Gary Glitter ordered to pay more than £500,000 in damages to abuse victim
Gary Glitter has been ordered to pay more than £500,000 in damages to one of his victims who sued him at the High Court.
The woman is suing Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, following his 2015 conviction for abusing her and two other young people between 1975 and 1980.
She previously secured a “default judgment” in her claim – a ruling in her favour over Glitter’s liability – and on Tuesday Mrs Justice Tipples said the woman was entitled to damages of £508,800.
The judge said in a 13-page ruling: “There is no doubt that the claimant was subject to sexual abuse of the most serious kind by the defendant when she was only 12 years old and that has had very significant adverse impact on the rest of her life.”
Mrs Justice Tipples said the woman brought the legal action after being repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by Glitter, as well as being “humiliated and coercively controlled” by the singer.
She continued: “The claimant said that she felt totally ashamed and she would scrub herself in the bath daily and this included, on occasion, using a pumice stone to ‘scrub her face off’, and she did not care what she looked like. The claimant just did not want to look like herself.
“The claimant did not tell anyone in her family what happened to her as she was worried that she would bring shame on them all and she thought her family would not love her any more if they knew.”
Mrs Justice Tipples said the six-figure sum includes £381,000 in lost earnings and £7,800 for future therapy and treatment.
At a hearing on Tuesday, the judge said the woman should also be paid interest on the damages of around £84,000.
Glitter did not attend the hearing, nor was he represented by a lawyer, with the court told he has not engaged with the civil case.
At a hearing in March, the High Court in London heard the woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – has been unable to work for several decades as a result of the abuse.
Her barrister Jonathan Metzer said Glitter’s abuse had a “dramatic and terrible impact” on her education, work and personal relationships.
Richard Scorer, head of abuse law at Slater & Gordon who acts for the woman in this case, said after the judgment: “Whilst no amount of money can make up for horrific sexual abuse, the award at least goes some way to recognising the devastation inflicted on my client throughout her childhood and adult life.
“Gadd’s refusal to engage with the process merely proves his utter lack of remorse, something we will be reminding the parole board about if he makes another application for early release.
“We will be pursuing Gadd for payment and will continue to support our client through this process.”
Glitter was jailed for 16 years in 2015 for sexually abusing three schoolgirls. His sentence expires in February 2031.
He was automatically released from HMP The Verne, a low-security prison in Portland, Dorset, in February last year after serving half of his fixed-term determinate sentence.
Glitter was put back behind bars less than six weeks after walking free when police monitoring showed he had breached his licence conditions by reportedly trying to access the dark web and viewing downloaded images of children.
