Father brings his six-year-old daughter to protest Gary Glitter’s bail hostel demanding to know why staff are ‘protecting a paedophile’
- The 1970s glam rock star, 78, and child abuser was released from jail yesterday
- Father, David Jones, took his six-year-old daughter to protest outside his hostel
- The hostel is within walking distance of no fewer than ten schools
A father brought his six-year-old daughter to protest outside Gary Glitter’s bail hostel today, demanding: ‘Why are they protecting a paedophile?’
The serial sex offender has been treated ‘like royalty’ by having his meals delivered by staff, according to sources at the hostel in the Home Counties, where Glitter, 78, was moved early Friday, upon his release from prison halfway through his 16-year sentence.
Yesterday police were called after two vigilantes stormed into the hostel’s driveway and one clambered onto the electric gate.
But today, father-of-one David Jones, 46, who lives nearby, tried to engage staff at the hostel on an intercom after arriving outside with his daughter, who was wearing a pink kitten headband. He asked that his daughter not be named.
‘We’re spending all kinds of money to protect a paedophile like that – he should have died in prison,’ said construction worker Mr Jones.
Pop paedophile Gary Glitter, pictured, who was released from jail yesterday, is facing protestors want to know ‘why are they protecting a paedophile?’
David Jones (pictured left), 46, who lives nearby, tried to engage staff at the hostel when he arrived outside with his daughter the day after police were called after two vigilantes stormed into the hostel’s driveway and one clambered onto the electric gate (pictured right)
‘I asked the staff why they were protecting paedophiles and not children like my daughter who live around this area. They told me they would call the police and it was private property.
‘I just wanted them to explain to my daughter why a man like that is here at all.’
Mr Jones, who said he spent many years in the US, said residents there could check where paedophiles lived, but the same checks could not be done in the UK.
‘It’s completely wrong – why don’t they do that here?’
Earlier, a vigilante who had been live-streaming yesterday’s protest on Facebook from outside the hostel claimed he was planning to fly a drone around the outside of the facility to check whether Glitter – real name Paul Gadd – was inside.
The hostel, in a suburban area behind electric gates, is within walking distance of no fewer than ten schools.
The inmates have an outdoor gym, football goalposts, smoking shelter and spacious grounds to walk around, with an allotment area.
Nearby residents made their feelings clear about the prospect of having a sex offender like Glitter in their midst.
The serial sex offender has been treated ‘like royalty’ by having his meals delivered by staff, according to sources at the hostel in the undisclosed location in the south of England
The self-styled vigilantes, who arrived in a BMW, shouted to passing motorists outside the hostel: ‘Watch out, Glitter’s in there!’
Father-of-one David Jones, 46, who lives nearby, said: ‘I asked the staff why they were protecting paedophiles and not children like my daughter who live around this area.’ Pictured: Garry Glitter
‘I know these people have to be put somewhere,’ one middle-aged woman told Mail Online, ‘but there are loads of children, playgrounds and schools in this area, and it doesn’t seem to be the best choice for a man like him.’
One children’s playground on a private estate right next to Glitter’s hostel is even visible through the fencing, and a child’s swing is right by the fence.
According to reports, Glitter, who had a string of 1970s hits, has refused to engage with prison sex offender treatment programmes.
A source said: ‘He attended the sessions but made it quite clear he wasn’t interested.
READ MORE on Gary Glitter’s early release from jail
‘It was like a naughty kid staring out of the window throughout class.
‘If a dangerous sex offender refuses to engage, surely they’re just not fit for release?’
Others wondered why Glitter was apparently accompanied by three or four police officers on his 1.30am release from HMP The Verne, in Portland, Dorset, at taxpayer’s expense, when he’s perfectly capable of paying for his own taxi or even security detail.
‘Most prisoners are just given a bus or taxi fare if they’re lucky,’ said a source. ‘He was given the five-star treatment, which seems to be continuing in the hostel.’
Glitter has been categorised as a ‘level 3’ offender.
It means he is still seen as ‘dangerous’ and ‘capable of causing serious harm’ and will need senior probation staff to monitor him.
Any breach of his licence conditions would see Glitter facing an instant return to jail.
He still owns a luxury top-floor £2m flat in a Victorian red-brick mansion block near Baker Street, London.
The vacant flat has not been in his name since he was arrested in Vietnam in 2006.
The home – which residents in the block say lay empty during his incarceration – is controlled by a former associate through a company.
The shamed pop idol was caged for 16 years in 2015 for sex offences against three girls aged eight to 13.
The self-styled vigilantes, who arrived in a BMW, shouted to passing motorists outside the hostel: ‘Watch out, Glitter’s in there!’
Glitter was freed in 2008 and returned to Britain, where he was jailed again in 2015 for child sex abuse dating back to the 1970s
Because he was sentenced to a fixed term, he did not have to go before the Parole Board.
Parole chiefs can block a prisoner’s release if they believe they still pose a risk to the public.
Glitter — was one of the UK’s biggest glam rock stars of the 1970s and a familiar face of BBC’s TV chart show Top of the Pops. He had a string of hits including three UK No1 singles: I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am!), I Love You Love Me Love and Always Yours.
By 1975, he had sold 18million records but by the end of the decade he was declared bankrupt.
He made a comeback with his hit single Dance Me Up in 1984.
Glitter unmasked as a paedophile after fame
November 1997 – A computer engineer discovers thousands of child porn images on Glitter’s laptop while servicing it.
November 1999 – Glitter is jailed for four months after pleading guilty to 54 offences of making indecent photographs of children under 16.
January 2000 – After serving two months in prison, the singer is freed and travels to Spain and then Cuba.
February 2001 – Glitter has a son with Yudenia Sosa Martinez on the Caribbean island.
2002 – He is kicked out of Cambodia after facing allegations of sex crimes and moves to Thailand, before going on to the Vietnamese coastal resort of Vung Tau.
March 2006 – The shamed singer is convicted of sexually abusing two Vietnamese girls, aged ten and 11, and sentenced to three years in prison.
August 2008 – Glitter is ordered to return to the UK after spending two-and-a-half years in jail.
October 2012 – Glitter becomes the first person to be arrested under the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Yewtree.
June 2014 – The singer is charged with eight counts of sexual offences, which later becomes ten counts.
February 2015 – He is found guilty of one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13. Glitter is jailed for 16 years.
February 3 2023 – The now 78-year-old is released from HMP The Verne.
Glitter’s dramatic fall from grace began in 1997 when he took a laptop into a Bristol branch of PC World for repair.
An engineer found child abuse images on the hard drive.
Two years later the singer was jailed for four months after a total of 4,000 images were found by police in a subsequent investigation.
Glitter emigrated on release, before being kicked out of Cambodia in 2002 amid claims of sex crimes.
Four years later he was jailed in neighbouring Vietnam for molesting two girls, one aged just ten.
He escaped serious charges of child rape — which carried a death sentence — and returned to the UK in 2008.
He was forced to sign the sex offenders register, but he was arrested once again in 2012 at his multi-million pound home in Westminster.
Police would later describe him as a ‘habitual sexual predator who took advantage of the star status afforded to him’.
And in 2015 he was convicted of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one of having sex with a girl under 13 in the 1970s and 1980s.
Sentencing, Judge Alistair McCreath said he could find ‘no real evidence’ that Glitter had atoned for his crimes.
The judge said: ‘It is difficult to overstate the depravity of this dreadful behaviour.’
He added: ‘You did all of them real and lasting damage and you did so for no other reason than to obtain sexual gratification for yourself of a wholly improper kind.’
In June 2021 it was revealed Glitter had been given the green light for freedom.
One of his child victims in Vietnam — whom he molested when she was just aged ten — said at the time: ‘He will always be a terrible danger to young girls.
‘It’s terrifying to think he might soon be free.
‘I still have nightmares about what he did to me.’
Glitter no longer owns the master rights to his songs — meaning he no longer receives any royalties.
In 2019, his song Rock and Roll Part 2 featured in hit movie The Joker, but rights holders insisted he would not receive any royalties.
Source: Read Full Article
