The player we can't write about and football's ‘systemic failure' to deal with sexual violence

New York Times

a day ago

Faith loves her football club and has followed their ups and downs for as long as she can remember. But her love has been tested in recent seasons by their refusal to suspend a player who has been accused of sexual assault by four different women.
First arrested and questioned by police in July 2022, the player was questioned twice more in 2023 and now it's up to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the public agency that conducts criminal prosecutions in England and Wales, to decide whether he should be charged with the alleged offences.
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In the meantime, he has continued to play — and play well — for his Premier League team, but his presence in the side has been difficult for Faith to witness.
'For the first time in my life, I watched a game and I didn't even want us to win,' she explains.
'I just thought, 'This is so wrong' and couldn't get past the idea that he would always be part of our history. It's appalling.'
We cannot name the player or his club for legal reasons. We also cannot identify the women who have complained as, in the UK, alleged victims of sexual abuse are entitled to anonymity for life.
The UK takes a strict line on the right to privacy. As an example, when we asked the Metropolitan Police, the force that polices Greater London, for an update on this case, it asked us to remove the individual's occupation from the subject line of our email. The force politely explained that they never reveal the occupations of people they question under caution.
However, the balancing act between privacy and public interest would tip towards the latter if the player is charged by the CPS. If that happens, we and every other UK-based outlet will be able to publish the name that many of you already know. For now, however, comments on the piece will be turned off and any posts we put out on social media will not be open for replies.
We are also aware that the player is not guilty until proven otherwise and has not even been charged. This means the CPS has not yet decided if it thinks it has a reasonable chance of gaining a conviction based on the evidence the police have gathered.
That is why we cannot even risk providing clues for what is known as jigsaw identification, so Faith is not our conflicted fan's real name. But she is not alone with her concerns about how football is dealing with violence against women and girls — far from it.
'This situation was an opportunity to plant a flag and demand accountability in the way professional athletes behave around women,' says Atu, another football fan whom we will identify only by his first name. 'But every time this player does something good on the pitch, I feel a sense of disappointment, as well as some anger and frustration at the club.
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'I want him gone… but I recognise that, from a legal perspective, they (his club) may have limited options.'
That is certainly the club's position, although they, like the Premier League, English Football Association and players' trade union the Professional Footballers' Association, declined to comment for this piece.
But that is just about the only consistency we could find when speaking to people about this. For it is not just the inconsistency of football's approach to these cases that is problematic; there is also no consistency within the game.
'It's a systemic failure,' says Nazir Afzal, the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England.
Dev Kumar Parmar is the principal director at global law firm Parmars Sports and his client Beryly Lubala, who played for Wycombe Wanderers last season, was charged and then cleared of a rape allegation in 2022.
'From a strictly legal point of view, I completely understand why any club would continue to play someone who has not been charged with an offence, because, until that point, the allegations are conjecture,' Kumar Parmar explains. 'For a club to act before that point, it would risk opening itself up to litigation from the player for breach of contract. So they must protect themselves.
'But there is also a duty of care to their employee, who is not guilty until proven otherwise. And our system is very strict on privacy, as was reinforced by a recent Supreme Court ruling about a case involving a high-profile businessman.'
This case is known as Bloomberg LP v ZXC and it resulted in the UK's highest court ruling in 2022 that someone under criminal investigation has a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' until they are charged.
So, as Kumar Parmar puts it, the club in question here has behaved legally. But that is not the same thing as behaving morally, is it?
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'The fact that the accused in these cases has been able to continue his working life is wrong and clearly sends the wrong message for such serious allegations as rape and sexual assault,' says Dino Nocivelli, a sexual abuse claims lawyer with English firm Leigh Day.
'The player should have been suspended while his club and the Football Association investigated the allegations, with no prospect of resuming his work until the investigations were concluded.
'It is bad enough that victims of alleged sexual assaults have to endure lengthy delays in the criminal justice system, but even worse that the victim continues to see their alleged attacker in the public eye.'
Nocivelli points out that if he, a lawyer, was under investigation for an offence as serious as rape, he would be suspended, as would a doctor, teacher and many other professions, too. He also suggests that if the player is convicted, fans and sponsors of his club could potentially sue them if they have bought a shirt with his name and number on it or used him in a marketing campaign.
Afzal believes clubs 'hide behind the legal process' and that football should use the civil burden of proof for deciding if a player, coach or official should be sacked.
'I was the chair of the Catholic Church's safeguarding standards agency,' he says. 'If a priest did something terrible but it wasn't bad enough for a criminal conviction, the church would still take action against him.
''Beyond reasonable doubt' is a very high threshold but it should not be the bar for disciplinary action. The General Medical Council will strike off doctors that have been cleared of a crime by the courts but whose behaviour is still short of the industry's own standards. Football could and should do the same.'
Instead, however, football has a lottery-style approach to handling allegations of sexual assault.
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When Manchester United star Mason Greenwood was arrested on suspicion of rape, causing actual bodily harm and making threats to kill in January 2022, protecting his privacy was not an issue as the allegations emerged via social media. But United quickly announced he would not train or play for the club 'until further notice' and then suspended him on full pay, long before he was charged in October of that year. Greenwood consistently denied all the allegations against him.
Greenwood never played for his boyhood club again, despite the charges being dropped in February 2023 when the prosecution's main witness withdrew her cooperation. Now 23, he was initially loaned to Spain's Getafe and then sold to French side Marseille last summer.
Another Premier League club suspended one of their players in 2021 when he was arrested on suspicion of multiple child sex offences. The player was also moved to a safe house while he waited for charges that never came. In 2023, 21 months after his arrest, the case was dropped, although he had already left the club by then. Neither the player nor his club have been named by the UK media.
In contrast to these two cases, Yves Bissouma continued to play for his club Brighton & Hove Albion despite being arrested at a nightclub in the seaside city in October 2021 on suspicion of sexual assault. Brighton then sold him to Tottenham Hotspur at the end of the season for £25million, shortly before the police decided that he should face no further action.
And then there was the very high-profile case of Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy, who continued to play for his club despite them being aware of an investigation into multiple allegations of rape and sexual assault. They, however, suspended him as soon as he was arrested in August 2021 and then stopped paying him a month later.
The France international, who left the club once his contract expired in June 2023, was eventually cleared of all charges after two trials that year. He then took City to an industrial tribunal over a claim for £11million in unpaid wages. Last November, the tribunal ruled that he should be paid the majority of that sum. The 30-year-old is now playing for Zurich in the Swiss top flight.
These four precedents demonstrate that different clubs handle these cases in very different ways. Three of the four players were suspended but only one of was actually charged, and he was eventually acquitted.
'All clubs should follow one game-wide policy,' argues Faith. 'At the moment, they all do their own thing.
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'Players under investigation for allegations as serious as this should be suspended. Having to watch someone who has been accused of four counts of rape play every week really is a slap in the face for the survivors. One survivor in this case said that she would never have met the player if she had known he had already been accused of sexual violence.
'Football appears to take this less seriously than someone sending a nasty tweet. There should also be a commitment to provide meaningful support to any victims.'
A campaign led by the End Violence Against Women Coalition, gender justice campaigners Level Up and fans' group The Three Hijabis has called on the Premier League and the FA 'to adopt clear sexual-misconduct policies'. These include disciplinary action ranging from suspension without pay to lifetime bans, bringing in minimum standards for tackling violent behaviour and mandatory, gender-based violence training and prevention programmes for young players.
'So far, the Premier League has introduced mandatory consent training, but it has failed to consult women's and gender-justice experts during its development and refused to share its content, so we have no idea what is actually being taught,' says Level Up co-director Seyi Falodun-Liburd. 'The rest of our demands have been ignored.'
The Premier League has partnered with a Cheshire-based company called LimeCulture and all academy and first-team players must now receive regular safeguarding lessons, with players and staff also taking a course in 'healthy relationships and sexual consent'. The league has not conducted an audit yet for this season but says all of its clubs met the training requirement last season.
'As the most popular sport in the UK, football has the power to shift public perceptions and behaviours,' says Falodun-Liburd. 'Whether they like it or not, footballers are role models. The Premier League, FA and football clubs must start by acknowledging that this isn't about one player — football has a serious problem with gender-based violence.
'As more women bravely speak out about the physical and sexual abuse they have experienced at the hands of footballers, managers and club bosses, we are seeing just how resistant the Premier League and FA are to taking action to end gender-based violence in football.
'Fans have a role to play in this, too. They have the power to demand their clubs take gender-based violence seriously. We're already seen fans mobilise to write open letters to clubs, hold match-day protests and amplify the issue on social media.'
Afzal, whose successful prosecutions of paedophile gangs, so-called 'honour' murderers and high-profile rapists has made him a national figure, is also not convinced football is doing enough.
The 62-year-old lawyer has spoken to the alleged victims of the unnamed Premier League footballer and they have told him they fear 'they would be ripped apart by the tabloids, the courts, social media'.
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'These cases are nearly always about men, but it is usually the character and credibility of their female accusers that comes under attack,' he explains. 'For high-profile cases, the character assassination is worse. So many victims feel that justice isn't worth pursuing.
'There is a power imbalance. The player will have access to the most expensive lawyers and crisis comms specialists. But they will also have thousands of fans who would rather believe them than the accuser and who will back them blindly and excuse any embarrassing details.
'These fans become weaponised and attack whoever has accused their favourite player. They are protecting the badge but they do not think about the values that the badge represents.
'So footballers have fame, wealth and adulation. There is a culture of entitlement and an undercurrent of misogyny. Women are a perk of success, consent is blurred. They get a workshop on consent but are they listening?
'These cases nearly always hinge on one person's word against another's. And every time one fails, victims come to me and say, 'What's the point?'. Trust is further eroded, which leads to silence. It's a systemic failure.'
For Afzal, the idea that the clubs' and leagues' hands are tied is 'unbelievable', but he is also angry at how long this case — and so many others — has taken already.
'The bottom line is that sexual assault cases are not expedited,' he says. 'Yes, due process needs to take place but very little thought is given to supporting the alleged victims.'
His advice to clubs is simple: stop hiding, issue simple statements to say you have received an allegation of a serious nature against an employee and you are cooperating fully, provide support to the victim and, in the worst cases, after a risk assessment, suspend the player.
'I have talked to the PFA and the leagues about this and told them that they should put the same amount of energy that they've put into campaigns against racism into addressing football's problem with sexual violence,' he adds.
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While the player, his alleged victims, his club, journalists and everyone else with an interest in this case waits for the CPS to decide if it believes it has a winnable case, Faith and other fans are also looking for answers.
'We know there's a problem with sexism and misogyny in the men's game — we know it's bigger than one club,' she says. 'But I want my club to be part of the solution, not the problem.'
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic;,)