Off Topic Adam Johnson

So, the charges are enough to trigger safeguarding but they're not enough to warrant suspension pending an investigation???

 

The PFA published our confirmation that his Lawyers were present. If they weren't they'd refute it not publish it. Your last PS shows what a limited thinking idiot I'm trying to reason with. My last user name had nothing to do with the case. I change my username all the time, this time I did it to support a fellow poster who was getting a bit of grief for having a certain word in his user name. You'll probably find a way to create a conspiracy from that.

As for your first ps, I've seen nowt to make me think your claims are true. Nothing at all, just you bounding around with conspiracies you're desperate to prove(but haven't come close) so you can turn the sad events of a child being abused into a way to point score in a football rivalry. What a ****houseIf I see proof we've been out of order, not only will I condemn it but I'll be writing to them personally to condemn it and to rule out any further ticket purchases while those responsible are still at the club. Grow up and jog on ya batty crease, fifa16 is nearly downloaded.

 

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as the allegations came out, and certainly as soon as it was confirmed it was going to court, the club should have suspended the player until the outcome was known (or until he changed his plea, which he obviously only did at the last minute for his own finanial gain as the club would sack him if he said was pleading guilty). Morally, I don't think any employer and certainly a public entity like SAFC can justify letting an employee continue under that kind of allegation. Legally, they could keep playing him and they did, mainly due to their precarious league position. Just my opinion and certainly not swayed because of the club they are or the club I support.

 

Here we go again! It always ends in a slanging match with you Brian doesn't it? If you can't form a reasonable argument, start slagging someone off.

Firstly, the PFA haven't said anything as far as I'm aware. Please enlighten me.

Secondly, which 'claims' are you referring to? I have only been dealing with facts. As outlined in a court of law by 2 QCs and a judge.

Thirdly, I'm not point scoring. I'm ashamed. Ashamed that a club from the North East has been involved in this. My stance is that SAFC have chosen to follow the path of profit over the health and safety of OUR children. It is a sad indictment on our society that the pull of the pound outweighed the well being of a youngster. As I have already stated, I don't blame the fans or cast any aspersions to them as they were left in the dark over this.

Fourth, what more proof do you need? The club knew. They've admitted as much in their statement.

Reet, I'm outta here. I'll look forward to your witty name calling tomorrow!

 

Having read the Club Statement and in particular the paragraph dealing with the 4th May 2015 it strikes me that there are two issues raised from the statement at this point, the reference to documents received is short and relatively vague, in actual fact during the case in court it was stated that these documents which were received were full transcripts of the police interviews and the 834 WhatsApp messages, these were in the possession of Margaret Byrne. The only denial the club make is that they knew in advance that Johnson would change his plea, there is no part of the statement denying that the club were not aware of the extent of the charges just a focus on the knowledge of if they knew he would plead guilty to 2 of the charges prior to the commencement of the trial, whilst they state that originally they were made aware of the broad nature of the allegations by the police on the 23rd April 2015 Johnson was charged with 4 offences, considering that the club were advised that he would defend these allegations I would be very surprised if not one person on the club side had said well what are the full allegations that you are going to defend, again the statement dodges the extent of the club's knowledge.

This is not about the fans but it is about the fans right to know the full details of what has happened, having written company statements and formulated many letters in response to difficult situations I can see the craft behind the statement, it's a bit like politicians answering a question, you get an answer and it will be full and verbose but it will never really address the question that was asked. Writing elsewhere today about Donald Trump I was called a "Thick Geordie Twat" by another user, it occurs to me that Johnson will go to prison, the board of SAFC will pick up their money but the fans will take all the stick for the crimes that they didn't commit and possibly the mistakes made by the club in handling this.

 

Please try to stay close to the facts, Where have I said that someone has turned a blind eye to paedophiles ?

 

A similar type of situation occurred a couple of thousand years ago and a bloke wrote on the forum at the time

" Let he that is without sin make the first comment "

P.S. His suggestion was accepted by the wise men of the day

 

I think that Mark Zuckerburg and Jack Dorsey decided that this wasn't a very good suggestion.

 

I think everyone is missing the point here. There is one BIG elephant in the room. If Johnson had just been a normal player( a run of the mill defender or midfielder) and not a potentially relegation saving player, he would never have got near the first team in a million years. But he wasnt, he was a player that might produce moments of brilliance to keep SAFC up, so morals went out the window. Legally it may have been ok to keep playing him, but morally it wasnt. If SAFC had been mid table and safe from relegation he would not have played again. The safest thing for Sundeland to do was to just suspend him on full pay until it was over. That way they would not receive any flak from anyone. But no, they took a decision based on their league predicament that may leave them looking a bit sullied in the eyes of other fans. Its a shame because I would have thought that most of their fans probably thought he should not be playing until it all blew over.

 

Pretty much where I stand. I can't really comment on the club because their vague statement lacks the detail to clear their name. We still don't know what they had in their possession. Its a cleverly worded statement which attempts to focus on other matters i.e. what his plea was going to be. I'm a bit of a cynic and this leads me to think they are doing that because the other stuff doesn't paint the club in a good light.

The vast majority of fans are blameless. The ones who sang the vile songs, or who thought it was morally acceptable to hide behind his not guilty plea in order to aid their relegation battle, I don't have a lot of time for. You can't blame fans for thinking their club has acted correctly either, they are going to be biased wherever they can. Some will see through the vagueness of the statement and wonder. Some won't want to do that. Neither should be vilified, they cannot dictate what the club put out or do in these situations. The sad thing is the fans are getting smeared by all and sundry, when the vast majority haven't had much involvement in any of it.

I think if the club truly felt their name had been wronged in the case, they wouldn't let it lie and would take action. If what they are saying is true and Johnson is bullshitting, it should be a fairly easy case to win. However they will probably hide behind the "we just want to put the episode behind us, the victim has suffered enough" lines. That's a shame for the fans I think as it leaves it open to interpretation/perception etc.

 

Religious belief is founded upon faith not factual evidence or proof, to that extent the bible which you quote is a work of fiction, it is as valid as The Lord of the Rings, so as for your little quote this is just the trite ramblings of a superior than the rest story teller from a long time ago.

 

Release the bible today and it would be a best seller in the paperback fiction charts despite having major plot contradictions/ holes. I'm not one to judge those that follow religion normally, but choosing to take the word of a book of fiction as gospel [sic] in the 21st century is quite worrying. The fact that people still kill in the name of fictional beings such as god or allah [invented beings in my view I might add] is part of the problem with humans. We are scared of the unknown and a sizeable proportion of the worlds population believe that they will meet these mythical beings when they die. To have world events controlled by such people is embarrassing.

 

You are talking to an Agnostic !!!!!!

 

I'm an Atheist.

 

I do feel that the Statement from Sunderland leaves questions unanswered. Whether it is deliberate or not only they will be able to say.

I do not agree that just because AJ was charged with the offences then Sunderland had to suspend him. This follows the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

That being said a Company owes a duty of care to it's other employees. It is accepted that Sunderland had some information about the charges and clearly did discuss these with AJ and by the sound of it HIS legal team and the PFA. What isn't known is exactly how much information they had or what AJ was saying to them. My understanding was that they did have transcripts of the interviews and copies of the messages between AJ and the girl. I also understand that Sunderland obtained advice from THEIR legal advisors. I would expect that they would have given their lawyers the transcripts and the messages to enable them to advise the Club what to do.

I would imagine that the transcripts would be unedited as would the messages otherwise Sunderland as employer would request unedited documents and indicate refusal to do so would leave them with no option but to take an adverse inference from any such refusal.

The crux of Sunderland's actions or inaction centre upon what those documents showed. If they showed that offences of at least grooming and sexual kissing occurred then it would be hard for anyone to defend their allowing AJ to play. If advice was got from their own legal team then you would expect a legal team would be able to identify any offences revealed from AJ's replies in the interviews and combined with the messages even if he was denying the offences to Sunderland. On the basis that those interviews and the messages did reveal "admitted" offences (not when he pleaded but from his replies in interview and his messages) then Sunderland have acted in a reprehensible way in continuing to play AJ and should hang their heads in shame. If not, then I don't believe they have done anything wrong in playing him.

My guess is that they did know. They had the transcripts and the messages and this is what probably caused AJ to plead guilty to two of the charges i.e. he was banged to rights by what he had said and messaged. He probably pleaded not guilty to the two other offences because they weren't made out and proven in what he said and the messages (possibly because he didn't commit those offences; a point which the jury agreed with on one offence and disagreed on the other offence)

The Club could not just accept him saying he was innocent and in getting copies of the transcripts and the messages and getting legal advice of their own clearly showed they looked into the matter. An extreme example of this would be if an employee said he hadn't been guilty of drink driving and stated he was going to plead not guilty could an employer ignore an interview transcript in which the employee admits to the Police that he had 10 pints of lager in the hour before driving. I think not. Therefore in this instance if Sunderland's legal team considered the transcripts and messages would they have seen offences committed by AJ on his own evidence? If they could then Sunderland should be apologising to a lot of people. If Sunderland failed to give all the information to their legal team then in my view they are equally damned as they clearly should have.

Apologies for the length but I would like to think the above is a fair summary of what people know and how Sunderland should have acted. Ultimately only Sunderland know what they should have done and whether what they did was right.

 

There is no guessing, as has been reported quite widely today the club were made aware of the exact nature of the charges and that Johnson even though he originally stated that he would plead not guilty to all 4 charges had in fact already admitted to police while being interviewed that he had kissed and groomed the child. The drink driving analogy fails as the police do not rely upon such evidence in itself, they will take a breath sample and this will determine the outcome, pass or fail, the failure of a breath test will certainly lead to dismissal in some jobs as it is extremely unlikely that you can avoid prosecution and conviction with a positive test.

 

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Whilst it may have been reported I always take newspaper and other such reports with a large pinch of salt.

I accept my example wasn't a good one but it was the principle that I was trying to get across was about admissions in interview but denial of guilt notwithstanding the admissions already made in interview. i.e the employer can't and shouldn't just take the word of the employee, they have to look and consider all the information they have.

I can't see Sunderland commenting further and I expect they will just keep their heads down and hope it all blows over when the next numpty footballer commits some indiscretion.

 

The bad thing for me was seeing the Mackem away fans sing songs about his sexual exploits. Sickening.

 

A small bunch of arses that I doubt have much support amongst the majority of right minded fans who will be given **** by most opposing fans for the rest of this season.