Rolf Harris trial deliberations drag on

Rolf Harris arrives at Southwark Crown Court in London. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
Rolf Harris arrives at Southwark Crown Court in London. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
Jury deliberations will drag into a sixth day at the Rolf Harris child sex abuse trial in London.

Jurors have been considering their verdicts in the case for almost 23 hours.

They were sent home on Wednesday afternoon after again failing to reach consensus.

Justice Nigel Sweeney said the six men and six women shouldn't contact each other overnight and would restart deliberations on Thursday morning.

The judge first sent the jury out last Thursday afternoon.

Harris has spent each day since waiting for news at Southwark Crown Court supported by his daughter, Bindi, and a small group of other family and friends.

The 84-year-old is charged with 12 counts of indecent assault against four girls in the UK between 1968 and 1986.

The entertainer's main accuser is a childhood friend of Bindi.

She claims the Australian abused her from the age of 13 but he insists the pair had a consensual affair that started after she turned 18.

The second complainant is Australian woman Tonya Lee, who alleges Harris assaulted her when she travelled to London in 1986 with a youth theatre group. She was 15 at the time.

The two other complainants claim the celebrity groped them near Portsmouth in the late 1960s and in Cambridge in the mid-1970s. The women were seven or eight and a teenager, respectively, at the time.

Another six women gave supporting evidence during the seven-week trial that Harris abused them in Australia, New Zealand and Malta between 1969 and 1991.

Prosecutor Sasha Wass QC told the court the accounts by the 10 women were "chillingly similar", which showed Harris was a "sinister pervert".

Harris denies touching any of the women inappropriately. He told the court in late May: "They are all making it up."

The trial continues.

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