The 64-year-old, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was released from a Vietnamese jail on Tuesday, where he had served most of a three-year term for molesting two girls aged 10 and 11.
He was put on a connecting flight to London via Bangkok, where he refused to board the plane for the second leg of the flight, and spent 24 hours in the airport after claiming a heart problem. He then flew to Hong Kong, but was barred entry and forced to return to Thailand, where he has persona non grata status.
The singer, known for his 1970s hits "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)!" and "I Love You Love Me Love", fell from grace in 1999 when he took his computer into a branch of PC World in Bristol, U.K. for repairs, and a technician discovered graphic child abuse images on the hard drive.
After serving only two months in jail in the U.K., Gadd traveled to Spain, Cuba, and then Cambodia, where in 2002 he was accused of sex offenses but not convicted, and later deported. In late 2005 he was charged with raping two children in Vietnam and faced the death penalty, but the charges were scaled down to "obscene acts with minors" in 2006, and he was given a three-year prison term.
Police in Thailand said it remains unclear where the disgraced star will now go.
"It's our understanding that he's arrived in Bangkok. He will either try to go somewhere else or come back to the UK," Thai police colonel Worawat Amornwiwat said.
If he returns to Britain, Gadd will be met by police and put on the sex offenders' register.
According to ECPAT, an international NGO engaged in countering trafficking in children, Gadd's case is one among many, and numerous known pedophiles are currently travelling Asia freely with almost no checks.
There is a "clear pattern with repeat offenders travelling from country to country and flagrantly avoiding the stringent sex offender management mechanisms in the U.K.", British daily The Independent quoted the ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) as saying in a report.
The group said that in the past two years, over 25 Britons have been arrested by police abroad for child sex offences, with 15 of the arrests in Thailand.
