The FA's child *** abuse inquiry?

[seumasbhoy]

...With regard to this thread, the OPs motive was clear from his first post and it is no surprise he received support from the other two pond life. All three should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. It is disappointing but unfortunately not surprising. It is how they are, and the worst thing is they think it is okay.

They think its a joke, a great way to wind up Celtic fans, which is pretty sick tbh. As England debates the seriousness of the issue, Sevco fans carry on the tradition they brought through from their days of supporting Rangers by wearing scarves, making banners and singing songs about child *** abuse, no doubt their counterparts at Motherwell will repeat the songs they learned from the Ibrox pondlife, today when we visit Fir Park, just as Aberdeen and Hearts fans do when we play them. They conveniently forget these pertinent points because it does no suit their warped agenda.

1. No crime or instance of abuse ever took place within Celtic Football Club or any of its property by any of its officials or employees.
2. Reporting a crime to the Police needs either witness testimony or physical undeniable evidence, no one has ever been able to report a crime based on hearsay, and wasting Police time is a crime in itself. There was no one able to corroborate the rumours or "open secret".
3. Jock Steins actions of kicking Torbett out of Celtic BC, where that of someone who was a friend who could not allow the hearsay and innuendo go unnoticed. For him, it was all about removing any perceived danger to the young lads of the club, even though he was only acting on rumor. Am sure that Jock had an idea that if nothing had been going on, Torbett would have taken the matter further and protested his innocence. Jock Stein felt that his actions in removing Torbett were the right ones just as his actions on helping out on the pitch after the Ibrox Disaster were also the right thing to do.
4. Torbett had further business dealings with Celtic around about the time the stories were confirmed, with guys like Alan Brazil finally confident enough to bring the matter out in the open. Rangers fans conveniently forget that Torbett had the same business dealings with their club at the time, did David Murray know ?

[54FairAndSquare]

I don’t recall mentioning Rangers, (or sevco for that matter) but I understand some people have a fertile imagination.

I only mentioned specifically Penn State. Remember they were stripped to a title, not as you may recall because child abuse happened there, but precisely because it happened and they covered it up.

Now we have allegations in the media that some football clubs in the UK have done the same. All I said is that the same should happen here.

[Rangersmandownunder]

I see more former Chelsea players are coming forward and admitting they knew what was going on, again one asks why they didn't feel the need to inform the police of the crimes being committed, once more we see the good name of a football club being put before the life of the victims.

Those that used money to silence these victims should be jailed and the club should be severely punished, I don't know if Chelsea won anything back then, but demotion and a huge fine would go someway to prove the FA were serious about this, or perhaps the lives of those ruined aren't important enough.

[seumasbhoy]

I don’t recall mentioning Rangers, (or sevco for that matter) but I understand some people have a fertile imagination.

I only mentioned specifically Penn State. Remember they were stripped to a title, not as you may recall because child abuse happened there, but precisely because it happened and they covered it up.

Now we have allegations in the media that some football clubs in the UK have done the same. All I said is that the same should happen here.

Punishing players at a club, who played their way through 9 months of a season by removing their title for the actions of some pervert behind the scenes, isnt the way to deal with it IMO. Those that actually covered up the actions by financial means or other way, should go through the courts and lose their employment at the club or directorship, etc. Punish the punishable, not the innocent.

PS, dont try and equate it with improper registration of players, everyone in the club is guilty by association.

[Rangersmandownunder]

They think its a joke, a great way to wind up Celtic fans, which is pretty sick tbh. As England debates the seriousness of the issue, Sevco fans carry on the tradition they brought through from their days of supporting Rangers by wearing scarves, making banners and singing songs about child *** abuse, no doubt their counterparts at Motherwell will repeat the songs they learned from the Ibrox pondlife, today when we visit Fir Park, just as Aberdeen and Hearts fans do when we play them. They conveniently forget these pertinent points because it does no suit their warped agenda.

1. No crime or instance of abuse ever took place within Celtic Football Club or any of its property by any of its officials or employees.
2. Reporting a crime to the Police needs either witness testimony or physical undeniable evidence, no one has ever been able to report a crime based on hearsay, and wasting Police time is a crime in itself. There was no one able to corroborate the rumours or "open secret".
3. Jock Steins actions of kicking Torbett out of Celtic BC, where that of someone who was a friend who could not allow the hearsay and innuendo go unnoticed. For him, it was all about removing any perceived danger to the young lads of the club, even though he was only acting on rumor. Am sure that Jock had an idea that if nothing had been going on, Torbett would have taken the matter further and protested his innocence. Jock Stein felt that his actions in removing Torbett were the right ones just as his actions on helping out on the pitch after the Ibrox Disaster were also the right thing to do.
4. Torbett had further business dealings with Celtic around about the time the stories were confirmed, with guys like Alan Brazil finally confident enough to bring the matter out in the open. Rangers fans conveniently forget that Torbett had the same business dealings with their club at the time, did David Murray know ?

Stop defending the enablers.

[mogwaiCSC]

I am glad more abuse victims are now coming forward and it really seems we are only scratching the surface on how widespread it was/is. The more that come forward the more we hope the abuse victims can be nearer justice. There will be a lot of people in football and I suspect in wider sports that have serious questions to answer and for me that would include Kevin Kelly. This is a very serious subject and one I have been able to discuss with others in a measured and elucidative manner on anther forum. Reading this thread is depressing though as it is clear there are certain posters whose prime motive is one thing and it is not the welfare of abuse victims. One is being disingenuous, the other is showing again the pond life they are by trying to score cheap points on their club ending up in the bottom tier. There is very little chance of this thread being constructive.

[Rangersmandownunder]

Football has always been immoral. It's always known that £300,000 a week for one goal all season is disgusting, that £30 for a baby-sized replica kit is a joke, and overlooking the vices of its players and managers is a disgrace.

But it has at least known what moral is . It just decided to do the opposite, because that was more fun.

Amorality is different. It means you have no idea what right or wrong is - you simply do what suits you, unable to see the harm it might cause.

And buying the silence of someone because they claim to have been sodomised by *****philes you employed is all the evidence we need to prove that football is more than just an ugly game. It's now an appalling one.


Child abuse victim and former Spurs player Paul Stewart (left) pictured with his abuser Frank Roper (right)
The fact there were, and possibly still are, perverts working in football is not a surprise. They can be found in any walk of life where children are entrusted to the care of others.

The fact less was done about these people then than would have been done today is also no surprise. People didn't talk about it, victims were often blamed, and it's natural to see such cases as a one-off because the alternative is hard to comprehend.

And the fact clubs like Chelsea may have paid a victim when they had the courage to come forward is to be expected. In the absence of a living perpetrator or a legal finding of criminality, any organisation with millions in the bank and a reputation to protect would seek to settle a claim out of court.


To use a chequebook, in other words, to smooth the bumps and hurt and problems that a damaging allegation will cause to an untold number of people - the victim, the innocent relatives of the alleged perpetrator, colleagues, friends, fans and, yes, shareholders.


You can argue about the rights and wrongs of paying someone for a hurt that is neither proven nor disproven, but there are at least two sides to see it from.

There is only one way to see a payment to a former player like Gary Johnson, who alleged child ***ual abuse, and which was conditional upon him never discussing it in public: it's a moral atrocity.

The deal may be accepted for a multitude of reasons. Lawyers may rightly advise it is the best they can hope for, and victims can decide that a court case would be too traumatic and involve being called a liar by the sort of defence that has driven other *** abuse victims to suicide.

Chelsea have since released Gary from that condition, his allegations remain unproven and there's no evidence Chelsea did anything wrong.

But that gag should never have been there in the first place.

When the silence about abuse in football finally ended a fortnight ago with Andy Woodward's devastating revelations, it led to 860 phone calls to a NSPCC hotline in its first week. Some may be from fantasists, but the huge number indicates there are many more victims who have never been heard before.

A third of the UK's police forces have now launched investigations into historical *** abuse allegations from 250 people. The geographical spread involved means there was probably more than one or two abusers at work.

If 1,000 people report offences taking place over three decades in a third of the UK in just a fortnight, it shows there is something to see. If it's never been properly dealt with before, then it's still there.

Which means there are still children being sodomised, groped, terrified and otherwise abused by *****philes employed to care for them. And the only reason it is still happening is because people never talked about it before.


Buying the silence of people you pay off is a standard clause in any out-of-court settlement.

But its inclusion in one about alleged child ***ual abuse has only one effect. By stopping one person speaking, it stops others realising that they can do the same.

Any children who are still being abused don't hear a grown-up say it's not right. They don't hear from footballers who never made it to the top because they were too damaged to get there. They don't see their favourite club call in the police.

So that child is allowed to carry on believing this is how things must be and that they must keep quiet about it.

If no-one speaks, then no-one screams. It's as simple as that.

The only people saying that must change are the men who have spoken up. The 20-odd footballers who have waived their anonymity to tell us what happened to them are now all that stands between the perverts and their prey.

Because the clubs, it would seem, never did.

It is quite a thing to see a sport as overtly hetero***ual, emotions-averse and success-oriented as football produce men prepared to discuss gay ***, child abuse, and their own vulnerability on daytime TV. That they did so is to their immense credit.

But now it appears that when concerns were first raised years ago the police didn't always get called in. The accused didn't always get sacked. And I'll bet you my last dime that Chelsea is not the only club that made a payment to hush things up.


FA chief Greg Clarke has vowed to compensate all players who were victims of ***ual abuse
Gary Johnson, who confronted Chelsea bosses about his ordeal last year, said: “I have nothing against the new regime, I realise what happened to me is a long time ago. But their attitude when I came forward was to sweep it under the carpet.”

That attitude has now changed, and is changing across the sport. FA chairman Greg Clarke says he will help all players harmed in the scandal. But it's too late to help one victim - which is football itself.

Because who benefits most from gagging clauses, pay-offs and a refusal to clean up the game? The *****phile whose victims are unnoticed. The club whose reputation is undamaged. And the money men whose profit margins are unharmed.

Now that silence has rebounded off a wall of defenders led by Andy Woodward, and smashed football's pretence of being a harmless game.

It is instead a sport that by brushing away the allegations every time they surfaced facilitated *****philes simply because it feared the damage done to its reputation more than the damage done to our children.

That is not just wrong - it is a sign you don't even know what wrong is . And in the end, the damage done to football is far greater than if a club chairman somewhere had just picked up the phone and called the police years ago.

[Rangersmandownunder]

I am glad more abuse victims are now coming forward and it really seems we are only scratching the surface on how widespread it was/is. The more that come forward the more we hope the abuse victims can be nearer justice. There will be a lot of people in football and I suspect in wider sports that have serious questions to answer and for me that would include Kevin Kelly. This is a very serious subject and one I have been able to discuss with others in a measured and elucidative manner on anther forum. Reading this thread is depressing though as it is clear there are certain posters whose prime motive is one thing and it is not the welfare of abuse victims. One is being disingenuous, the other is showing again the pond life they are by trying to score cheap points on their club ending up in the bottom tier. There is very little chance of this thread being constructive.

I care not what you think of me or what my motives are, it is not the role of celtc fans to decide who is allowed to discuss this issue.

I know first hand how this affects familes, you don't, so take your fake pious moralities and shove them where the sun don't shine.

You're right about Kelly, he is one of the guilty who enabled the abuse.

[mogwaiCSC]

I care not what you think of me or what my motives are, it is not the role of celtc fans to decide who is allowed to discuss this issue.

I know first hand how this affects familes, you don't, so take your fake pious moralities and shove them where the sun don't shine.

You're right about Kelly, he is one of the guilty who enabled the abuse.

What a presumptuous w@nker you are. You know absolutely nothing about my circumstance. And once again illustrated why this topic cant be discussed in a reasonable manner on here when you are so agenda driven.

[Rangersmandownunder]

It should be noted that every celtc fan saying that we Rangers men are using this as a point scoring exercise is quite happy to either call me by the name of a convicted pedophile or to happy break bread with those that do.

Every club exposed in this investigation must be punished appropriately, let's hope it's more than a monetary punishment which the likes of Chelsea will pay off easily.