Light sentence for Glitter after cash to families
THE convicted pedophile Gary Glitter showed no remorse for his "sick" behaviour yesterday, shaking his fist at the media in one final show of defiance from the door of the prison van before he was driven away.
"It's a conspiracy, you know who by, one or more newspapers," Glitter shouted after a provincial Vietnamese court found him guilty of committing obscene acts against young girls and sentenced him to three years in prison. With remission for good behaviour, the disgraced glam rocker could be out of jail before Christmas and would face immediate deportation.
"I think if we speak of his behaviour, I think he would understand clearly he has a sickness," said the judge, Hoang Thinh Tung, addressing a press conference after the trial.
Glitter's courtroom outburst was directed against the British tabloids The Sun and News of the World, which have tracked him across three continents from Spain to Cuba to South-east Asia to expose him. As Glitter shook his fist, the Sun's reporter shouted back: "Have you no shame?"
Glitter received the minimum sentence, in part because he paid $US2000 ($2680) compensation to the girls' families. The court ordered him to pay a further 5 million dong ($420) to each family, as well as court costs.
The judge rejected suggestions that Glitter had received rich man's justice. "Vietnamese regulation stipulates compensation can help reduce psychological damage, so if a criminal has money and does not make compensation the court considers this," Judge Tung said. "If the criminal comes from a very poor condition, the court can see that."
The judge summarised the lewd acts Glitter committed against two girls aged 11, saying he had touched their bodies and licked their sex organs, had sex with them and performed other acts.
"Gary Glitter has to take responsibility for his actions," Nguyen Duc Trinh, the deputy chief of police investigations in Vung Tau, said after the trial. "Young children will be safer."
Glitter had come to Vung Tau, a rough and tumble oil and gas town in southern Vietnam in June 2005 after The Sun had published a picture of him with a very young girl at his apartment in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He was never charged there but was forced out of the country.
It is not clear why Glitter chose Vung Tau, 90 kilometres south of Ho Chi Minh City last year. No one in the city of more than 200,000 wants to claim him as an acquaintance. One bar owner told the Herald that Glitter had been to his bar but he was not there on the night.
The local expatriates deeply resent their town's new notoriety. Before Glitter was arrested, Vung Tau was not on the radar for child protection organisations, according to Luc Ferran, of Ecpat, which fights child prostitution and pornography. But Vietnam's tight controls on information made it difficult to assess the extent of the problem.
In Vung Tau, Glitter only stayed six months, in a rented villa before News of the World was tipped off to his new location. Glitter had outed himself with an impromptu performance at a local bar, the Labyrinth club. An expatriate Briton captured it on a mobile phone and contacted the media.
The Vietnamese press followed up and soon after police investigations began.
Glitter tried to leave Vietnam on November 19 last year, but was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City airport and has been in custody ever since. That time served will be deducted from his three-year sentence. He has 15 days to lodge an appeal.
Glitter avoided further charges when a computer confiscated from his home was found to contain hard core pornography - with 2231 pictures and 31 video clips on the hard drive. Glitter had previously served two months' jail in 2000 in Britain for possessing 4000 pornographic images on his computer. Vietnamese law forbids storage of pornographic pictures in any form. But he was not charged because police accepted Glitter's claim that the pornography was on the computer already when it was given to him by an Australian friend.
Ecpat's Mr Ferran said Glitter's case highlighted how the problem of a child sex offender could shift from nation to nation. "He has been convicted in the United Kingdom, barred from entry into Cambodia and now he has been arrested in Vietnam," Mr Ferran said. He said the world may have got too small for Glitter because of his notoriety but for others, there are still many opportunities. There are thousands of people with less glamorous backgrounds exploiting kids."
By Connie Levett Herald Correspondent in Ba Ria, Vietnam