Gary Glitter victim says she’ll ‘never get any peace’ after singer raped her

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One of Gary Glitter's victims has spoken of how she will "never get any peace" after being repeatedly raped by the singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, as a young girl.

Her comment was revealed in ITV's new documentary Glitter: The Popstar Paedophile, which explores the convicted criminal's rise to fame, the extent of his abuse of young girls at the height of it, and how he continued even after some of his abuse was made public. The documentary examines Gadd's attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl in 1975, the rape of a 12-year-old girl, and a third victim who, as a teen, was targeted by the singer while visiting him backstage after a concert.

The lawyer of one of the victims, who remain anonymous in the series, shared how his client still struggles mentally following Gadd's abuse. Her legal representative recounted how the event "haunts" her to this day, and she told him that she will "never get any peace".

What, how, and why?

In ITV's documentary, lawyer Richard Scorer spoke of his client who was "repeatedly raped" by Gadd, saying: "The manner in which he did all that was particularly depraved and revolting."

Scorer added: "My client has always been absolutely insistent that she wants to remain anonymous but at the same time she wants to get across what sort of a man this was. She said to me the other day, 'I will never get any peace over this, it haunts me constantly', and she has nightmares about it all the time.

"I don't believe it's ever a case of these cases that nobody knew about it or nobody suspected, I think that people just didn't want to acknowledge what was going on."

The documentary explored several cases against the convicted paedophile, adding that the aforementioned case involving the 8-year-old girl was dropped in 1997 because "too much time had passed". He was also found not guilty of raping a victim when she was aged 14, who had gone to court against him in 1999 and whose story was shared with the News of the World.

The victim said she was "absolutely devastated" that the jury found Gadd not guilty, the singer later faced a second indictment of 54 counts of possessing indecent images of children. He pled guilty and was sentenced to four months imprisonment, of which he served a two month sentence.

After being released from prison, the documentary examined how Gadd travelled between Cambodia and Vietnam, in Cambodia allegations were made that he was abusing children. When he was in Vietnam he was also arrested for child molestation of a 10-year-old and 13-year-old girl, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

When he was released from prison Gadd returned to the UK in 2008, and in the aftermath of Jimmy Savile's death and Operation Yewtree the singer was investigated on three cases, including the attempted rape of an 8-year-old girl. Glitter was found guilty of sexually abusing girls and sentenced to 16 years in prison

Gadd is currently serving this sentence, he was automatically released in February 2023 halfway through this sentence but was recalled to prison after he allegedly downloaded images of children. In February 2024 a parole board concluded he was not safe to be released from prison, his sentence lasts until 2031.

What else happened on Glitter: The Popstar Paedophile

In a chilling segment of the documentary, archival footage of a 1974 interview between Gadd and Jimmy Savile during his Gary Glitter heyday was shown.

The interview saw Savile, who after his death was revealed to have also sexually abused young children, asked Gadd: "Do young ladies go to great lengths to get next to you, as it were?"

Gadd responded by saying: "Yea thank goodness, I go to great lengths to get next to them too" before he remarked on trying to find someone in the room.

Later in the interview, Savile said: "I am going to perform on television right now a feat which will make me out of friends with about 14 million young ladies because I'm going to give Mr Glitter away to a young girl." The conversation is, of course, very disturbing with hindsight of their crimes.

Glitter: The Popstar Paedophile is out now on ITV and ITVX.

If you feel you have been sexually assaulted you can contact the Rape Crisis National Telephone Helpline on 0808 802 9999 (12-2.30pm and 7-9.30pm every day of the year) or visit https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-help/.

You can also contact Women's Aid, Victim Support, The Survivors Trust or Survivors UK (for male victims of sexual assault). Or you can contact the 24-hour freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, on 0808 2000 247.

Read more:

• Gary Glitter recalled to prison just weeks after paedophile pop star’s release (The Independent, 3-min read)

• Suzi Quatro: ‘Gary Glitter asked me to lick his face’ (The Telegraph, 9-min read)

• The Reckoning: BBC boss defends Jimmy Savile drama - 'It’s something that we have to continue to talk about' (Yahoo UK, 3-min read)