UK
Gary Glitter ordered to pay half a million pounds to woman he abused
Gary Glitter has been ordered to pay £508,800 to a woman he abused when she was 12 years old.
The disgraced singer was jailed for 16 years in 2015 for sexually abusing three schoolgirls between 1975 and 1980.
He was released last year but recalled to jail less than six weeks later after breaching his parole conditions.
The woman sued Glitter and now a judge has awarded her compensation after saying she was subjected to abuse “of the most serious kind”.
The court heard she hadn’t worked for decades due to the trauma of being repeatedly raped and “humiliated” by the singer.
The payout includes £381,000 for lost earnings and £7,800 for future therapy.
Her barrister said Glitter’s abuse had a “dramatic and terrible impact” on her work, education and personal life.
“She felt totally ashamed,” said judge Mrs Justice Tipples.
“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.”
The paedophile is back behind bars after breaching the terms of his parole. Pic: Met Police/PA
Glitter, 80, may have to pay even more as another hearing will consider legal fees and whether interest on the damages is due.
The convicted paedophile – whose real name is Paul Gadd – was released in February 2023 after serving half his sentence.
But he was back behind bars weeks later after reportedly trying to access the dark web and images of children.
Law firm Slater & Gordon said no amount of money could make up for the abuse but it went some way in recognising the “devastation” it caused to the woman’s life.
“Gadd’s refusal to engage with the process merely proves his utter lack of remorse, something we will be reminding the Parole Board about if he makes another application for early release,” said the firm’s Richard Scorer.
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Glitter’s abuse came to light when he became the first person arrested under Operation Yewtree – the investigation launched in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
However, his fall from grace happened years earlier after he admitted possessing around 4,000 child pornography images and was jailed for four months in 1999.
He was expelled from Cambodia in 2002, and in March 2006 was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam and spent two-and-a-half years in prison.