and musician, 87, denies assaulting three teenagers in the 1970s and 1980s

Rolf Harris leaves Southwark Crown Court after the jury was sent out to consider its verdicts last Friday (PA)

The jury in Rolf Harris's trial at Southwark Crown Court has been discharged after failing to reach verdicts on four indecent assault charges.

The entertainer and musician, 87, denies four counts of indecent assault relating to three teenagers, including a 13-year-old, who allege he molested them in the 1970s and 1980s.

The jury was sent out to consider their verdicts at 2pm on 26 May.

After deliberating for just under five hours, the jury said they were unable to reach verdicts on any of the four charges and were discharged by Judge Deborah Taylor.

Harris denies four charges of indecent assault against three women between 1971 and 1983 (PA)

It was a retrial for Harris on three of the four counts, after a jury in a previous trial at the same court in January and February failed to reach verdicts.

The Australia-born former television star was freed from HMP Stafford earlier in May.

Harris is accused of groping a schoolgirl after he appeared in a broadcast of the BBC's Saturday Superstore in 1983.

He is also alleged to have indecently touched a 14-year-old girl in 1971 after she asked him for an autograph at a music event for children in London.

Harris is also accused of twice groping a third teenage girl after being paid £100 to appear on ITV celebrity show Star Games in 1978, and telling her she was "a little bit irresistible", the court heard.

Jurors have been told Harris had already been convicted and sentenced for other offences in 2014.

They were told Harris did not give evidence at this trial because he could not remember the alleged incidents and has always insisted his innocence of all claims against him.

Press Association