Gary Glitter is said to be ‘on his last legs’ as inmates believe the sick criminal could die soon as the 81-year-old’s health continues to rapidly decline in prison
Paedophile Gary Glitter was at the height of his fame in the glam rock era of the 1970s when he began preying on vulnerable victims as young as 12.
He went on to be convicted of possessing child pornography before being jailed in the UK and abroad for vile sex attacks on underage girls.
The now 81-year-old is said to be battling declining health in prison, with inmates claiming he’s deaf, wheelchair-bound and refusing to leave his cell. Despite being released in in February 2023, he was recalled a month later for breaching his licence conditions. The Sun reports that fellow lags believe Glitter will die in prison at HMP Channings Wood in Devon.
The singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, had been jailed in 2015 for having sex with a girl under 13, attempted rape and four counts of indecent assault. Here, we take a look at his dark life and horrific crimes as he languishes in jail…
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Troubled childhood
Gary Glitter, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, was born on May 8, 1944, in Banbury, Oxfordshire. He had a troubled childhood, never knowing his father. His young mother and grandmother, who brought him up, often struggled to cope.
Things came to a breaking point for the family at the age of 10 and Glitter and his brother were taken into care. Glitter became known as a tearaway and would often run away to London to perform in clubs when he was just 12.
Years later when he was on trial for possessing child abuse images, Glitter claimed he had been abused as a child himself and blamed his actions on “trying to work my own feelings out.”
His dark side emerges
Behind the scenes of his thriving career, something more sinister was going on. In November 1997, Glitter’s life changed forever when he took his computer to a repair shop and an engineer discovered thousands of child sex abuse images on it.
After reporting this to the police, Glitter was arrested and in 1999 jailed for four months after pleading guilty to 54 offences of making indecent photographs of children under 16. He only served two months in prison and was freed in January 2000.
Upon his release he quit the UK and travelled to Spain, Cuba and then Cambodia, where he was kicked out the country after facing allegations of sex crime.
He moved to Thailand in 2002, before going on to the Vietnamese coastal resort of Vung Tau.
Vietnam conviction
In March 2006, the shamed singer stood trial accused of engaging in sexual acts with two Vietnamese girls, aged 10 and 11. He evaded the more serious charge of child rape, which carries a maximum penalty of death by firing squad, and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Two years later he was ordered to return to the UK in 2008 after spending two-and-a-half years in jail.
Operation Yewtree
This vital police investigation was launched to uncover the abuse of children committed by multiple media personalities following the Jimmy Savile scandal. The operation, spearheaded by the Met Police, uncovered horrific abuse by multiple well-known celebrities, including Rolf Harris and Gary Glitter.
Glitter was the first person to be arrested under Yewtree, in 2012. He was charged with 10 counts of sexual offences involving two girls aged 12 and 13 who he invited backstage to his dressing room in the 1970s. A third victim was just 10 years old when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975.
After standing trial at Southwark Crown Court in January 2015, 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 and jailed for 16 years. The former singer tried to get his conviction overturned in the court of appeal, but the case was thrown out.
Judge Alistair McCreath told him at his sentencing in 2015 that it was clear his victims “were all profoundly affected” by his abuse of them. The judge noted that in 2011 Glitter sought professional help to understand his sexual behaviour but said: “Whatever changes may have been effected in you by this treatment, they did not include any admission at all on your part of the wrong that you had done.”
Compensation
In 2024, Glitter was ordered by a high court judge to pay more than £500,000 in damages to one of the women he abused. He was sued after his 2015 conviction for abusing the claimant and two other young people between 1975 and 1980.
The judge said in a 13-page ruling: “There is no doubt that the claimant was subject to sexual abuse of the most serious kind by the defendant when she was only 12 years old and that has had a very significant adverse impact on the rest of her life.”
The woman brought legal action after feeling “humiliated” and “controlled” by Glitter. She continued: “The claimant said that she felt totally ashamed and she would scrub herself in the bath daily and this included, on occasion, using a pumice stone to ‘scrub her face off’, and she did not care what she looked like. The claimant just did not want to look like herself.”
If something sexual happened to you without your consent, or you are not sure, you can talk to Rape Crisis England & Wales. It does not matter when it happened.
If you need support, please contact Rape Crisis’ 24 hour sexual abuse support line. You can contact them at any time, day or night, all year round, on 0808 500 2222
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: mirror.co.uk
