Sobbing in the witness box, the 70-year-old singer told the jury that he was ‘In a very bad place in my life at that time and I had a lot of very serious decisions to make about my future.’
Subsequently the singer, who was once adored by millions, downloaded thousands of images of child abuse - a decision which he claims ‘changed my life forever.’
Paul Gadd (Glitter’s real name) stands trial accused of sexually abusing three young girls including two teenagers during the 70s and 80s.
The accusations include attempting to rape an eight-year-old and plying a 12-year-old with alcohol in order to have sex with her.
He denies the charges against him.
Glitter broke down as he explained he had invested 200,000 in his own career, and then when he took his computer to PC World, and the allegations starting coming in against him, he had to spend out further money on lawyer’s fees.
On top of this, Glitter said he missed his girlfriend, who lived in Cuba, admitting: ‘I still can’t get her out of Cuba.’
‘I was drinking heavily, I was doing drugs, and the other thing of course is that I had to find this money to pay for the legal costs and studio,’ he said.
The prosecution did not accept Glitter’s claims, telling him: ‘You will accept that people have difficulties in their careers. You will accept that they do not reach for their laptop and look for pictures of men having sex with young children.’
Gadd served time in the 90s and 00s for possessing a large number of indecent images of children. He was caught when he went to pick up a Toshiba laptop from Bristol PC World.