Glitter facing seven years on child abuse charges

Faded British rocker Gary Glitter faces up to seven years in a Vietnamese prison if found guilty of child abuse charges this week in southern Vietnam.

His two-day trial on charges of committing lewd acts with two girls, aged 10 and 11, begins tomorrow in closed session at the courthouse in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province. The crime carries a prison sentence ranging from three to seven years.

The ageing singer, who won fame during the 1970s as a glam rocker with a penchant for bouffant wigs and sequin jump-suits, has been accused of kissing, fondling, and ”engaging in other physical acts” with the girls at his rented villa in the port city of Vung Tau, located about 125 kilometres southeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

Glitter, 61, who has been held in Phuoc Co prison outside the city since he was arrested last November, has maintained his innocence, said his lawyer Le Thanh Kinh.

“He says he has not committed any crime,” Kinh said yesterday. “I will do my best to defend him,” though he added it will be “very difficult”.

Glitter has said he was teaching the girls English at his home and considered them “like his grandchildren”. He has admitted to police that the 11-year-old girl slept in his room because she was afraid of ghosts, but denied inappropriate behaviour, his attorney said.

The trial will be closed to the public to protect the girls’ identity. However, the verdict will be read publicly on Friday.

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, has been in police custody since November 19, when he was seized in Ho Chi Minh City trying to board a flight out of the country. Police confiscated his laptop, which had hundreds of pornographic pictures on it.

During the criminal investigation, police had considered whether to charge Glitter with child rape, which carries a maximum penalty of death, but said prosecutors did not find enough evidence.

The girls’ families wrote to the court in December, asking that charges be dropped altogether after Glitter paid $2,000 (€1,700) to each of them.

Although prosecutors decided o move forward with the case anyway, under the Vietnamese legal system, the payments are considered “compensation” that counts toward lessening any sentence.

Glitter is perhaps best known for his crowd-pleasing rock anthem “Rock and Roll (Part 2)”, which is still often played at sporting events. His career faded after the 1970s, and the platform boots and jump-suit look he sported at the height of his career is now considered unfashionable.

But Glitter’s downfall was triggered in 1997 when he brought his computer to be repaired and thousands of hard-core pornographic images of children were found.

He was convicted in Britain in 1999 of possessing child pornography and served half of a four-month jail term. He later went to Cambodia and in 2002 was expelled from that country, though Cambodian officials did not specify any crime or file charges.