Off Topic Paul Stewart: I was sexually abused by my football coach for four years

It did take a very stupid, crass remark for Morgan to have anything to work with though.

And if anything, Morgan's self righteous indignation puts him in an even worse light than before.

He is - and always will be - a loathsome tw*t

 

He's just a horrible, slimy, piece of crap. Arsenal personified.

 

Eddie Heath - whose name I am allowed to disclose as the Standard already did so earlier today.

Something else that has come out is that, during this time, the club are alleged to have paid off at least one victim to keep his mouth shut - which not only sums up Chelsea and Ken Bates perfectly, but also goes a long way to explaining how abysmal their youth policy has been for the past three decades.

If found guilty, The FA are supposedly preparing to hit Chelsea hard for this...which probably means a £200,000 fine.

:::EDIT:::

...which, based on inflation, would be less than what Chelsea paid him to keep his mouth shut in the first place!

 

How fortunate have we been at Spurs to have had the likes of John Moncur in charge of school boy scouting and much of the training
A man of integrity and strong family ties
You have to believe the we would never have swept this kind of issue under the carpet as have other clubs

 

Up to 350 victims and 10 suspects so far.

This is gonna run on and on.

 

It might be early to say something like that. Not accusing Moncur of course but with the apparent scale of this it would be foolish for any set of fans to claim they had nothing going on at this point in time.

 

Funny how this story continues to grow, with more and more clubs implicated, rather than address this story the countless ex-pros on countless sofas are instead focusing such a disproportionate amount of time and energy into demanding Dele Alli be hung, drawn & quartered.

It's almost as if they're following a directive from on high to direct the discussion to something other than this story...

 

During the nineties, I was working at QPR as a scout. The guy I reported to has today been named as someone allegedly involved in football's sex abuse scandal. Bloody hell.

 

The media have been asked to keep the stories to a minimum so as not to hinder future court proceedings

Media are still ****, no doubt about it

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38221613
Chris Gieler? Another one that's already dead.

Redknapp's quite scathing about the whole thing, but I can't see how he's wrong.
Most of those accused so far already seem to have had dodgy reputations, yet clubs failed to check them out.
Seems like a massive failing across the game, unfortunately.

 

Blimey. Must be a shock. Nothing you can do if you don't know about it though.

 

Any c

Any club found guilty of paying hush money should be kicked out of the football league. It is a thousand worse than what Glasgow Rangers did and they were relegated to the bottom division in Scotland. No appeal, no nothing. What happens happens, but covering it up so it happens to others is unforgivable. No fine, no points deduction, just kicked out forever. It would make remaining clubs more careful.

 

You have a lot of faith then that Scholar or Sugar would have behaved bravely if our club (God forbid) became involved.

 

To be fair to Chelsea, they weren't really in a position to investigate it, as the alleged perpetrator was dead.
They probably asked their lawyers what to do and were told that this was the best solution.
I can understand how they failed to grasp the bigger picture.
Everyone was unaware of the scale of the abuse.

Don't get me wrong, they definitely ****ed up.
There were worse **** ups committed though, in my opinion.

 

M

My issue is that by not bringing it out into the open ASAP and choosing to pay hush money, other children may have been abused at other clubs since as a result. If this is the case, apart from obviously perverting the course of justice they could be guilty of aiding and abetting. Both of which are serious criminal offences and should be treated as such. Any lawyer suggesting that the club commits a criminal offence should be struck off immediately. People's lives have been ruined here, it's not like having your brand new car nicked.

 

I agree that they may have allowed more abuse to happen because of their actions.
It does depend on whether the dead bloke was involved with any other abusers, though.
I doubt that Chelsea committed any offences, though.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38260878

83 suspects and 98 clubs? ****ing hell.
Hopefully this will force clubs to address the issue and keep an eye out for any potential abuse in the future.

 

It's disturbing.

And alarming that this could go on without any consequences (until now if the allegations are proven).

And baffling that there hasn't been any inkling of such a problem in football previously; I don't even recall any rumours or innuendo surfacing.

 

North of the border there has been, as a Celtic coach from the 60s and 70s was convicted of similar offences in the past decade.

It also should be mention that allegations against both Bennell and Higgins were brought up in an edition of Dispatches back in the mid-90s.

 

I think that the scale of this and the fact that, incredibly, almost nothing has been said/done about it for decades shows us just how terrified these kids were made to feel by their abusers. I know it sounds really stupid and trite of me to say this but hearing Paul Stewart (one of the first players whose pictures were on my wall as a kid) talk about this and hearing one of the other victims describe his experience has really helped crystallize in me how terrible this must be for victims.

Hearing Andy Woodward describe how he was terrified that his family would be hurt, that his whole dream of being a footballer would be finished, if he told anyone was heart-breaking. Imagine a kid living with that - with wanting to tell people how someone was hurting them and genuinely believing that if they said anything their family would be hurt. I don't think I've ever really *really* internalized that thought before.

I just hope that this whole affair will be a huge turning point in the game and maybe in the lives of young people in every walk of life. It seems so simple to us grown-ups: ****ing tell someone what's happening! We WANT to know! But it obviously wasn't simple to these kids. Let's hope that, as a society as a whole, kids have just a little bit of awareness of this scandal and know 100%, with not a doubt in their mind, that calling out this sort of behaviour is guaranteed to be a good thing, no doubt at all. It's not much to ask to have a society where every kid knows that when someone hurts them they absolutely can and should tell someone.