Gary Glitter: Guilty Of Child Sex Offenses, Former Glam Rock Star Faces Life In Prison

Gary Glitter, the 70-year-old former glam rock star from the U.K. who fell from grace in the 1990s with a string of child sexual assault charges, was found guilty on Thursday of child sex offenses against girls and faces life in prison. His crimes were committed in the 1970s and 1980s and include the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl and unlawful sex with a 12-year-old girl, reports The Guardian.

In 1999, Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was convicted of having over 4,000 child abuse images on his computer, some, according to The Guardian, that depicted children who were only two years old.

In 2006, Glitter was arrested and sentenced in Vietnam to three years in prison for raping two Vietnamese girls, ages 10 and 11, in a seaside home he rented in Vung Tau, Vietnam, reported Billboard. His sentence was reduced from seven years to three, the minimum sentence, by the Vietnamese court because he paid $2,000 “compensation” to each girl’s family, rather than the originally court mandated $320. At his sentencing, according to Billboard, he railed at British tabloids for tracking him down in Southeast Asia. “I haven’t done anything,” he said. “I’m innocent. It’s a conspiracy by you know who.”

Glitter was caught at the Ho Chi Minh City airport by Vietnamese authorities trying to board a flight to Bangkok, Thailand, and was then deported to the U.K. after he served his sentence.

Glitter was arrested again in 2012 as part of "Operation Yewtree," an investigation that looked into child sex crimes after BBC TV personality Jimmy Savile, was found after his death to have been a predatory pedophile, reports The Guardian. Women who were Glitter's child victims began to tell the police of their childhood abuse.