When 12-year-old Tran Thi Thao Nguyen eyed her tormentor across a courtroom in the southern Vietnamese town of Vung Tau three days ago, it was the first time in months she had seen him.
Nearly every night though, it seems, Gary Glitter returns to haunt her sleeping hours. 'I wake up at night shouting and in a cold sweat,' Tran Thao told me in an interview shortly before the 61-year-old pop star went on trial for molesting her and then 10-year-old Tran Thi Thu Diem.
'I stare at the ceiling and I don't know where I am. I feel as if I am dead. My parents run in and ask me what is wrong. I never remember my bad dreams afterwards but I know they are about Gary because they only started after he did those things to me. It has affected all of my family. None of us will be the same again.'
Tran Thao and Tran Thu were the key witnesses in a closed-door trial in Vung Tau which saw the fallen Glam Rock icon jailed for three years on Friday for committing obscene acts with minors in a case that, on the face of it, demonstrated that Vietnam is not prepared to harbour the child sex tourists who have blighted the image of neighbouring Cambodia.
However, as Tran Thao and Tran Thu return to their families this weekend to rebuild their young lives with the help of US$2,000 pre-trial 'compensation' payouts from Glitter's lawyer, the trial has left troubling questions about whether justice was really served.
Prosecution papers seen by the Sunday Morning Post indicate that the police, after initial interviews, had a case strong enough to bring child rape charges against Glitter - an offence which carries a maximum penalty of death by firing squad in Vietnam.
The course of justice appears to have been dramatically altered by an encounter between the two witnesses, their mothers, Glitter's lawyer and a police chief in charge of the case in December, one month after the British singer was arrested as he tried to board a plane from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok.