Gary Glitter: all the former singer’s sexual abuse convictions

Gary Glitter has been released from prison after serving half of his 16-year sentence for sexually abusing girls at the height of his fame in the 1970s and 80s.

Related: Gary Glitter freed from jail after serving half of his 16-year sentence – reports

This conviction relates to historical offences committed in the UK, but Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was also found guilty of obscene acts against children in Vietnam. Here, the Guardian details the sentences the disgraced pop star has been handed at home and abroad.

United Kingdom

Glitter was sentenced to four months in prison in 1999 after he pleaded guilty to 54 charges of making indecent photographs of children under 16.

The offences came to light after police launched an investigation when child abuse images were found on a computer that Glitter had taken to a branch of PC World for repair.

His most recent conviction was in 2015, when he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for sexually abusing three schoolgirls in the 1970s and 80s.

He was found guilty at the end of a three-week trial of one count of attempted rape, one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, and four counts of indecent assault.

Two girls, aged 12 and 13, were attacked by Glitter after he invited them backstage to his dressing room and isolated them from their mothers. His youngest victim was below the age of 10 when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975.

“It is difficult to overstate the depravity of this dreadful behaviour,” Judge Alistair McCreath said at Southwark crown court at the time.

Vietnam

Glitter was sentenced to three years in jail in March 2006 for sexually molesting two girls.

The judge and two-strong jury heard he had kissed and fondled “D”, aged 11, and “Ng”, aged 10. A charge of child rape had been dropped, but Glitter was tried for the lesser crime of obscene acts.

Glitter abused the girls at his home in the city of Vung Tau before being arrested at an airport while trying to leave the country in November 2005.

One of the girls told the BBC in 2015 that she met Glitter when a friend had taken her to the house, where she said she was shown photos and a video.

“He then grabbed me and dragged me into the bedroom, and that’s when he did it to me. I was scared – really scared, so scared,” she said.

He spent two and a half years in jail before being deported to the UK in 2008.