London -
Gary Glitter tried to rape an eight-year-old girl while she was having a sleepover with a friend, a court heard on Monday.
The former glam rock star is alleged to have attacked the schoolgirl when he was at the height of his fame, creeping into her bed in the middle of the night.
A jury heard how the singer also preyed on fans as young as 12 backstage at his concerts and in hotels, after plying them with champagne and persuading their parents to leave them alone.
The 70-year-old is accused of a string of historic sex offences against three young girls in the 1970s and 1980s.
The first alleged attack happened during the 1970s, when he is said to have crept into a child’s bedroom where two young girls were sleeping in a double bed.
John Price, QC, prosecuting, said the victim was awoken when the drunken musician, who was then in his 30s, clambered on to the bed.
“She remembers awaking from her sleep to find him in the bed between herself and her friend,” he told Southwark Crown Court. “He was drunk?...?she remembers what she describes as a horrible smell of alcohol and tobacco and that there had been a dinner party at the house that night.
“She felt his hands lift her nightdress, she was not wearing underwear?...?in short, it is alleged that he tried to rape her.
“She only managed to prevent him from succeeding by moving away from him in the bed until she had moved so far that she remembers she fell into the ‘envelope’ or ‘cocoon’ formed at the edge of the bed, by the fact that the covers and blankets had been tucked beneath the mattress.”
The victim waited for the singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, to fall asleep before staggering to the bathroom in pain, where she attempted to scrub herself clean, the court heard.
The next day, Glitter allegedly “behaved entirely as normal” and even gave his terrified victim chocolate.
Years later, when she went to help a friend clear up after a party, Glitter is said to have lured the frightened teenager to a bedroom where he was reclining on the bed. Mr Price said: “He asked her to cuddle him.
“She tried to do so quickly and awkwardly but he took hold of her and rolled her on to her back on the bed.
“She was frightened. He asked her, ‘Do you remember what I did to you? Did you like it? Do you want to go into the bathroom? There’s a lock on the door.’ She summoned the courage to say no and got up from the bed and left the room.”
The victim confided in her mother weeks later, but did not report the alleged assaults to police until after Glitter was arrested for amassing a hoard of child pornography in 1997.
Jurors were told Glitter pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in 1999, brought after he took his laptop to be serviced at a PC World in Bristol.
The engineer who examined the machine discovered a large number of sickening images and alerted the police.
Glitter is also accused of preying on young fans who came to his concerts.
One woman claims she was just 12 when the musician invited her and her mother to his hotel room after a 1977 show at a Leicester nightclub. He offered her champagne before having sex with her after her mother was led out of the room, the jury was told.
Mr Price said the girl was also attacked in a Birmingham hotel room. Jurors were shown photographs of the victim with her mother and Glitter, some of them showing bottles of champagne in ice buckets.
Glitter topped the charts in the 1970s with hits including I’m The Leader Of The Gang (I Am), I Love You Love Me Love and Always Yours.
Another girl, aged 13, was allegedly molested in the star’s dressing room at a Watford nightclub in 1979 after he persuaded her mother to leave them alone.
Glitter showed no emotion yesterday as the case was opened.
Wearing dark glasses, a silk scarf and a navy suit, the profoundly deaf defendant wore a hearing aid and was flanked by two lip-reading interpreters.
Glitter, of Marylebone, central London, denies seven counts of indecent assault, one of attempted rape, one of administering a drug or other substance and one of sex with a girl under 13.-
Daily Mail