A former criminal law solicitor who was found to have sexually or indecently assaulted clients while they were being held in police or court cells was today described as a ‘monster’ by one of his victims.
Retired Plymouth practitioner Alan Harris, 72, was convicted last December of five counts of sexual assault and five counts of indecent assault relating to seven former clients – six men and one woman – between 1989 and 2015. Harris has not held a practising certificate since retirement in 2016.
Anne Whyte KC, prosecuting, told a sentencing hearing at Winchester Crown Court that the ‘overriding common feature of abuse of trust…applied to every single offence and complainant in this case, given the solicitor-client relationship existing at the time of offending’.
Victim impact statements were read out in court with some of the complainants, who are granted lifetime anonymity, choosing to read theirs aloud.
One said Harris abused him ‘when I was at my most vulnerable, when I was supposed to trust you.’ The victim told Harris: ‘You knew I could not stand up for myself. I could not say anything. Nobody would believe me. Who would believe me over you? We were there for you to do whatever you wanted to do to us in plain sight.’
Another said: ‘You made my journey through the justice system far more distressing than it ever should have been. It should have been a professional solicitor and client relationship. I was young, I was scared and vulnerable. I was locked in a cell with no escape.’
Another victim statement, read out by Whyte, said Harris was a ‘solicitor, a man in position of authority and respect, someone trusted by society and our family’ who ‘used that power not to help…but prey’.
Whyte, reading out another statement, said: ‘The one person in my whole world who could help me was you but you abused your position knowing how vulnerable I was. You are vile. The way I look at police, solicitors and the whole legal system has been tarnished because of him.’
In mitigation, Christine Agnew KC, for Harris, said: ‘Mr Harris was a local solicitor who represented a great many clients. Those who worked with him were extremely complimentary about his ability as a solicitor and kindness to clients. He had a very loyal following as a solicitor. He helped out... hundreds if not thousands, of clients over the years. He had many clients that returned to him.'
Asking the court to ‘impose the shortest prison sentence possible’, Agnew said: ’To say Alan Harris has had a mighty fall from grace is a colossal understatement.’
The sentencing hearing continues.
