Gary Glitter Is Released From Prison After Serving Half of His Sentence

LONDON — The former glam rock singer Gary Glitter has been released from prison after serving half of a 16-year sentence for sexually abusing three young girls decades ago, Britain’s Ministry of Justice said on Friday.

The singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, will serve the remainder of his sentence under probation, a common arrangement in Britain.

Mr. Gadd will be fitted with a GPS tag and will face other restrictions, the ministry said in a statement. “If the offender breaches these conditions at any point, they can go back behind bars,” it noted.

The 78-year-old former star rose to fame in the 1970s after a string of hits, including “Rock and Roll Part 2,” which has been widely featured in films and at sporting events in the United States.

Mr. Gadd was arrested in 2012 as part of an inquiry set up to investigate accusations of sexual abuse against Jimmy Savile, a longtime BBC host.

That arrest led to Mr. Gadd’s conviction on one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 12. During his 2015 trial, prosecutors described how he had abused his access to young fans as he became an international star in the 1970s.

In his sentencing remarks, Judge Alistair McCreath said that he had found no evidence that Mr. Gadd had done anything to atone for his crimes and that, after reading statements from the three victims from the 1970s, it was “clear that in their different ways, they were all profoundly affected by your abuse of them. You did all of them real and lasting damage.”

Before his 2015 conviction, Mr. Gadd had been convicted in separate cases of sexually abusing minors and possession of child pornography.

In the late 1990s, he served two months in jail after admitting to possessing 4,000 images of child pornography. In 2006, he was sentenced to three years in prison in Vietnam for molesting two underage girls at a seaside villa he was renting.

In 2019, the music label that owns “Rock and Roll Part 2” said that Mr. Gadd would not receive any royalties from the use of his song in “Joker,” one of the year’s top-grossing films.

The British government enacted a law last year that required criminals serving sentences for violent or sexual offenses to spend longer in prison, with the automatic release point occurring two-thirds through their sentences, not halfway.