Gary Glitter has been freed from prison after serving half of his 16-year sentence for sexualy abusing three schoolgirls, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.

The 79-year-old left HMP The Verne – a low-security category C jail in Portland, Dorset – on Friday after eight years behind bars. The former pop star, who had a string of chart hits in the 1970s, was jailed in 2015. He was freed automatically halfway through a fixed-term determinate sentence and will be subject to licence conditions.

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, was at the height of his fame when he preyed on his vulnerable victims, who thought no one would believe their claims over that of a celebrity.

He attacked two girls, aged 12 and 13, after inviting them backstage to his dressing room, and isolating them from their mothers. His third victim was younger than 10 years old when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975.

The allegations only came to light nearly 40 years later when Glitter became the first person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree – the investigation launched by the Metropolitan police after the Jimmy Savile scandal – when police detained him at his home in 2012.

An MoJ spokesperson said: “Sex offenders like Paul Gadd are closely monitored by the police and Probation Service and face some of the strictest licence conditions, including being fitted with a GPS tag. If the offender breaches these conditions at any point, they can go back behind bars.

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Glitter had faced the prospect of dying in jail when he was sentenced in 2015 to 15 years by a judge who told him that – while the offences took place at a time when, in respect of one of them, the maximum sentence was considerably lower – new guidelines meant he would take revised options into account.

Judge Alistair McCreath said all the victims were “profoundly affected” by the abuse and that it was “difficult to overstate the gravity of this dreadful behaviour” when referring to the assault on one victim, telling Glitter he was able to attack another “only” because of his fame.

“You did all of them real and lasting damage and you did so for no other reason than to obtain sexual gratification for yourself of a wholly improper kind,” he added.

The court heard there was no evidence Glitter had atoned for his actions after he was found guilty of one count of attempted rape, one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, and four counts of indecent assault. He later lost a court of appeal challenge against his conviction. All six offences were committed in the 1970s and 80s.

Glitter’s fall from grace occurred years earlier after he admitted possessing 4,000 child abuse images and was jailed for four months in 1999.

In 2002, he was expelled from Cambodia amid reports of sex crime allegations, and in March 2006, he was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam and spent two-and-a-half years in jail.

Born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in 1944, Glitter had three UK No 1s as a performer, including I’m the Leader of the Gang. His breakthrough single, Rock And Roll (Parts 1 And 2), reached No 2 in the UK and topped the US charts in 1972.

By 1975, he had sold 18m records, but towards the end of the decade he was declared bankrupt, later making a comeback with hit single Dance Me Up in 1984.

The four-month jail term handed to Glitter in 1999 related to a computer engineer’s discovery in November 1997 of child sexual abuse images on a laptop that Glitter had brought into a branch of PC World in Bristol.

A police search of homes in Somerset and London led to the seizure of indecent videos and pictures of children. He was first charged on 31 March 1998 with 50 offences of downloading indecent photographs of children on his return from a three-month holiday in Cuba.

However, he continued to periodically earn royalties from his music, such as when the US Democratic party played one of his songs at its convention in 2012.

In 2019, rights-holders for Glitter’s catalogue of songs stated that he would not receive royalties from one of his songs being used in the movie Joker.

Snapper Music Ltd, an independent music company based in London, told the Guardian it had owned the master rights since February 1997. A spokesperson added: “He is not entitled to any royalties or monies from the catalogue.”