Gary Glitter found guilty of child sex offences

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Gary Glitter found guilty of child sex offences
By Karen McVeigh, Friday 6 February 2015


Gary Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, arrives at Southwark crown court

Singer convicted of string of offences in 1970s and 1980s, including attempted rape of an eight-year-old child

Former Glam rock star Gary Glitter faces spending the remainder of his life in prison after being found guilty of child sex offences on young girls.

A jury of five men and seven women on Thursday convicted the flamboyant singer, now 70, of offences committed in the 1970s and 1980s including the attempted rape of an eight-year-old child.

Glitter was found guilty of one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault, and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13.

Glitter raised his eyebrows and looked shocked in the dock as the verdicts were read. He blew kisses to a public gallery full of reporters as he was remanded in custody and led down to the cells.

Judge Alistair McCreath told him: “In light of verdicts, I am remanding him in custody.”

His predatory sexual offences against his child victims, including fans that helped propel him to stardom, went unpunished for 40 years because of the “immunity of fame”, the prosecution said during the trial.

However, that vanished after the singer’s fall from grace when the father of three, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was found to have a “voracious” appetite for child abuse images. He was convicted in 1999 of building up a library of 4,000 such images, some involving children as young as two.

Later, in 2012, he was arrested as part of the Operation Yewtree investigation, set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal. It was during this period that his victims, now grown women, found the courage to tell the police about the abuse, although they had previously confided in others.

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Gary Glitter trial: Singer guilty of historical sex abuse


Gary Glitter, charged under his real name of Paul Gadd, was first person arrested under Operation Yewtree

Gary Glitter has been found guilty of historical sex abuse against three young girls between 1975 and 1980.

The 70-year-old former singer - real name Paul Gadd - was convicted of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one of having sex with a girl under the age of 13.

Gadd, who denied all charges, was acquitted of three other counts at Southwark Crown Court, London.

He was remanded in custody to be sentenced on 27 February.

'Ashamed'

The court heard one victim was under the age of 10 when Gadd, of Marylebone, central London, tried to rape her.

She said the singer had crept into her bed as she slept and that afterwards she had felt "ashamed and dirty". She only managed to escape by moving away and then wrapping herself in sheets and blankets.

The victim told the trial she had been to the star's mansion a number of times as a child and that after the attack, drunken Gadd had fallen asleep in the bed while she locked herself in a bathroom.

He was cleared of two counts of indecent assault and one count of administering a drug or other thing in order to facilitate sexual intercourse.

The jury of seven women and five men had been considering their verdicts since Wednesday.

Gadd was the first person to be arrested as part of Operation Yewtree.

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