Gary Glitter tried to rape schoolgirl, court hears

Gary Glitter arrives at Southwark Crown Court to face historic child abuse charges. Picture: Getty

He attempted to rape a girl under 10 after creeping into her bed, but she managed to escape his clutches, jurors were told.

John Price QC, opening the case for the prosecution at Southwark Crown Court, said Glitter – real name Paul Gadd – had tried to force himself on the girl in the mid-1970s.

He added: “She only managed to prevent him from succeeding by moving away from him in the bed until she had moved so far that she remembers she fell into the ‘envelope’ or ‘cocoon’ formed at the edge of the bed by the fact that the covers and blankets had been tucked beneath the mattress.”

Around four years later, the former chart-topper is said to have pounced on the youngster again, pushing her on to a bed after asking for a “cuddle”.

Although the girl confided in her mother and friends, it was more than two decades before she went to police, after seeing Glitter had admitted child pornography charges in 1999, the court heard.

The aurally impaired singer followed proceedings with the help of lip-reading interpreters.

Glitter was arrested in 1997 when he went to pick up a Toshiba laptop that had been serviced at a Bristol PC World, after an engineer had found child pornography images on it.

Mr Price said: “It encouraged [the alleged victim] to report to the police, for the first time, what she says he had done to her.

“It seemed to her that recent events in Bristol … offered a better chance that she might be believed when accusing so famous and popular a man of so dreadful a crime.”

Glitter is also accused of molesting two young fans whom he met while touring.

In each case, the girls are said to have first met him in his dressing room after a concert to which their mothers had taken them.

Each girl was initially introduced to Glitter in the presence of her mother, and the mother then persuaded to leave her daughter alone with him, jurors heard.

One woman claims she was just 12 when Glitter plied her with champagne and then assaulted her after one of his 1977 concerts in a Leicester club called Baileys.

She is said to have gone with her mother to Glitter’s dressing room after the concert, and then both of them were invited to the rocker’s Holiday Inn hotel suite.

Mr Price told jurors: “It was there, in his hotel bedroom, her mother having been taken elsewhere by someone else, that she says he subjected her to a prolonged episode of sexual abuse involving a full range of sexual activity culminating in intercourse, prior to which he plied her with alcohol – champagne.”

Jurors also heard that the teenager was also subjected to a similar ordeal in a Birmingham hotel room when she was 13.

Glitter’s alleged third victim was attacked backstage after one of his performances, in another club called Baileys, in Watford.

He allegedly kissed the girl and “touched her between the legs” after asking the schoolgirl’s mother to leave them alone.

Mr Price told jurors: “The issue presented for your decision in the case of the complaints of these two women – as they now are – is again a stark decision.

“Have both of them chosen to subject themselves to the ordeal of giving evidence in a public court about how a famous man came to indulge himself sexually with them whilst they were each still a child simply because that is what happened, or are they here falsely to accuse him?”

Glitter faces a charge of of attempted rape and indecent assault on a girl under the age of 13, dating from 1975.

In relation to the second complainant, he is charged with four counts of indecent assault when she was under the age of 13, in 1977.

He is also accused of plying the girl with alcohol with the intention to “stupefy or overpower” her to have sex with him between January and May 1977. And Glitter faces one charge of unlawful intercourse with a girl aged under 13 – the same girl – between the same dates.

In connection to a third complainant, who was under the age of 16, he is charged with two counts of indecent assault between 1979 and 1980.

Glitter from London, denies the charges. The trial continues.