Gary Glitter faces death behind bars as he begins 16-year sentence

The 70-year-old, real name Paul Gadd, was told there was no evidence he had atoned for his actions as he was sentenced for one count of attempted rape, one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, and four counts of indecent assault.

Glitter, dressed in a black velvet coat and burgundy scarf, showed no reaction as he was led from the dock after he was sentenced at London’s Southwark Crown Court.

But he could face fresh charges as Scotland Yard confirmed it had received more information since the convictions which is “currently being assessed”.

Sentencing the singer Judge Alistair McCreath said: “I have read the victim impact statements of all three victims. It is clear, in their different ways, they were all profoundly affected by your abuse of them.

“You did all of them real and lasting damage and you did so for no other reason than to obtain sexual gratification for yourself of a wholly improper kind.”

In relation to Glitter’s behaviour against his first victim, he continued: “It is difficult to overstate the depravity of this dreadful behaviour.”

Referring to the second girl who he attacked after a nightclub performance, the judge told Glitter he was able to attack her “because, and only because. of your fame”.

Judge McCreath went on: “The assessment of the harm caused by sexual offending is not easy in the immediate, or near immediate, aftermath of it. But where the offending took place many years ago, it is a great deal easier.”

He concluded that while Glitter had sought professional help to understand his sexual attitudes and behaviour, it did not “include any admission at all on your part of the wrong that you had done, in particular of the offences of which you now stand convicted”.

There was standing room only in court as loyal fans of the singer gathered in the public gallery to see him learn his fate. Before the hearing they had huddled together, poring over a Glitter annual, sharing tales of their fandom, one of them wearing a sequinned jacket and another with studded pumps.

One even waved at him - to no response - as he was taken down to the cells.

Glitter was at the height of his fame when he preyed on his vulnerable victims who thought no one would believe their claims over that of a celebrity.

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 younger than 10 years old when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975. But the allegations came to light only around nearly 40 years later when Glitter became the first person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree - the investigation launched by the Met in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Glitter suffered a spectacular fall from grace in 1999 when he admitted possessing 4,000 child pornography images and was jailed for four months in 1999.

In 2002 he 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.

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 where he sexually abused her all night.

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. Glitter claimed 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.

Glitter, from Marylebone, central London, denied the allegations against him.

THE VICTIMS’ STORIES

Three women came forward with claims of abuse at the hands of disgraced former pop idol Gary Glitter. Here are their stories.

• The attempted rape victim

Glitter’s first victim said she was under 10 years old when the singer crept into the bed she was sharing with a friend and tried to rape her.

She described how she had her back to the former star - and, as he put his arm around the top of her body, she thought he just wanted a cuddle and not wanting to be rude, did not push him away.

She only managed to escape by falling into the “cocoon” formed by the sheets being tucked under the mattress, jurors heard.

The woman said: “I felt ashamed and embarrassed because by that age all your private areas become private ... I just felt ashamed and dirty.”

She said that the day after the alleged attack in 1975, Glitter gave her an Easter egg and carried on as “normal”.

Years later, the woman told a school friend to stay away from the singer because he was “dangerous”.

• The fan

Two years later, Glitter took advantage of a young fan who had been introduced to him backstage after he performed at Baileys nightclub in Leicester.

The 12-year-old was invited back to the performer’s Holiday Inn hotel suite with her mother.

Once there, she drank champagne while Glitter told stories of how comic Spike Milligan was after him with a gun for sleeping with his wife.

The woman, now 50, said that, eventually, the former singer’s manager and star producer-songwriter Mike Leander led her drunken mother to another room, leaving her alone with Glitter.

She was taken into a bedroom and, after disappearing for a while, Glitter returned naked and began kissing the girl, she said.

As the schoolgirl lifted her hands to push his head away, he shouted at her for touching his hair, telling her he had a “phobia”.

The balding singer then asked the girl to undress - chastising her when she tried to cover herself - and pushed her on to the bed to have sex with her, jurors heard.

Describing how she felt, the tearful woman told jurors: “My mum is gone, I don’t know what she wants me to do. She really loved this guy, so I am thinking I can’t upset her.

“I was trying to be really grown up because I had been drinking and I had been smoking.”

After the youngster’s mother went in to check on her the following morning, she said Glitter pulled her aside and said: “You are a really clever girl, you got dressed before your mum came in.”

The woman’s brother gave evidence that his sister had told him she was “going out” with Glitter, and a friend recalled snooping in her Glitter poster covered bedroom and discovering red roses.

• The dressing room attack

The third woman claimed she was 13 when she was taken backstage to see her “idol” Glitter as a surprise arranged by her mother’s partner.

She said that, after he performed on a revolving stage at a Watford club - also called Baileys - she went to see the singer and was allowed into his dressing room after a “coded knock”.

She described seeing Glitter sitting in a silver sequinned jumpsuit, unzipped to his navel and silver platform shoes.

Sobbing, the woman recalled: “He asked me to sit on his lap, which I did. He then asked me for a kiss, which I gave him a peck on the lips. He then asked me for another kiss and I gave him another peck on the lips.”

Now 48, the woman said her mum was taken away from the room and Glitter then stuck his tongue down her throat and slid his hand up her skirt.

She said that, after the incident, the singer asked her if she had liked what he did to her. She told him that she did.

However, on the way home, the youngster did not tell anyone what had happened to her “because he said it was his and my secret. I said I wouldn’t tell anybody”.

The incident is said to have taken place between October 1979 and December 1980.