Original subtitles

GLITTER: Gary Glitter can be the most eccentric person in the world,

Paul Gadd can't be.

You know, he's just like everybody else.

But Gary Glitter can be... He can fly.

He can, you know, he's much larger than life.

So they are two different people? Oh, sure, you know.

I mean, he is a bit of a monster between you and I, you know,

and he's getting bigger all the time, of course.

# Rock and roll, rock and roll

# Rock and roll, rock... #

Kids did love him.

He was a larger-than-life character on screen and on the stage.

They thought they knew him because of what they saw on television.

But, of course, they didn't. It was an illusion.

Have you heard about my reputation? No. Tell me.

We want to hear about your reputation.

There's a microphone down there. HE LAUGHS

It's almost as if they're having a little private joke

about what each of them was up to.

It was a tidal wave, really. I was on a roller-coaster.

I mean, in some ways, it was wonderful,

but also, there was this very dark side.

My client was 12 years old at the time.

She was repeatedly raped by him,

and the manner in which he did all of that

was particularly depraved and revolting.

I think there was real shock in the courtroom

that the youngest victim was eight years old.

For Glitter, I looked at the case.

It was, again, for paedophilia,

but I remember it was also about boys and girls.

For any young person meeting their hero

or meeting someone famous, it should be a moment of joy.

In the case of Gadd,

these young girls met an absolute monster.

# Come on, come on Come on, come on

# Come on, come on

# Come on, come on Come on, come on

# Come on, come on, come on And I say

# Come on, come on... #

Everybody used to watch Top Of The Pops - everybody.

And Gary Glitter come on. He looked different.

# Come on, come on, come on

# Come on... #

Glam rock was like an explosion.

It was like something you'd never seen before.

Before glam rock, you had all the teenage boys,

like myself, who were skinheads.

What glam rock did was

we were all into, like, shaved heads, following Slade.

We saw glam rock on Top Of The Pops.

We all grew our hair, dyed it red,

put in little bits of glitter on our faces and all that.

It was so far removed from real life.

# I can take you high as a kite Every single night... #

It inspired you that there was more to life than nine-to-five boredom.

It made you go from grey to colour.

Glam rock sort of came into two camps.

There was the cool teenagers, who liked the proper glam rock,

which was your David Bowie, Mark Bolan, Alice Cooper,

and there was the under 12s, who liked Gary Glitter.

GIRL: What made you want to be a singer?

I've always wanted to be a singer.

Since my... My uncle John used to be...

When I was about two years of age,

my uncle John used to come into the room,

and we used to have fancy dress parties

in Banbury, in Oxfordshire, where I was born.

And he used to sing,

and all the girls used to go mad, you know,

and I thought, "That's not a bad job when I grow up."

Of course, I haven't grown up yet, but when I do,

that's what I would like to be, a singer.

The childhood was quite interesting

because there was a lot of things that happened to me.

I mean, my mum was between marriages,

so my brother and I, Tony, got put into a children's home.

And once you go into those institutions,

you know, it was only supposed to be a couple of weekends.

But in fact, it turned out for two years.

That was quite painful.

I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning,

light all the fires, do all the potatoes,

you know, clean all their shoes and things like this.

I was 11 years of age, so I wanted to get out of that.

And fame was the thing that I wanted.

CROWD CHEERS

WOMAN: Thank you! And welcome...

Welcome...

Welcome to The Saturday Scene British Pop Awards of 1975!

We've got a great show lined up for you.

'Saturday Scene was very, very popular.

'It was a fantastic atmosphere, I do remember that.

'They adored him. They really did adore him.

'His audience loved him.

'So there would have been a lot of kids.

'Maybe seven or eight, that young.'

And then all the teenagers that were allowed to go on their own

and probably with a parent anxiously waiting in the car park.

So it was a very young audience,

hence the squealing and the shouting.

His energy levels were so high.

Like, he's stomping around, and he's fist-pumping.

It was glamorous. It was rock, it was, you know, Glitter.

Everything he was doing was larger than life.

You might be able to tell who the mystery guest is,

but just in case you're in any doubt,

let's whip off the paper bag,

Argh! Yes, it's Gary Glitter!

It's me! What an outfit!

Look at this outfit! Da-da-da!

Fantastic! Actually, I've gotta get an outfit like that!

'I think he was quite childlike.'

Hello. LAUGHTER

In Tiswas, we used to have

50 completely over-excitable children every week.

So by the time they arrived,

and they would see buckets of water and custard pies lying around.

A level of excitement that was off the scale.

Hello, who's there?

Juno. Juno who?

Juno what time it is?

'He was just really enjoying the moment.'

If you look over here, Gary...

It's allowed. Now, wait a minute.

It says, "And now for some music, here's Bar..."

Barry what?!

And I don't think anyone would have thought anything weird

about any of the guests and the children.

It just wouldn't have crossed our mind.

And if I think back now,

no wonder Gary Glitter was always polite and nice to me

because that gives him access to more children,

more whatever it is that he was trying to gain access to,

which makes it even more sickening when you think back.

# I love you, love

# You love me, too, love

# I love you, love me... #

Wait, wait, wait!

Because it would have to be the one and only Gary Glitter in person.

Gary! APPLAUSE

Do young ladies go to great lengths to get next to you, as it were?

Yeah, thank goodness. Oh.

I go to great lengths to get next to them, too.

"It's mutual," he says.

I'm having a look round the audience now

to see if there's anyone I fancy.

We've got some on the bean bags lined up for you.

Lovely. We always line our artists up.

You can see the sway that they held over the audience, can't you,

none of whom would ever have imagined...

..what, even at that time, those two were both doing.

I am going to perform on television just now

a feat which will make me out of friends

with about 49 million young ladies

because I am going to give Mr Gary Glitter away.

I'm actually going to give him to a girl, see.

Over here. Over here.

Now, then, I think...

Would you like Mr Glitter next to you two ladies?

One can't necessarily say when it started.

But what I do know is that in 1975,

and he will then have been aged about 31,

he had already attempted to rape an eight-year-old girl.

'And he did it in his own home.

'She was a friend of the family.'

There was an occasion when he had a dinner party downstairs,

and it was after the dinner party was over that he came upstairs

to where she was sleeping and came into her room,

and she could remember the repellent smell

of alcohol and cigarettes on his breath.

'She later gave an interview

'describing what she said had happened to her.'

RECORDING: By now, he turned to me.

And at first, I thought he was just maybe cuddling me and...

lying up against me, and it didn't feel comfortable.

You know, I didn't know him well enough for him to be doing that.

So I lay there really still.

And...

he was too close.

And, erm...

then I felt him lifting up my nightie.

Erm...

And then...

And then I felt it.

'There is a certain tone to her voice, isn't there?'

You can almost sense it playing in her mind

as she's describing it.

'There were no blurred lines in this case.

'We weren't talking about late adolescence here.'

We were talking about very young children.

Very young children.

'I was a showbiz journalist on Sounds music magazine,

'and I got invited to this launch

'of the Gary Glitter single, Dance Me Up, at The Hippodrome.'

# Dance, dance, dance

# Dance me up... #

'And that's how I met him. And then just used to meet him

'at other rock-and-roll parties and whatever.'

Good God. Not seen this for 30 years. Unbelievable!

'He had that sort of personality

'where he sort of won you over, like, you know.

'It wasn't until years later, you heard the rumours.

'I was just interviewing my friend for a book.

'And he just brought it up in conversation.

'He said, "I did a job for Gary Glitter once."

'My friend and his friend were doing security for Glitter,

'plus, they was bringing the boxes from the van to the dressing room

'And I'm not sure when the year was,

'but I think it must have been about 1990.

'He said the box come open

'and all these Polaroid pictures came out.'

He said he didn't think anything of it straightaway.

But then when he picked 'em up, he looked at 'em,

and there was pictures of underage children.

'And he was, like, automatically disgusted with it.

'And he had words with Glitter.

'Glitter immediately shed tears.

' "I'll pay you money. I'll pay you your fee."

'They didn't want his fee.'

'They said, "We're not doing anything for you." '

He didn't do his gig.

They just set fire to his wig and left.

# I love you, love me... #

'I thought, "Jesus, you're joking."

'Although I met Gary Glitter, I just thought he was a...

'I just thought he was like a weirdo who chatted people up.

'I didn't know he was into young children or whatever.'

You know, I was the victim when I was in a children's home

so my hatred of perverts and that is inborn.

It's raw, it's deep, it runs deep.

What helped Glitter was that he was playing a character,

he dressed as Gary Glitter,

and he done all them crimes as... What was it? Paul Gadd.

So I think that's probably why he got away with it for so long

cos he was an alter ego, wasn't he?

As sexy as ever, the leader, Gary Glitter!

APPLAUSE

How are you? Leader!

Oh! She knows how to make a young boy happy.

SHE LAUGHS

'When you met him and spoke to him, he was a gentleman.'

I'm not just another women here sitting

to do you a very nice interview.

I'm a fan. I've got... Now you're talking my language.

And certain things,

the raise of an eyebrow and a little look were expected,

but they weren't a real threat.

You get more and more outrageous,

I was in one of your concerts one, on the front row,

and your codpiece nearly poked my eye out.

It gets bigger every show, doesn't it?

I mean, you are a bit... You are a bit overt, Gary.

I hope it continues to get bigger at every show.

I never got any vibes that he was interested, ever,

in anyone, really.

Now, Jimmy Savile is a totally different, different kettle of fish.

There'd always been rumours about Savile.

He tried to grab me onto his knee for a photo shoot once.

'And I said, "No!" I said, "Off!"

'With Gary Glitter, there was none of that.'

Oh, you're totally, totally outrageous.

'If Gary Glitter had been a sexual predator of women,

'my antenna would have been going.'

And as you look back, in retrospect,

it was because he wasn't interested in grown-ups,

he was interested in children.

You were sort of the heart of gold. You look after the kids in the club.

It's a bit like you in real life, isn't it?

Well, I'm always surrounded by teenagers and kids.

I mean, the rest of the cast are very young,

and I think if you can keep an open mind with young people,

erm, it's great.

And that's what rock and roll is all about.

It's made me realise

that with all the years' experience I'd had then

and even have now,

you can be so very, very wrong.

CHEERING

IAIN LEE: 'He appeared on This Is Your life,

'which was a huge show.

'He's always been a part of my life, he's always been there.'

I kind of got into him, in a semi-ironic way, about '88, '89

when I was 15 and 16,

and me and my friends would go off and see him in concert, you know,

and every time he spoke, we would shout, "Leader, Leader!"

Tessa Dahl. Tessa! Tessa, Tessa, Tessa!

There's that uncomfortable bit in it where someone comes out and says,

"Oh, Gary, you stayed with us when you had a breakdown or something."

Gary actually came to live in my house when he was between jobs.

Between jobs, yeah. I was absolutely broke!

He kind of does something like that, "Don't... don't talk about that."

My sister Lucy turned it into quite a successful venture

because she used to pack the train

full of her adolescent school friends in school uniforms.

And she'd bring them up to the house,

and charge them £5 a head to come and gaze at Glitter.

She wouldn't have known about what he was doing,

but looking at that now, what were we thinking?

Why didn't someone hone in on that and say, "Hang on, what is this?"

The fact that he was such a big star

is what allowed him to groom and rape children.

If he'd just been Paul Gadd,

yeah, he would have still have been a paedophile.

The Gary Glitter persona made it easier to do it.

I was abused around about the age of eight or nine

by a very loud character.

He did the same kind of tricks that Glitter did

in that he and other people around him were trusted by parents.

One of the tricks of paedophiles

is to make you think you're the only person.

"I'm not doing this to anyone else."

It's manipulation and control, and making you feel isolated.

I can speak of the three girls that I know.

One of whom was the eight-year-old girl

who he attempted to rape in his home in 1975.

The other two women in the case were teenage girls

who had come into contact with him after concerts.

One of the girls attended a concert on consecutive nights in Leicester.

And then on the second night,

she and her mother were invited back to his hotel.

And then while the two of them were there,

somebody quietly ushered the mum out of the room.

This is a girl who was about 12 at the time.

It was, in effect, child rape.

And then the third girl was in his changing room,

and again, the situation was manipulated

so that the mother was persuaded to leave their daughter alone with him.

If they'd been asked in similar circumstances

to leave their daughter with a stranger,

they would have almost certainly refused to do it.

They thought they knew him.

But of course, they didn't. It was an illusion.

I think it's one of the most shocking cases that I've dealt with.

My client was repeatedly raped by him.

And the manner in which he did all of that

was particularly depraved and revolting.

My client's always been absolutely insistent

that she wants to be anonymous.

But at the same time, she...

she wants to get across what sort of man this was.

I mean, she said to me the other day, you know,

"I will never get any peace over this.

"It haunts me constantly."

And she has, you know, nightmares about it all the time.

I don't believe it's ever a case with these cases

that literally nobody knew about it or nobody suspected.

I think that people just didn't want to acknowledge what was going on.

God, the tune's terrible, but the lyrics are disgusting.

I can imagine him sitting at home, watching himself perform that,

thinking he's pulled the wool over people's eyes.

And he's a grown man singing that.

It's that "hiding in plain sight" thing.

He was telling us what he was doing but no-one picked up on the clues.

Mirror, mirror, framed in gold.

In your depths, the story holds.

I'm a rock star who became a monster!

Again, he's telling us,

and he was grooming an entire generation by being on the TV,

by being on kids' shows.

And he would have known that.

Well, I'm on the bed with,

of course, you already know I'm on the bed with Gary Glitter.

But what is amazing about Gary, how could I start?

How many amazing things can I say about Gary?

One of the amazing things about Gary, is, of course,

that he has sold over 18 million records

and still managed to go bankrupt.

LAUGHTER

This was like the coolest show

that everybody watched cos it was completely new.

What did you used to spend all your money on?

Very extravagant things, you know.

Like, erm...

I used to ring up the Playboy Club in London

and get a coachload of Bunnies down most evenings.

LAUGHTER, CHEERING

Just generally, lots of good sex, drugs, and rock n roll.

But of course, it was allowed, you could do that in the '70s.

Now everyone is leading such a clean life.

Who do you coach down to your house now? Erm. You...

LAUGHTER

You sneaked that one in.

I have got a couple of good friends that come around.

Have you? Are they very young?

How old is very young? Whenever I think about you,

I do imagine you with rather young nubile girls.

Well, yes. I mean... What do you call young?

24, 23, that sort of age? That's quite young.

Whoa! His face, you see it for a second, you see it, you see it,

and he doesn't know how to get out of it.

He looks really, really uncomfortable

and, at the time, he's, erm...

I keep using the phrase "raping children",

cos I don't like saying sex

cos sex makes it sound like something adult and consensual,

and it's not,

and it's important to remember these are children.

And...

You see just a glimpse of him there, panicking.

Gary! Gary!

CROWD SHOUTS

CHEERING

My name is Chris Boffey,

I was a reporter, Fleet Street journalist for 40 plus years.

I got a call from the news editor of the News Of The World

asking me to sort out a buyout

with a girl who says she had underage sex with Gary Glitter.

She had a stash of photographs, including many pictures of him bald,

and no-one had ever seen that picture.

She also had a story to tell how she was sexually assaulted by Glitter.

She told us about how they met when she was aged 11.

But she said the relationship didn't become physical

until she was about 14.

It was a tidal wave, really, I was on a roller-coaster.

In some ways, it was wonderful,

but there was also this very dark side.

And also the fact that these things had happened to me

were at the back of my mind all the time.

I drew up an affidavit, which...

Basically, bullet points about what she said to us.

And when I took the copy of the affidavit to her lawyer,

she was there and she read it,

and went very pale and dashed out of the room.

And I think she was violently ill.

Because she had actually seen it in black and white,

what had happened to her.

It was very chastening.

The reality was the newspaper was more interested

in the fact that this was the first picture of Gary Glitter bald.

And this was very prominently displayed

both on the front pages and inside pages.

There was no reaction to her being 14 at the time

when the relationship, if you could call it a relationship, started.

"Showbiz exclusive." Showbiz.

They're missing the story that they had sex when she was 14.

They're calling it "making love."

14-year-olds cannot consent to making love. That is sexual assault.

This is sold as a little bit of smutty fun.

"Pop star sleeps with young girl" was not unusual.

It was a different time,

and I don't think young girls were seen as victims then.

I had obviously gone to the police, they had all the details,

but no-one ever contacted me from the police,

and I've no idea if they followed it up at all.

This should have been the thing that got him shut down, and it didn't,

and he would still be performing for quite a while after this.

Let's hear it for the Leader Of The Gang himself,

and a Children In Need salute to the king of glam rock,

Mr Gary Glitter.

CHEERING

MUSIC PLAYS

# Hello, hello

# It's good to be back Good to be back. #

That's Mike Read, is it? Yeah, I thought I recognised him.

The tribute to Gary Glitter on Children In Need,

he would see as one of the high points of his career.

Y'know, he'd done This Is Your Life, he'd done Jim'll Fix It,

and now he's getting this tribute

on a programme which went out nationally

where millions would've been viewing it.

Yeah. One of my heroes.

My boyhood hero, him.

And, Blackburn, are you still in a trance or what?

No, I'm not in a trance. No more. He's my hero as well.

'It was quite shocking to see Radio 1 DJs

'describing Gary as their hero.

'Even though there's been allegations against him

'in the newspapers,

'he's just there on the stage, the adulation of the crowd,

'the leader of the pack.'

# Do you wanna be in my gang My gang, my gang? #

And then having his music included in the film, Spice World,

where the Spice Girls are performing one of Gary's biggest hits,

in this energetic manner, would have been a huge deal for him.

At that time,

the Spice Girls were probably the biggest band in the world.

What do you think of the Spice Girls phenomenon?

The Spice Girls are amazing.

I've always believed in girl power

and with my album coming out this year,

there'll be a lot of male power back again.

I don't see Gary Glitter as any different

from many of the other child abusers that are part of my day-to-day life.

I believe that if they abuse children,

erm, it is virtually impossible to change that pattern of behaviour.

And, erm, so to leave abusers walking the street,

for me, just means that they will continue to abuse

many, many more children until they're stopped,

and I still believe that today.

But all those people who were around him,

I don't believe for one single moment

that some of them didn't know what was happening.

And there will have been many reasons why they turned away.

I know how difficult it is to step out of the crowd.

But I do believe that we all have a moral responsibility

to protect children.

'I was photographing in Cuba

'and I came across Gary Glitter at a swimming pool in Havana.

'I used to go to this hotel to come and swim.'

And there was a man in a great big wig with make-up

in a purple velvet jumpsuit.

By the pool, and there he was.

He stripped that off, down to his little black briefs.

And he, instead of the usual music around the pool,

there was, "Do you want to be in my gang?"

# I'm the leader

# I'm the leader of the gang... #

As the afternoon wore on,

I noticed one man brought three very young girls,

probably between the ages of eight, 12 or 13.

One of them seemed to know him.

This wasn't "playtime with children" behaviour.

That's sort of why it made me really suspicious in the first place.

The next day, another three.

They turned up on their own.

Then, I also had my cameras on me,

so I decided that I would record this,

because it was getting sort of uncomfortable.

He kept asking to put their arms around him.

It didn't look right at all.

This is them arriving.

Just strange, a man of this age with these three children,

and all this kissing.

Then he would disappear, and one of them would disappear.

It was uncomfortable.

I did even say something to the management,

and they would say, "It's fine, he's well behaved, he tips...

"He's great with us" and things. So nothing was really said.

I would never have interfered with him or pictures

if I hadn't thought something pretty dark was going on.

I think I did the right thing.

The hunch was correct.

Boy, was it correct, yeah.

NEWSREADER: The pop star Gary Glitter

has been questioned by police

after claims that child pornography

was discovered on a computer he had taken into a shop to be repaired.

NEWSREADER 2: Detectives this morning

searched two homes belonging to the star

and seized a number of videos and pictures of children.

It tells you something, doesn't it?

That he should have taken that laptop for repair

with those images on it,

and it shouldn't have crossed his mind

what might happen as a result.

REPORTER: Gary Glitter spent six hours with the police,

after which he was charged under his real name, Paul Francis Gadd,

with 50 offences

of making indecent pseudo pictures of children under the age of 16.

And in the wake of that discovery, two complainants came forward,

one was the eight-year-old who...

He attempted to rape her in his home.

That was the moment when she felt able to come forward.

She later gave an interview,

when she's describing hearing about him being arrested for the computer.

When I heard about the pornography.

I was just really angry

because it just became instantly clear to me

that this had never ever stopped.

It was still his thing.

Hearing her speak,

you can hear great anger at the thought

that what had happened to her was still continuing.

All these years later,

he was still doing what he had always done.

I felt like, "This is it, people will know.

"Maybe there is a chance that I might be believed."

REPORTER: Gary Glitter is charged with a string of sex offences

dating back to 1975, involving a girl aged under 13

and another aged under 16.

There are five counts of indecent assault

and four of another serious sexual assault.

On top of that, there are 51 charges

of either making or possessing indecent photographs of children.

The second woman who came forward

was the lady who, in 1993, had already spoken to the press

about her relationship with him.

It sometimes takes decades for people to come forward.

I now work as a counsellor.

I have clients who bring all kinds of issues to me

but yeah, I also have survivors of child sexual abuse who I work with.

People who haven't experienced that can be really suspicious

when someone comes out 30, 40, 50 years later

and says, "This happened to me."

And a lot of people have that thing,

"They're jumping on the bandwagon, they're doing it for money.

"Why didn't they say it at the time?"

There's loads of reasons why they didn't say it at the time.

They were afraid, they were ashamed,

they would have possibly thought it was their fault.

And it can take decades for people

to feel the strength and the confidence

to speak about their experiences.

To find that there wasn't even going to be a trial of it

because it had all happened so long ago

will have been damaging and upsetting to her.

Faced with that set of circumstances,

she decided to go public

and to state what she said had happened to her.

I was devastated.

Because there's this protective window of time

set in place by the legal system.

So all the time that clock is ticking,

a child abuser is getting safer and safer,

and it just seems so wrong that that's the case.

You can hear the resentment of what had happened

and how unfair and unjust she felt that it was.

There was now only one woman to give evidence in the trial,

and that will have weakened the strength of the case.

REPORTER: 'Arriving at Bristol Crown Court,

'Gary Glitter literally bounced with confidence.

'Flamboyant as ever,

'wearing his familiar quiffed wig and ponytail.'

REPORTER: 'Bristol Crown Court was told today

'that the rock star Glitter seduced one of his fans when she just 14.

'The 55-year-old singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd,

'denies that he sexually assaulted the young girl.'

She told a compelling story

of how she had first met Glitter at the age of 11.

He then saw her at a concert, invited her up to stage,

met her parents backstage.

They were so impressed, "What a nice man he is,"

invited him back for lunch.

He stayed five days,

and the relationship built up with that.

He gradually weaned her away from her parents,

first in a hotel room

where he then encouraged her to watch him in a bath,

and when he emerged, the first sexual act,

sex abuse, took place.

The danger, of course,

of being brave enough to bring your case to the court

is that you are then cross-examined but the defendant's barrister.

And in this case, an absolute master,

and he absolutely ripped her to shreds.

REPORTER: 'Defence barrister said

'the jury should not believe the woman's evidence

'because she'd waited almost 20 years to make a complaint

'and only then after selling her story for £25,000

'to the to the News Of The World if Glitter is convicted.'

The criminal justice system is brutal.

One victim standing against one abuser.

It's always gonna be very difficult to prove

because a jury is going to give the suspect the benefit of the doubt

because the judge will direct them

that you have to convict beyond any reasonable doubt.

When she decided to go public,

she went to the press before she went to the police.

And that was fatal to her chances of convincing the jury.

It was extremely uncomfortable to watch a woman

who I thought had clearly been abused,

and she was reduced to absolute tears of frustration.

And my abiding memory is as she left the witness box for the last time,

she turned round to look directly at Glitter in the dock,

with her big eyes full of tears and just sort of imploring,

beseeching him, "Why have you done this?"

You made a deal with the News Of The World

that you would've got more money if he'd been found guilty,

and that deal had been allowed to stand.

Do you regret entering that agreement with the newspaper now?

With hindsight, if I would've known

he was going to use that as his only defence,

really, in the case against me, of course.

But in saying that, the News Of The World made people aware

two years before the police could

of the kind of person that he is or was.

Yes, now, I didn't think this helped at all, this.

The judge also told the jury...

that there are 14-year-old girls, and there are 14-year-old girls.

And he's pointed out,

"There are some 14-year-olds

"who look like a sophisticated young lady...

"And some 14-year-olds still look like little girls.

"You may wish to consider which category the girl was in."

14 is 14.

Under the terms of the law,

under the age of 16, you... are protected.

And it's not a judge's place to say that, in my opinion.

REPORTER: 'With the characteristic twitch of the head,

'the '70s rock star arrived at court to hear his fate.'

REPORTER: 'This morning, a jury cleared him of all the offences.

'They decided there was enough reasonable doubt

'about the alleged victim's evidence.'

Of course, I was absolutely devastated

when he was found not guilty of the allegations that I'd made.

I went to court to tell the truth, and that's all that I could do.

If I can speak out, maybe other people can as well.

And despite the fact of the not guilty verdict,

I still can stand with dignity

and say that what happened to me is the truth.

These were not merely images of children without clothes.

These were images of adults engaging in sexual activity

with very, very young children,

what people would describe as toddlers or babies.

So it was...

..as bad as it gets.

Each charge was read, and he had to make the response.

He started mumbling "guilty" and was told to speak up.

And then he started turning away

and tried to talk into his shoulder

in some sort of display of phoney self-loathing.

But in the public gallery, I have never seen such a transformation

from the glee that they had before.

Suddenly, jaws dropped, eyes went wide.

A real look of horror on the faces of his fans

who had no idea

that the man they hero-worshipped,

was in fact a filthy paedophile.

The pop star Gary Glitter has been jailed for four months

after pleading guilty to 54 counts

of making indecent photographs of children.

REPORTER: 'It emerged that some of the photos

'revealed young girls being tortured,

'tied up, gagged and blindfolded.

'He left in disgrace, his career in ruins,

'a convicted criminal, who will now be placed

'on the police register as a sex offender.'

Four months sounds a powder puff penalty

for such a huge amount of absolute perverted filth.

And I think it reflected the fact that the law had not caught up

with what the internet was capable of.

It was a sentence of four months' imprisonment,

of which he served half.

I venture to suggest that for images of that kind,

the sentence now, the position would've been rather more severe.

INTERVIEWER: If you could speak to Gary Glitter tonight,

what would you say to him?

WOMAN: I'd ask him whether he really was sorry

and if he really did know the true intensity

and the true severity of the kind of damage that he's done.

The pop star Gary Glitter is due to be released

from a Bristol prison today

after serving half of a four-month sentence

for possession of child pornography.

Gary will just hang around for a few minutes to be photographed...

REPORTER: 'As his solicitor explained terms

'to the assembled media,

'Gary Glitter sat silently behind the tinted windows of his car.

'Then, in what looks like a final theatrical flourish,

'he appeared.'

I remember it.

Making it appear as though this was some temporary aberration

and that he was now looking to, as it were, start again.

I deeply regret doing what I was sent to prison for.

I've served my time.

I want to put it all behind me and live my life.

As a sex offender,

once you are released, you're free to carry on your life

and disappear into the ether, really.

And another country wouldn't necessarily be aware

that you are a sex offender.

I heard that he was going around with his motorcycle and his bandana.

That's why it also enraged me

because this guy feels like he's a King of Cambodia or something.

When I heard his name, Gary Glitter,

I went, "Gary Glitter?"

I quickly googled his name, and I was horrified.

He came to Cambodia to buy children, to have sex,

like the rest of these ugly men that we see in these bars.

My name is Luke Hunt.

I was a journalist for Agence Presse in Cambodia.

Cambodia was attracting a lot of dubious characters,

pardon the cliche, a haven for paedophiles.

It was easy to get a visa,

and there were no shortage of kids without families who were hungry.

For some types of people, this was an attraction.

When it comes to child sex offenders,

Gary Glitter, he was just another one of them.

And he wasn't trying to use his celebrity,

he was really trying... doing his best to hide.

We had an idea where he was staying, where he got his first apartment,

and then it became a bit of a game of cat and mouse

about where he was and following him around.

And that was the one time we did confront him,

and, er, I got some photographs.

The reason why they couldn't find him

was because he was always wearing his motorbike helmet.

MU SOCHUA: Gary Glitter was escaping from the UK.

Why did he get out?

How was he able to be a free man?

I was enraged.

Right away, I said, "I'm gonna go after this guy,

"and he has to leave the country as soon as possible."

The message from Cambodia is very clear -

Cambodia is not a safe haven

for people who have committed crimes against children in their country

or anywhere in the world.

By the end of 2002,

the police made allegations that he had abused children.

It was enough to have him arrested and held for two days.

When he was arrested, I felt relieved.

But I was told also that he was going to Vietnam.

I said, "Are you sure he is not coming back?"

Sure enough, he came back.

I was not surprised.

I was told that he had a lot of money, he had a lot of protection.

When you're looking at 2003, '04 and '05,

he was basically traversing between Vietnam and Cambodia.

But the end of 2005, there were quite a few more reports coming in.

Allegations were made

that he had molested children in Cambodia.

When they went to find him, he'd gone.

Basically, he left before he was deported,

and he went back to his place in Vietnam.

As soon as he left Cambodia, the government was happy with it.

"No longer our business."

That's why these, er, paedophiles... survived.

That's how they survive.

ANDREW DRUMMOND: The first time I heard that he was in Vietnam,

I was asked to go and find him.

On this occasion, we just went in as tourists

and met one of the foreigners living in Vung Tau

who had tipped off the newspaper.

I think within 24 hours,

we had established where Gary Glitter lived.

So then we put a watch on the house.

Glitter came out with what seemed to be a young girl.

I would've said 15, 16.

I don't think it was an unfair assumption that something was up.

I think Gary Glitter, er, was aware that the bomb was going to drop.

Because I went back and banged on the door,

basically told to go away.

And I knew I wasn't going to get a word out of him.

And by the following morning, he'd gone,

and he was, I think, in Ho Chi Minh City,

possibly the same night.

The singer Gary Glitter has been arrested

at an airport in Vietnam, as he tried to board a flight to Bangkok.

The 61-year-old was wanted by Vietnamese police over allegations

about his relationships with two underage girls.

From his legal office in downtown Saigon,

Le Thanh Kinh is Gary Glitter's best hope.

SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

He masturbated over one girl twice on two separate occasions.

I think the second girl,

he had oral sex with on a couple of occasions.

So I don't think it's any doubt

that Gary Glitter actually committed offenses,

and they were serious offenses.

When I was about to fly out to Vietnam

to cover the Glitter story...

..I didn't know at that point that I was gonna speak to the victims.

But it turned out that's where it took me.

The thing that always hit home that I remember,

15 years after the story,

was that line she gave me,

"I never forget the things Mr Gary did to me."

And I just thought that very succinctly

spelled out that this girl had been violated by Gary Glitter

in the most awful way,

and she was gonna remember that for the rest of her life.

That sort of shocked a lot of other people,

but if you've worked in Asia for... for a long time,

that is often quite actually sort of seen as a good result.

The fact that some guy's going to jail

is not going to help the family, particularly,

but I'm afraid cash is.

Even officials view this as one way of sorting things out.

But of course, it can be grossly misused.

REPORTER: 'The former pop star Gary Glitter

'has gone on trial in Vietnam, accused of molesting two girls.

'If convicted, Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd,

'could face up to seven years in jail.'

REPORTER: 'After years trying to evade the spotlight,

'this was the day Gary Glitter

'and his secret, sordid life abroad

'were officially laid bare.

'The judge described him as abnormal

'and sick and said he needed help.'

You've been found guilty. I am innocent. It's a conspiracy.

It's a conspiracy by you know who.

One or more newspapers, you know who.

I will be taking legal action.

There was some controversy over the sentence,

I think, which was three years.

The word was already out that Gary Glitter had paid the assaulted girls

and asked for leniency.

Six years after he was freed from jail in England,

Glitter is now starting another jail sentence.

He's clearly furious about the verdict,

and how long he serves in prison is open to question.

'But tonight, he's wearing a prisoner's uniform.

'For now, at least, Gary Glitter is in their gang.'

REPORTER: 'Gary Glitter is now a free man.

'But after a lifetime of celebrity, today, he shunned the limelight.

'It was media scrutiny that tracked him down here in Vietnam

'and led to his conviction on abusing two young girls.'

SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

We were all booked on the flight he was booked on.

CHATTER

MAN: Come on, leader. Up you come.

So when we landed in Bangkok,

we had to tell the Thai police who Gary Glitter was first.

We had to explain why he shouldn't be allowed into the country.

So on arrival, the police came onto the aircraft and took him airside,

so he wasn't allowed into Thailand.

He then flew out to Hong Kong.

Yet another country has refused

to allow in the disgraced singer Gary Glitter.

This time, he's been turned away from Hong Kong.

REPORTER: 'His options are shrinking fast.

'Singapore, Cambodia and many other countries

'have also closed their doors.'

It still appears only one country has been prepared to take him -

Britain.

The one country that, until tonight, it seemed,

he wasn't prepared to go to.

When Glitter came back here,

I was determined to keep the heat on him.

He couldn't lead a completely normal life

cos he had to wear a disguise when he went out.

I would go to near Regent Street with a photographer

where Glitter has a property and to try and catch him.

To try and show the public

that this man is being allowed to continue his life

and enjoy the fruits of his... of a very successful music career.

It also helps to shine a light

on what do we do with these paedophiles,

especially those that have come back from abroad,

and he's living freely in our society,

and what's he gonna do next?

REPORTER: 'Last year, Jimmy Savile's coffin

'was driven past Leeds General Hospital,

'where he'd worked as a volunteer porter.

'Hospital staff joined the crowds,

'saying their goodbyes and applauding him.

'How things have changed.'

REPORTER: 'Tonight, Exposure investigates allegations

'that away from the cameras,

'Sir Jimmy Savile was far from the genial eccentric.'

I do remember the documentary about Savile

that was the catalyst for Operation Yewtree.

And Yewtree is the fallout of the documentary.

Yewtree wasn't just about him,

it was about all of the others

who had the fingers pointed at them

in the wake of the revelations about him.

And Paul Gadd was a notable figure within that group.

REPORTER: 'Paul Gadd, on his way to a police station this morning.

'His name has been in the frame

'since the Jimmy Savile scandal broke three weeks ago.

'And just after 7am this morning,

'officers arrested the man in his 60s

'on suspicion of sexual offences.'

I prosecuted Paul Gadd at the Crown Court at Southwark.

And in that case were three women.

And Yewtree does explain how it was that within three years,

Gary Glitter was charged with serious sexual offenses

against three children.

One of whom was the eight-year-old girl who he attempted to rape

that had been stopped in 1999.

REPORTER: 'Known to millions as Gary Glitter,

'the former pop star arrived at Southwark Crown Court

'for the start of his trial.'

'I first came into contact with Paul Francis Gadd

'when he was on trial at Southwark Crown Court.'

Mr Gadd is 70 years old and wears hearing aids in both ears.

He was flanked inside the dock by two lip-reading interpreters.

I think there was real shock in the courtroom

amongst the media and journalists covering it

that the youngest victim was eight years old.

This was an eight-year-old

who had gone to sleep over at a family friend's property

and ended up the victim of an attempted rape.

It was a little detail that she gave.

She said that she managed to avoid what he was trying to do

because she fell off the edge of the bed,

and where the covers and the sheet had been tucked

beneath the mattress,

there was a sort of what I'd described to the jury

as being a little cocoon,

and she fell off the mattress into this cocoon...

..and that brought it to an end.

And he then fell asleep in a drunken state on the bottom of the bed,

and she managed to get out and go into the bathroom.

Those are the details that are so telling.

So the other two victims alleged

that they'd been abused backstage after concerts.

For any young person meeting their hero or meeting someone famous,

it should be a moment of joy.

In the case of Gadd, these young girls met an absolute monster.

REPORTER: 'Arriving for a day

'where his evidence would be challenged and tested.

'Under cross examination by John Price QC,

'he was asked directly

'why he was looking at pictures of men having sex with young children.'

I do have a very vivid memory of him breaking down.

And to be in company

with someone...

sobbing in circumstances like that for a long time

is an uncomfortable thing.

I watched it, and my jaw was on the floor

because I'd never seen a defendant behave like this before.

Yes, I'd seen defendants cry, I'd seen people giving evidence cry.

But this was all very self-centred.

There was no mention of the victims. It was all about Gadd.

In the end, most trials are about truth and lies.

Somebody's telling the truth, and somebody is not.

It's a case of working out who it is.

Drama inside Court One in the past few moments.

The jury have now come back in with verdicts on all of those charges.

There was no emotion.

He stared at the floor.

There was one word that kept coming back.

Guilty of the attempted rape of a child under the age of ten.

Guilty of five indecent assaults.

Guilty of sex with a child under the age of 13.

That one charge alone potentially carries a sentence

of life in prison.

Well, I'd be lying if I said to you

it's anything other than immensely satisfying.

Particularly because of the history,

particularly, erm...

I'll call her Woman A,

that there was a huge amount invested in this outcome for her.

And I... One of the...

One of the memories I have of the case

is the profound sense of vindication that she felt.

After all these years,

and they convicted him of attempting to rape her

because she'd been believed.

REPORTER: 'There was little reaction or emotion

'from the former glam rock star as he was sentenced.

'Some of his fans who were in the public gallery

'waved at him as he was led away from the dock

'to begin his 16 years in prison.'

I feel very sad that these poor women

had to wait 40 years for justice.

I feel very sad that they felt that they could not report

what had happened to them to the police for all those years.

And I feel sorry that they had to suffer in silence.

My client was one of the victims in the criminal trial in 2015.

I think fundamentally that the justice that she wants

is the justice that, frustratingly,

is not really available through the system

because of when this happened, which is a life sentence for Gadd.

He gets to come out of prison.

Her suffering is life-long.

My immediate question is -

what about all the other victims in that period?

Because he will never have stopped abusing children.

That will never have gone away.

When you grow up, will you run away with me?

Or when I grow up, will I run away with you?

I don't believe for one moment that some of the people

that surrounded Gary Glitter didn't know what he was doing.

And my question to them would be -

why did you not do something sooner?

I don't think it's possible to know if anybody knew

because if anybody did know, they did nothing about it.

He hid behind Gary Glitter.

It's like an actor hiding behind a part.

It was a mask to throw you off the scent.

But there were clues.

"What your mama don't see, your mama don't know."

I think without the News Of The World's involvement in this case,

Glitter would have been convicted, I have no doubt at all about that.

And that he would have been locked up then.

Instead of being convicted of these terrible crimes

that she says he committed,

he was cleared.

As one of the richest countries in the world,

it always struck me as a bit of a scandal

that we were complicit, in a way.

We should not be letting our citizens travel round the world,

abusing children in poorer countries.

WOMAN: I think it's unbelievable.

All of those children...

are someone's child, and that's wrong.

You know, he should be doing... 4,000 days,

4,000 years for doing that.

We have some breaking news coming to you now here at the BBC,

and it is that the disgraced pop star Gary Glitter

has been freed from jail

after serving half of his 16-year sentence.

He'll never change. This is his life.

This is all he's done.

Paul Francis Gadd lived as a paedophile,

and he will die as a paedophile.

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