| Kids Can Say No! | |
|---|---|
 Opening title card | |
| Directed by | Jessica Skippon |
| Written by | Anita Bennett |
| Produced by | Jessica Skippon |
| Starring | Rolf Harris |
| Cinematography | Deb Ditchburn |
| Music by | Peter Alsop |
Production company | Rolf Harris Video |
| Distributed by | Skippon Video |
Release date |
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Running time | 20 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Kids Can Say No!, stylized as Kids Can Say No, is a 1985 British short educational film produced and directed by Jessica Skippon and written by Anita Bennett. It is intended to teach children between ages five and eight how to avoid situations where they might be sexually abused, how to escape such situations, and how to get help if they are abused. In the film, Australian celebrity Rolf Harris is in a park with a group of four children and tells them about proper and improper physical intimacy, which he calls "yes" and "no" feelings. The film has four role-playing scenes in which children encounter paedophiles, with Harris and the children discussing each scene.
Harris said that he came up with the idea for the film on a 1982 Canadian tour when he saw Vancouver's Green Thumb Theatre production of Feeling Yes, Feeling No, a play about child sexual abuse. Kids Can Say No!, released in October 1985 on VHS in the United Kingdom, was the first British children's film about sexual abuse and was purchased by police forces, educational institutions, and libraries across Europe. Upon the film's release, The Times obtained opinions from four sexual-abuse experts, who unanimously opposed using Kids Can Say No! or any other film to teach children about the subject. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation received a positive response to its 1988 broadcast of Kids Can Say No! and therefore broadcast it a second time that year. Harris and Skippon collaborated on the 1986 sequel Beyond the Scare, which advises teachers about what to do if a child discloses abuse. Showings of Kids Can Say No! eventually decreased as VHS became less popular in favour of DVD-Video in the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s.
Kids Can Say No! resurfaced in 2014, when Harris was prosecuted for twelve counts of indecently assaulting young girls. The prosecutors found Kids Can Say No! on YouTube and wanted to show it at trial to illustrate its unintentional irony, but the film was not admitted as evidence. Harris was found guilty of all counts. During the trial, it was learned that, while Harris was filming Kids Can Say No!, he was in the midst of a casual sexual relationship with his daughter Bindi's best friend and, by its release, he had committed nine of the twelve assaults. According to Richard Guilliatt and Jacquelin Magnay in an article in The Australian, Harris's campaign against paedophilia in Kids Can Say No! can "be seen in retrospect as either monumental self-delusion or a sign of deep, self-lacerating guilt".[1]