Matthew Steeples details his experiences with the trolls supporting Rolf Harris as his daughter, Bindi Nicholls, strangely contradicts herself on the Internet in a rant in support of this convicted paedophile
It is perfectly legitimate for a daughter to defend her father but in taking to the Internet to comment on a Change.org petition seeking to release her convicted paedophile father, Bindi Nicholls, the daughter of the disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris, has gone too far.
In a comment to accompany her signature of the petition, London based fine artist Nicholls – whose unseemly emails to her father demanding to know whether she was the sole inheritor of her parents’ £11 million fortune and whose ex-husband gave crucial evidence detailing how she had broken down and told him that Harris had abused one of her childhood friends during their marriage –remarked:
“Rolf Harris is my father, I have known him all my life, he is a kind sweet, honest man on stage and off. He has worked tirelessly all his life to bring joy, laughter, inspiration and happiness to all he meets. He is a workaholic, work is his priority and he lives to entertain. I have never witnessed him being interested on [SIC] children in that way, EVER. In public he is more interested in getting groups of people singing or telling jokes than sculking [sic] off with one person, he is just nothing like the man the press have been portraying him to be. All of his dear friends are shocked and desperately upset that he has been tarred by the propaganda out there. He has been swept up in a witch hunt because of his high profile and celebrity! A total travesty at his age”.
Given Nicholls’ previous comments about her father – including remarks such as: “You [Rolf Harris] will spend 10 minutes entertaining their little kid but what about me?” and “You [Harris] only come to life when strangers approach you wanting your autograph” – it is notable that she has now chosen to contradict herself at a time when her paedophile father faces yet more allegations and potential law suits. One simply has to ask if these are the actions of a genuinely loving daughter or, in fact, just a woman with money on her mind.
Turning to the Change.org petition itself, the originator is someone who goes by the name Anne Pyke. With just 20 followers on Twitter and a handle that states: “Frustrated by the corruption that imprisons innocent people in England! Free Rolf Harris! An innocent man targeted and framed by our corrupt ‘establishment’”, the somewhat ambiguous Pyke has only tweeted 65 times since joining the social media site in January 2015. Tellingly, aside from rants about Harris’ innocence, the account’s first tweets were retweets of those of a woman named Lizzie Cornish.
Having been amongst the first to expose Rolf Harris’ arrest in 2013 and written about his case extensively in the time since, I came to the attention of Cornish – whose own Twitter handle reads: “ROLF HARRIS IS INNOCENT! I’m a woman pissed off by Lying Women, &also [sic] by Greedy De-Sensitized Corporate Bastards who seem intent on ruining my Beautiful Planet” – and have had to put up with ranting email missives from her and others demanding to know why I have not chosen to support their “hero”. I have mostly blocked these individuals but frankly their tenacity speaks volumes and I would suspect that Anne Pyke and Lizzie Cornish could, in fact, be one and the same person.
Of the 407 signatures on the petition, several have left comments admitting they have signed it twice but one perhaps sums up best what might also motivate Bindi Nicholls. Written by someone named Kris Finch from Liverpool, it reads:
“I have spent the past 50 years collecting Rolf Harris memorabilia, that collection was my pension and unless Rolfy is pardoned it’s worthless”.
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