Vigilantes try to storm Gary Glitter's bail hostel days after release mid-way through sentence
5 February 2023, 21:25
Gary Glitter's bail hostel was targeted by angry protesters within days of his early release from prison.
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A group of vigilantes were alerted to the 70s pop star and convicted paedophile's location at a property in Hampshire via a local Facebook group.
They reportedly shouted to passersby: "Watch out, Glitter's in there."
One tried to scale the entrance and shook a perimeter gate before police arrived yesterday, The Times reported.
Glitter was released from prison late last week after serving half his sentence for sexually abusing three schoolgirls.
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Glitter, 79, real name is Paul Gadd, was found guilty of the abuse by a court in 2015 and sentenced to sixteen years in prison.
The paedophile glam rock singer, who had a string of chart hits in the 1970s, left HMP The Verne on Friday.
He is now being kept on bail at a hostel close to a children's playground on an estate. Numerous schools are also nearby.
Newspapers have not revealed the location as a matter of course.
Hampshire Police said: “Officers attended the scene and the situation was resolved.
“No arrests were made.”
Glitter reportedly failed to engage fully with treatment programmes for sex offenders while in prison and was considered to still be a risk to children.
He was freed automatically halfway through a fixed-term determinate sentence.
Glitter was first jailed for four months in 1999 after admitting he possessed more than 4,000 child pornography images.
The offences for which he was jailed in 2015 took place in the mid-1970s, with Glitter luring girls aged 12 and 13 to his dressing room and away from their mothers.
He tried to rape his third victim, under ten years old, in 1975.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Sex offenders like Paul Gadd are closely monitored by the police and Probation Service and face some of the strictest licence conditions, including being fitted with a GPS tag.
"If the offender breaches these conditions at any point, they can go back behind bars.”
Senior lawyer says Gary Glitter 'wasn't supposed to serve 16 years'
