Chelsea apologise to Gary Johnson over sex abuse

 

 

Mr Johnson, 57, told the Mirror on Friday that the club paid him £50,000 to keep quiet about allegations of sexual abuse by a former chief scout.

In a statement, Chelsea said Mr Johnson had "suffered unacceptably".

The club added it had "no desire to hide any historic abuse".

It said an external review would examine whether it had carried out a proper investigation when the allegations first came to light and why it did not report them to the Football Association and Premier League. 

"We are fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all children and young people who are in our care or attending our premises.

"Their welfare is of paramount importance," the club said.

Mr Johnson, 57, was a member of Chelsea's first team from 1978 to 1981.

He joined the club as an 11-year-old in 1970 and told the Mirror he had been groomed from the age of 13 by scout Eddie Heath. 

Mr Heath, who was the club's chief scout from 1968 to 1979, died before the allegations against him were made.

According to the Mirror, Mr Johnson signed a confidentiality agreement in 2015 and accepted £50,000 from the club, but they did not accept blame.

Chelsea said in its statement that when the settlement was reached the club's board understood it was "usual practice" to include a mutual confidentiality agreement, adding that Mr Johnson's solicitors had not objected to the clause.

"More recently, against the current backdrop of wider revelations and other victims coming forward bravely to tell their story, we no longer felt it appropriate to keep the confidentiality agreement in place. It was therefore removed," the club said. 

The club said the decision to have a confidentiality clause had received "significant scrutiny" and it had now asked an external law firm to review this decision and make recommendations for settling claims in the future.

"In advance of that, however, the board would like to make clear that, in light of what we know now about the wide-scale abuse in football clubs in the 1970s and 1980s, it now believes that the use of such a clause while understandable was inappropriate in this instance.

"We certainly have no desire to hide any historic abuse we uncover from view. Quite the opposite."

The club added it was now a "very different club" to the one it was in the 1970s.

It said its safeguarding policies were robust and continually reviewed and audited by the Premier League.