The paedophile former pop star Gary Glitter has been ordered by a high court judge to pay more than £500,000 in damages to one of the women he abused.
Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, is being sued after his 2015 conviction for abusing the claimant and two other young people between 1975 and 1980.
She previously secured a “default judgment” in her claim – a ruling in her favour over Gadd’s liability – and on Tuesday Mrs Justice Tipples said the woman was entitled to damages of £508,800. The judge said the woman should also be paid interest on the damages of about £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.
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 a very significant adverse impact on the rest of her life.”
Tipples said the woman brought the legal action after being repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by Gadd, as well as being “humiliated and coercively controlled” by him.
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.”
Tipples said the six-figure sum included £381,000 in lost earnings and £7,800 for future therapy and treatment.
Richard Scorer, the head of abuse law at Slater and Gordon, who acts for the claimant, said: “In making this award the court has properly acknowledged the appalling abuse suffered by my client. 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.”
At a hearing in March, the high court in London heard that the woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – had been unable to work for several decades as a result of the abuse.
Her barrister, Jonathan Metzer, said Gadd’s abuse had a “dramatic and terrible impact” on her education, work and personal relationships.
Gadd 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.
However, he was put back in prison less than six weeks later when police monitoring showed he had breached his licence conditions by reportedly trying to access the dark web and viewing downloaded images of children.
A parole hearing in January concluded Gadd should not be released. The Parole Board said there was also concern about the lack of victim empathy that he had continued to show, and that he had not taken part in any programmes to address his offending because he continued to deny having a sexual interest in children.
