'Yippee, thank God!' Rolf Harris's victims tell of their joy as he dies at the ... trends now

Victims of Rolf Harris have spoken out about the abuse they endured at the hands of the Australian sex offender after his death at the age of 93.

The disgraced TV star died of neck cancer and old age earlier this month after spending the last six years following his release from prison living as a near-recluse with his wife in their £5million riverside mansion in Bray, Berkshire. 

News of the abuser's death on May 10 and his subsequent secret cremation was revealed on Tuesday after it was registered with Windsor and Maidenhead Council bringing closure to some of his victims.

Dr Lin Berwick, who accused him of assaulting her when she was 27, screamed 'Yippee, thank God', while BBC radio host Karen Gardner - who claims she was assaulted by him when she was 16 - pointed to a statement where she described him as 'evil'.

Broadcaster Vanessa Feltz recalled how she was assaulted by the entertainer live on national television and metres away from his wife when he appeared on The Big Breakfast with her.

In June 2014 Harris was convicted of 12 indecent assaults, after a trial exposed an avalanche of evidence showing his disturbing behaviour towards women and girls. 

The entertainer was convicted of abusing a close friend of his daughter, Bindi Nicholls, over the course of 16 years as well as an eight-year-old girl seeking an autograph and two girls in their early teens.

Harris had strongly denied the charges against him, which took place between 19868 and 1986 but was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison after being convicted.

Upon his release in 2017 he lived as a near-recluse, with reports he was suffering from neck cancer and this had left him unable to speak, and was seen in a wheelchair when out of the house. An undertaker's private ambulance was photographed outside his riverside home on May 11.

In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon by his solicitor, his family said: 'Rolf Harris recently died peacefully surrounded by family and friends and has now been laid to rest. They ask that you respect their privacy. No further comment will be made'.  

The cause of death was revealed as 'metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of neck' - the medical term for neck cancer - and 'frailty of old age'.

The news was welcomed gleefully by some of his victims who still to this day have to cope with the abuse he inflicted on them. 

Dr Berwick, who is blind and disabled, claimed Harris assaulted her when she was 27 - and despite the sex offender being acquitted of that offence, she remains convinced he was the perpetrator.

She told the Sun: 'When I found out the news he was dead, I screamed 'Yippee, thank God'.

'No one has ever invaded my body the way Rolf Harris has. What he did to me as a blind person was vile.'

Karen Gardner, a BBC radio host who accused him of assaulting her three times in the space of 35 minutes when she was his 16-year-old bag carrier for the show Star Games in 1977 was more 

When asked by the Mirror if she had any comment, she pointed to a statement made after she appeared in the ITV documentary Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight, about his crimes earlier this month. 

In it she tweeted: 'Very few of us escape the impact of evil people. What we have to do is expose them, share and stand together to dilute the pain.

'For me it was Rolf Harris but he inflicted much worse on other girls.'

In the programme, which aired last week, Ms Gardner bravely waved her anonymity as she relived the traumatic experience. 

She told the programme: 'In the space of I guess about 35 minutes, he assaulted me three times in plain sight. And it was horrible because you're surrounded by people, and he had a method of operating.

'I won't talk about the actual details, but he was paying me attention, he was saying how great I had been, and he, he hugged me, and that that's when, when it happened. And it was humiliating and degrading and awful and your, your blood turns to concrete.'

She continued: 'You can't believe this is happening. And I have no doubt what was happening. My period was due, and my breasts were very tender, and I had no doubt what he'd done was deliberate. And he did it, he did that twice in the space of, I don't know, 20 odd, 25 minutes.

'And then it was mid-afternoon and they had organised a couple of taxis and one of the cars came to get him. And I had to get in the back seat of the car.'

Ms Gardner said Rolf got beside her and assaulted her again, adding: 'Maybe because there wasn't anyone there, I did tell him to f**k off. And he said something, which makes, still makes me feel sick now. He said to me, 'You're irresistible.' I was 16. He was 48. He was 10 years older than my dad.'

Harris was acquitted of assaulting Ms Gardner after the jury could not reach a verdict at two trials.

Speaking on TalkTV Drivetime on Tuesday, Vanessa Feltz described the stomach-churning moment Harris pulled up her dress while and tried to touch her knickers just metres away from his wife while Ms Feltz was presenting the The Big Breakfast.

Speaking about the incident she claims to have suffered at his hands, Ms Feltz revealed she had originally been excited to learn he was appearing on the show where she hosted to 'On The Bed' segment.

She said: 'So we crowded into the little tiny bedroom where The Big Breakfast bed was because it was situated in a real lock keeper's cottage. 

'So a tiny little bedroom, there's the bed, there's me on it and Rolf Harris next to me and the cameraman, director, and Rolf Harris' wife standing literally a foot away to the side of the bed. 

'We go live, and I'm like, 'Hello, guess who's on the bed with me today? It's the wonderful Rolf Harris'…. and I can hear this noise.'

She revealed that Harris was 'crunching' her dress and pulling it 'further and further and further up my legs'.

'And you can actually see in one of the pictures me, taking a blue cushion and putting it between us to try to make some space between me and him. And he completely ignored it,' she added.