Paedophile Gary Glitter has been released from jail after serving half of his sentence for sexually abusing three young schoolgirls.
The disgraced pop star, 79, was jailed in 2015 but it is understood he walked free from Dorset’s HMP The Verne on Friday morning.
Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was freed automatically halfway through a fixed-term determinate sentence.
The convicted sex offender, who had a string of chart hits in the 1970s, will be subject to licence conditions now that he is out of prison.
Glitter carried out his attacks on the girls – aged 12 and 13 – at the height of his fame, decades ago.
He separated them from their mothers by taking them backstage to his dressing room at one of his shows.
Glitter preyed on his vulnerable victims whose claims he thought would not be believed because of his celebrity, prosecutors said.
His third victim was less than 10 years old when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975.
The allegations only came to light nearly 40 years later when Glitter became the first person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree – the investigation launched by the Metropolitan Police in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Sentencing the singer, Judge Alistair McCreath said all the victims were “profoundly affected” by the abuse.
He said it was “difficult to overstate the gravity of this dreadful behaviour” when referring to the assault on one victim, telling Glitter he was able to attack another “only” because of his fame.
The court heard there was no evidence Glitter had atoned for his actions after he was found guilty of one count of attempted rape, one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, and four counts of indecent assault.
He later lost a Court of Appeal challenge against his conviction.
Glitter found fame in the 1970s as part of the glam rock scene, scoring number-one hits with “I’m The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)”, “I Love You Love Me Love” and “Always Yours”.
His fall from grace occurred years earlier after he admitted possessing 4,000 child pornography images and was jailed for four months in 1999.
In 2002, he was expelled from Cambodia following reports of sex crime allegations, and in March 2006 he was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam and spent two-and-a-half years in jail.
News that Glitter would be released early from prison emerged in February last year.
An offender who is convicted of a sexual offence is released on a strict licence.
The terms of the licence can include staying in an approved premise, obeying a curfew and having GPS tagging, not having unsupervised contact with children and restrictions on internet usage.
Victims’ families can also be protected from unwanted contact through exclusion zones being set up.
If offenders breach the conditions, the Probation Service can recall them to prison.
