VIETNAM/FILE: Vietnam presses molestation charge against Gary Glitter

Vietnamese police have pressed child molestation charge against British rocker Gary Glitter who faces up to 12 years in a Vietnamese jail if convicted, officials said on Saturday (November 26). "The formal charge is engaging in perverse activities with children," an official from Ba Ria Vung Tau province told Reuters. The official, who declined to be identified, said Glitter would be detained for up to three more months before a trial by the provincial court of Ba Ria Vung Tau. Glitter, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, has denied allegations that he molested girls as young as 12 and insisted he was just helping them with their English. The age of consent in Vietnam is 16 and sex with minors is punishable by up to 12 years in jail. Officials have said they were considering allowing the rocker bail due to the harsh conditions in the detention centre, where inmates sleep on the floor. Glitter's Vietnamese lawyer, Le Thanh Kinh, told Reuters the bail amount had not been decided yet. Authorities have not given details of their investigation, but state-owned newspapers said this week police had identified 10 girls who admitted to having had sex with Glitter. One of the girls was 12 years old. Glitter was sentenced to four months in jail in Britain in 1999 after being found guilty of storing more than 4,000 images of child pornography on his computer. After his release he left Britain for Cuba and then later turned up in Phnom Penh. Child rights activists hounded him out of Cambodia twice and had his name put on an entry blacklist, although Glitter filed lawsuits last year fighting the deportation orders. Vietnamese newspapers have reported Glitter had been in Vietnam for about a year.

ITN Source | December 1, 2005

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