January 21, 2012 10:55

'Gary Glitter' Twitter account is found to be fake

Man behind what appeared to be tweets attributed to the disgraced pop star claims the whole thing was a 'social experiment'

Photo: PA

The Twitter account claiming to belong to Gary Glitter has been revealed to be fake.

The man behind what appeared to be tweets attributed to the singer on Twitter.com/OfficialGlitter has come clean and admitted he set up the account as a "social experiment" before going into great detail as to why he created the account.

He wrote on his Tumblr page Glitterontwitter.tumblr.com:

Let me say that this account does not belong to convicted paedophile Gary Glitter. I am deeply disgusted by what Gary Glitter has done in his life and am not condoning, making light of or glorifying child abuse. His crimes are unforgivable and chilling.

The man - who calls himself Ben - added: "I set this twitter account up as a social experiment to highlight the dangers and safety of children using the social networking sites and to discover and question public morality. It's been an interesting and eye-opening experience for me."

To read the full transcript go to Glitterontwitter.tumblr.com.

In previous tweets he announced a comeback album an autobiography and a world tour.

Online speculation had suggested that the account may well be a hoax, but there is actually no legal barrier to stop Glitter from running a Twitter account.

While Facebook's rules explicitly state that no registered sex offenders are allowed to be members of the social networking site, Twitter does not have such a rule. Though the site makes it clear in its rules and regulations that it has a zero tolerance policy toward either the promotion or hosting of child pornography, it does not state that registered sex offenders cannot be members of the site.

NME also made inquiries to the Home Office press office about the online restrictions which can be placed upon registered sex offenders and was told that the police cannot ban anyone from using the internet as it would "violate their human rights" and any online monitoring of registered sex offenders by police was carried out on a "case by case basis".

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was convicted in 1999 of possession of child pornography and served four months in prison. After his release, he relocated to Vietnam, where he was subsequently convicted of a string of child sexual abuse offences.