Rolf Harris may walk free in less than three years unless an appeal court increases his prison sentence, which has been criticised by some as too lenient.

The 84-year-old on Friday was sentenced to five years and nine months in jail for 12 indecent assaults against four girls in the UK.

But Justice Nigel Sweeney told the former star he could serve less than half that time.

The sentence was immediately referred to UK Attorney-General Dominic Grieve under the “unduly lenient sentence scheme”.

“It only takes one person to trigger the process,” a spokesman said, adding it could be someone from the Crown Prosecution Service or simply a member of the public.

The attorney-general now has 28 days to decide whether to send the case to the Court of Appeal, which could increase the length of Harris’s sentence.

Harris may also face a raft of damages claims in the civil courts.

Justice Sweeney said he wouldn’t consider compensation because assessing the psychological harm done to the victims was a complex process.

But the trial judge said Harris would have to pay the prosecution’s legal costs.

Fresh allegations

Meanwhile, more New Zealand women are coming forward to say they were indecently assaulted by Harris.

Other allegations including assaults in New Zealand were heard during the trial.

On Friday, MP and former broadcaster Maggie Barry said Harris had groped her in the 1980s in a Palmerston North recording studio.

Since speaking out more than a dozen woman had approached her to say they too had been assaulted by Harris, Ms Barry said.

Many were also journalists who had experienced his “wandering hands” during interviews, Ms Barry told the New Zealand Herald.

Make-up artist Lee Howden said Harris assaulted her when he was in Christchurch for a TVNZ appearance in 1986.

“I went in at break time to just re-do his make-up, and the next minute I felt a hand going up my right leg, right inside of my underpants,” she told Radio New Zealand.

She had heard police were interested in finding more people and she hadn’t ruled out making a complaint.

Another woman said she was at an Anglican Trust Christmas Party in Auckland in the late 1970s or early 1980s when she was nine and was groped by Harris while going to sit on his knee to get a present.

“He would try and stick his hands up under your skirt and into your panties and rub your chest on the front,” she told TV3’s Campbell Live.

Convicted

Harris was convicted for indecently assaulting four girls between 1968 and 1986.

They revealed in victim impact statements that being attacked when young made it difficult to form relationships later in life.

The four women also made clear that the abuse was much harder to deal with because Harris was so loved by the public.

“As a young girl I had aspirations to have a career, settle down and have a family,” said a childhood friend of Bindi, who was abused from the age of 13.

“However, as a direct result of his [Harris’s] actions, this has never materialised.

“I have never had a meaningful relationship whilst sober.”

“Severe psychological harm”

Justice Sweeney told Harris on Friday that it was his crimes “that resulted in her becoming an alcoholic for many years”.

The judge said the assaults caused her “severe psychological harm”.

Australian woman Tonya Lee said Harris’s assaults on her in 1986, when she was 15, were a “turning point” in her life from which she never recovered.

“What Mr Harris took from me was my very essence,” the 43-year-old said.

“I believe that it was for Mr Harris a forgettable moment but it was something for me that I have never moved on from and will never forget.”

Harris’s youngest victim was seven or eight when he groped her after she had asked for his autograph in the late 1960s.

“I have carried what Rolf Harris did to me for most of my life,” she said in her statement. “It took away most of my childhood.”

A fourth victim was groped at a celebrity sporting event in Cambridge in 1978.

Harris initially denied ever having been to the city until three or four years ago but had to change his tune when footage of him participating in television show Star Games emerged mid-trial.

Apology would have been “braver”

The victim, now 52, on Friday said an apology would have meant more to her than a jail term.

“It would have been a lot braver, but he’s a nasty man who took advantage of his position, exploited that to the very utmost, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised,” she told ITV News.

The 84-year-old will spend his first nights behind bars at Wandsworth.

However, the man who gave the world the wobble board will eventually be transferred to a lower security prison to serve out his term.