Police Ring Up "Perverse" Glitter

Police Ring Up "Perverse" Glitter
By Josh Grossberg2 hours, 34 minutes ago

It might take more than $40,000 bail for Gary Glitter's get-out-of-jail card.
Authorities in Vietnam have charged the faded glam rocker with committing "lewd acts" on minors, allegations that could net him a lengthy prison sentence if he's convicted.
"The formal charge is engaging in perverse activities with children," an official from Ba Ria Vung Tau province told Reuters.
Glitter, whose real name Paul Francis Gadd, was arrested a week ago as he tried to board a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok. Police tracked him down at the airport just days after formally announcing he was wanted for questioning in connection with reports he had sex with at least two young girls, one of whom was 12.
Glitter, however, has claimed he was merely tutoring the girls in English.
The age of consent in Vietnam is 16. Glitter's charge carries a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison; he has apparently escaped the more serious count of child rape, which is punishable by death by firing squad.
The state-owned Liberated Saigon newspaper reported Tuesday that Glitter's Vietnamese lawyer, Le Thanh Kinh, had submitted paperwork to post a $40,000 bond to get the bouffant-wigged British crooner out of detention.
But officials said that even if they were to grant Glitter bail, it doesn't automatically guarantee his release.
"In Vietnam, you can't just apply and pay for bail to be released. There's a lot of other procedures required," Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Duc Trinh, deputy head of the police investigation department in southern Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, told the Associated Press.
Trinh added: "To accuse him of raping children, we need more investigation and to gather evidence. But now we only accuse him of lewd acts with a child, and we are launching an investigation of that."
Officials also said the singer is a flight risk.
Glitter's attorney said the 61-year-old entertainer could remain incarcerated in harsh conditions for another month before his bail would be accepted. The singer is currently locked up in Vietnam's Phuoc Co prison outside Vung Tau, where inmates typically sleep on the floor.
On Tuesday the "Do You Wanna Touch" singer, clad in a black T-shirt and pants, was allowed to leave his cell and touch base with British consular officials for a third time at the facility. No word what was discussed.
Local newspapers have reported that investigators interviewed 10 underage girls who allegedly had sex with Glitter at his rented seaside villa in Vung Tau, a popular resort mecca where he had been living for the past year. The probe was initiated after Glitterly was kicked out of a local nightclub for allegedly feeling up an underage barmaid and neighbors were quoted as saying they had witnessed several young girls at his home.
This is the latest legal scrape for the onetime hit-maker.
In 1999, the performer pleaded guilty to 54 counts of child pornography in his native England after kiddie porn was found on his PC. He served two months in prison and was placed on a child sex offender list. After his release, he went underground, turning up in Cuba, then Cambodia before being hounded out of the latter country by child-welfare activists. He eventually settled in Vietnam.
Glitter is best known Stateside for his made-for-basketball chant "Rock and Roll Part II," as well as 1973 hit "Leader of the Gang" and 1984's "Another Rock 'n' Roll Christmas."

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