That is truly outrageous. How can the CCRC possibly consider a verdict safe if the jury were given faulty evidence?
If I remember correctly, the goalposts were shifted to favour a couple of complainants in Rolf Harris's first trial. One (Wendy Wild/Rosher) first claimed he'd molested her in an autograph queue around the time of the 1969 moon landing. He proved he was in Australia. So she then "remembered" it was around the time of her birthday, for which he was unable to provide an "alibi". (This conviction was later quashed on appeal thanks to the efforts of the new defence team involving Stephen Vullo KC and private investigator William Merritt.) One of the accusers who were allowed to give evidence but in relation to whom he couldn't be charged because they were claiming he'd abused them outside the UK also "remembered" he'd abused her around the time of her birthday. (Things like birthdays, Christmas, etc. must be so easy to "remember" no matter the year and handy pegs on which to hang an accusation.) Another of the main accusers initially claimed she was 14 when he supposedly groped her left buttock at a TV event in a Cambridge park, then was allowed to change the year to three years later, the event and park to match a TV event he'd attended in Cambridge. In one of the interviews she gave with her identity concealed after the verdict she said "her recollection of being abused by Harris is so vivid it feels "like it was five minutes ago"" and that it was such a significant event in her life that she "was unable to say whether she feels she will ever be able to recover from the abuse" - but had a story that shifted by three years.
www.itv.com/news/2014-07-04/victim-rolf-...tage-of-his-position (this article has been cropped, it used to be longer)
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