Rolf Harris trial: Harris prosecutor calls first witness

Rolf Harris is accused of abusing a teenager in Hawaii. Photo / AP

The prosecution in the Rolf Harris indecent assault trial is set to call its first witness overnight.

Harris is accused of indecently assaulting four girls, one as young as 7 or 8, between 1968 and 1986 in Britain. He denies the charges.

Prosecutor Sasha Wass, QC, was to call her first witness at London's Southwark Crown Court.

The first week of the trial ended explosively with Wass opening the Crown's case by reading to the jury a letter Harris had written to the father of one of the main complainants against him.

Wass said the complainant was a close friend of Harris' daughter, Bindi, who joined the family on an overseas holiday in the late 1970s. The entertainer allegedly abused the then 13-year-old for the first time in Hawaii after she had taken a shower at their hotel and was wrapped in a towel.

Harris is said to have indecently touched the teenager then and on subsequent occasions both in Hawaii and Australia.

When the girl returned to London after the holiday she started drinking and within a few years was a teenage alcoholic. Wass said the victim was subsequently abused by Harris over the next 15 years.

In 1997, the court heard, Harris wrote a letter to the complainant's father admitting he had sexual relations with his daughter, but not when she was underage.

"When I see the misery I have caused [her] I am sickened by myself," Harris wrote.

- AAP