I used to work as a court reporter and in the course of my work saw a lot of sex offenders appearing in the dock either for trial or for sentence. The vast and I would say the absolute majority of those who were convicted of crimes such as rape, sexual assault, buggery or unlawful sexual intercourse, which were the main sexual offence crimes at the time, deserved the prison sentences that were imposed on them. Setting aside the cases which would now no longer be a crime such as being part of a gay couple where one partner was 19 and the other 21, I only saw one case where I saw some possible redemption arc for the offender and that was down to the horrific abuse he had suffered as a child from his relatives, which in turn I believe went a long way to making him a sex offender. This case should in my mind have been disposed of by some sort of hospital order rather than prison as this was a ruined man who need to be hospitalised to save himself and those around him from further ruin.

However I can see no redemption arc for Gary Glitter, whose request for parole from prison has just been rejected. There’s no indication that his pattern of offending is because of some factor such as prior abuse victimisation, he’s just a wrong ‘un. He has never to my knowledge properly acknowledged the wrong he has done, which is the basic first step to redemption and according to press reports had failed to engage with sex offender treatment programmes in prison nor admitted to prison staff that he is a paedophile. He’s also racked up other prison terms outside of the UK in Vietnam and the parole board was told he has no empathy for his victims. But the kicker that condemns Gary Glitter is the fact that upon his parole from prison where he was serving a 16 year sentence for sexually abusing schoolgirls in 1975 and 1980, Glitter went on to smash through his parole and release licence conditions and offend again by allegedly downloading pictures of children.

There are probably some, I’d guess very few, sex offenders, those whose offences are at the lower level of seriousness and who have addressed their offending behaviour and acknowledged the bestial nature of their crimes, who might well be safely released but kept under very close supervision. Gary Glitter is not one of those offenders. He will continue to deny that he did anything wrong and because of that will continue to be a risk to the public if he is outside of prison.

The short amount of time between Glitter’s release on licence and his alleged reoffending is ample reason to recall him to prison. It’s likely that due to Glitter’s age, 79, the remaining seven years or so that he will have to serve will see him die in prison in his late 80s and the only person responsible for that potential ending of Gary Glitter’s life is Gary Glitter himself.