Former glam-rock singer Gary Glitter is facing life behind bars after being found guilty of a string of sexual abuse offences against three young girls in the 1970s.
The 70-year-old, real name Paul Gadd, who lives in Marylebone, was this afternoon convicted at Southwark Crown Court of one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault, and one count of sex with a girl under 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 led down to the cells. He will be sentenced on February 27.
Glitter was cleared of two counts of indecent assault and one count of administering a drug or other thing to facilitate sex.
The offences date back to the height of his fame, with victims thinking no-one would believe their word over his.
He attacked two girls, aged 12 and 13, after inviting them backstage to his dressing room, and isolating them from their mothers.
The 70-year-old’s youngest victim was less than 10 years old when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975.
The allegations only came to light only around 40 years later when Glitter became the first person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree, sparked in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
The glam-rocker fell from grace in 1999 when he was jailed for possessing 4,000 images of child pornography.
In 2002 Glitter was expelled from Cambodia over unspecified allegations, and in March 2006 he was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam.
During the trial, all three of Glitter’s victims sobbed as they recounted their ordeals.
One woman, now in her 50s, described how she had attended a party at a house – where she had previously met Alvin Stardust – on the night she was attacked in 1975.
She remembered Glitter smelling of “booze and cigarettes” and putting his arm over her, making her feel “uncomfortable”.
The victim said she did not try to push him away because she did not want to be rude. Some years later, the woman warned a friend to steer clear of Glitter because he was “dangerous”.
Glitter’s second victim was 12 years old when he attacked her after a spring 1977 show at Leicester nightclub Baileys.
She initially went backstage with her mother and had a gold jacket autographed while drinking Moet champagne, but was then invited to the singer’s Holiday Inn hotel suite.
Once back in the room, star songwriter, producer and Glitter’s manager Mike Leander led the girl’s mother away, while Glitter took her by the hand into a bedroom where he told her comic Spike Milligan had a gun and was after Glitter for sleeping with his wife.
The girl tried to push the naked singer away, but as she lifted her hands, he shouted at her not to touch his hair, telling her he had a “phobia”.
He then pushed her on to the bed and subjected her to a prolonged period of sexual abuse.
The following morning he told the youngster: “You are a really clever girl, you got dressed before your mum came in.”
In a statement to the court, Anne Glover, a chambermaid who worked at the Holiday Inn in 1977, claimed she had walked into the former star’s bathroom to see him sitting in the bath with a girl she thought was around 12. There was no suggestion it was the second victim, and the evidence was never put before the jury.
Two indecent assault charges related to a third girl, who was aged 13 when the singer invited her to sit on his lap in his dressing room between October 1979 and December 1980.
Wearing a silver sequinned jumpsuit unzipped to the navel, and silver platform boots, he forcefully kissed the youngster and then slid his hand up her skirt.
She had been taken backstage to meet her “idol” as a surprise arranged by her mother’s partner, but after the attack in a club called Baileys in Watford, Glitter told the youngster it was their “secret”.
It was only after his arrest under Operation Yewtree that the woman went to the police.
Glitter denied all the allegations, claiming there was no way he could have abused the girls in his dressing room because his rigorous wig-maintenance routine required him to return to his suite immediately and clean his hairpiece.
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