Bradford Crown Court

When the media first got wind of Adam Johnson’s sexual misbehavior with an underage girl, it was because he was arrested at the start of March last year. It generated a lot of news then, because the guy was a very high profile award winning footballer, then playing for a famous North East, but under pressure, Premiership team, Sunderland Football Club (one of the top half dozen best supported, indeed). He was also an International player with 12 England caps to his credit, but not expected perhaps to get any more, or go to the Euros in France this very summer.

He has blown it all, ended a glittering high income lifestyle, just because he couldn’t keep it in his trousers, eh? As often is the case with such celebrity style figures, and particularly footballers, he has no personal values, or concern for the law. They are all so rich that they think that they can do whatever they like and get away with it, don’t they? And they often do, don’t they? There is the repetitive excessive speeding (hundreds a miles an hour), car crashing and even killing people on the road, drug taking, violent assaults (both on and off the pitch, eh?), domestic abuse, drunkenness, and all other manner of things – when they then employ top rank expensive lawyers & senior barristers to escape the justice that would have been meted out of the rest of the criminal fraternity, don’t they?

What do you need to ‘know’ about Adam Johnson as a person, then? Only that he is a rat, no integrity, and an accomplished liar by his own admission. He had a long term live in girlfriend who he got pregnant and had a daughter with some twelve months ago. Behind her back though he was playing the field (but told her she was paranoid), as well as on it, you see? That is what you can do as a highly paid playboy, as well as player, without any loyalty or scruples, isn’t it?

Even when he was exposed at the start of last March as a suspected sexual predator on an underage teenager, he hid the real truth from his girlfriend, and of course his football club employer as well – denying all, and claiming that HE was the victim. He, his family, friends, and his representatives were most vitriolic in his defence in the media. As a consequence his girlfriend having just given birth to his daughter, stuck by him, and Sunderland continued to play him – whether they really believed his account though is a moot point, as they had a vested interest in him delivering his technical skills in critical matches on the football pitch, wouldn’t you say? [He was only sacked by them (and his kit sponsor Adidas) when he admitted at court that he had previously lied about his guilt].

And so Johnson was able to bank another useful three or four million pounds before his trail and help pay for his legal team, eh? [Oh yes, he denies of course just ‘gabbing the money and running’, as the saying goes].

Oh of course he was allowed, as all the influential criminals seem to do, to abuse our too indulgent Justice System. Through his strong denials of any wrong doing whatsoever, as strenuously presented by his top legal team, of any such criminal deeds (that attracted a potentially long jail sentence and registration as a sex offender), he was able waste the time of the Courts, the Prosecution Service, State Barristers and Lawyers, and even to get police and court bail over the past year, and complete freedom where he could live it up as normal, as well perform every week in front of nearly fifty thousand indulgent Sunderland spectators, and similar numbers at other grounds – many supporters who slagged-off the victim girl and abused her a slut, on his say so, eh??

The physical evidence was so strong against him though, that even his top legal guys couldn’t fight it – he had to admit ‘something’, didn’t he? He even pre-warned his girlfriend that the was going to plead guilty to part of it, as well? But did he tell the Prosecution or the Court? Of course NOT – they all had to carry on their extensive costly work to deal with ALL matters in accordance of his ‘not guilty’ claims. At some stage his girlfriend finally ditched him – or so she now says?

So, he then admitted just partial guilt [both child grooming, and sexual activity with a child including kissing], but only when his High Court trial started in Bradford – the twelfth hour so to speak, to try to get Court’s indulgence for doing so, and avoid the necessary but available evidence having to be presented to the Jury. Nevertheless, he proceeded to trial to deny the most serious charges of sexual assault, as they would get him send down for much longer, wouldn’t they? So because he denied a further two charges of sexual activity with a child, he was able to force an expensive 3 week trial, and subjected the young schoolgirl to undergo the further trauma of facing him off at Court and to be branded by the Defence’s abusive accusations for days in giving her evidence, that she was a liar and a fantasist. He even got his estranged (?) girlfriend to give evidence on his behalf – that may has misfired though as she had to admit on oath that she had initially only stuck by him because he had told her the ‘whole truth’ about matters and his serial sexual cheating on her. Oh yea – he doesn’t know the meaning of the word truth, does he? She had to admit from the witness box that he hadn’t actually told her the half of it, eh?

Johnson even tried to implicate his team colleagues in his proven search for internet information on the ‘age of consent’, but he had nothing to back-up that evidence – and the other players had previously shunned & abandoned him anyway.

Oh yes, in addition to his previous admissions,  he was also found guilty on one of two counts today of sexual activity with a schoolgirl including penetration, by ‘unanimous verdict’ (12-0), indeed after only a relatively few hours of deliberation by the Jury, and he has been warned he will be sent down for between 5 & 10 years – but of course the Judge’s decision will be ‘overruled’ on that specific punishment evaluation, as it will be automatically overturned to be just half of that, to cater for the fact that we will not build enough prisons to detain the UK criminals for the full sentence, so the current jails are overfull, aren’t they? Some justice for all the victims, NOT?

Another unfathomable thing about our so called justice system, is why a felon, a convicted serious sex offender to boot, heading for a long stretch, is immediately allowed by the Court simply to go home to be ensconced with his family, instead of ‘go straight to jail’, don’t you think? Yep, he is simply given a few weeks holiday time before he is sentenced -WHY for God’s sale?

Johnson’s child sex victim won’t suddenly tonight stop being severely messed-up emotionally, just because he has been convicted, will she?

There has been possible dubious collusion by Sunderland FC in playing Johnson to avoid relegation, a cynical stage management by him to rake-in a fortune while awaiting trial, a blatant attempt by him to engender sympathy and public support on the football field and in the media, while denigrating the immature teenage victim of his assaults, a manipulation that undermines the British legal process, and moreover his convictions will not be adequate justice for the traumatised victim of a vile man’s lust, will it?]