EPL’s struggle to respond to player accused of rape

Perhaps you remember Chelsea’s reaction when Graham Rix, then the assistant manager to Gianluca Vialli, was sent to prison for a year in 1999 after pleading guilty to two charges of unlawful sex with an underage girl and another of indecent assault?

Chelsea had a game against Real Mallorca shortly after the court case and, in his programme notes, their chairman Ken Bates made it clear he had “no sympathy” with the 15-year-old victim.

Chelsea, he said, “look after their own”, which in this case meant keeping Rix’s job open and putting money into his family’s bank account while the 41-year-old was locked up.

“An IRA mass murderer got 12 months… where’s the justice?” Bates also wrote.

“We have been criticised for announcing our decision so quickly to keep Rix’s job open. But the punishment for Rix’s offence was appallingly harsh. Chelsea have no intention of adding to it.”

Almost a quarter of a century on, most reasonable people would hope that attitudes have changed. 

Even taking into account the need for rehabilitation, it is difficult to imagine Adam Johnson being allowed to return to football after he was jailed for six years in 2016 for grooming and sexual activity with a girl who had just turned 15.

How does football, as an industry, consider a case such as Player X during the long period when the police and Crown Prosecution Service investigate whether to press charges that, if proven, would mean time in prison?

Those questions feel particularly relevant when six out of the 20 Premier League clubs have found themselves in the difficult position of having players who are at different stages of criminal investigations for allegedly committing serious sexual offences.

Mason Greenwood, who has been suspended by Manchester United for just over a year, was due to stand trial in November this year until the announcement last week that the complainant was no longer cooperating with the prosecution and Greenwood was no longer facing charges of attempted rape, controlling and coercive behaviour and assault.

Benjamin Mendy has just been cleared of six counts of rape but faces a retrial in June over two more alleged offences, one of rape and another of attempted rape. Mendy continued playing for Manchester City until he was charged in August 2021, at which point he was suspended.

There was the police investigation, now dropped, into an alleged sexual assault case involving Yves Bissouma while he was a Brighton player and that was still briefly hanging over him after his transfer to Tottenham Hotspur last summer.

And then we go back to Player X, who is still turning out every week in England’s top division — and yet, in another sense, remains invisible.

Legally, his name cannot be reported. It has been that way since he was arrested last summer and, if you are wondering why you have not read more about his case, it is because the legalities make it that way. There are rules in place. Any media outlet that disregards them faces the likelihood of legal action.

Player X has not been charged and, as long as that is the case, none of his details — his age, his nationality, his club, family circumstances and so on — can be reported if doing so identifies him as the alleged offender.

Player X has not been suspended by his club, which is a decision that will always polarise opinion, and the people at the top of that club are legally obliged to protect his anonymity. We all are. It is a story nobody can talk about. Nothing is ever mentioned on Match Of The Day, radio shows or television commentaries because how can it be? Nobody made it a big issue, media-wise, when he represented his country in the recent World Cup.

It is a difficult, complex and often divisive issue, not helped by the fact, football being the sport it is, so many people see these matters through the prism of who they support rather than what they would ordinarily consider right or wrong.

At the same time, there has to be the scope for a grown-up debate when it seems perfectly reasonable, even if you have no real interest in football, to want some context about the reasons Player X’s employers have decided it would be wrong to suspend him.

Many people will agree with that stance and refer to the old principle that, in law, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Others have challenging, yet legitimate questions. Would his employer take the same position if the accused was not a multi-million-pound asset? Would the club have suspended a guy on their security staff who was accused of rape? Or one of their office workers? – The Athletic.