Selfish, depraved... he acted as if soccer stars were above the law
How gifted but flawed player threw away his career – and lost WAG who stood by him
THE story of Adam Johnson’s fall from grace is the ultimate soccer morality tale. A colliery worker’s son, he rose from modest beginnings to become a Premier League and England winger earning an astonishing £60,000 a week.
With the wages, so too came the lifestyle. There were girls galore, glamour models – even a date with Katie Price – and riotous nights out in Las Vegas and Dubai, not to mention Range Rovers, Aston Martins and the rest.
More recently, he had started a family with his stunning girlfriend, the glossy embodiment of WAG beauty, setting up home in the sort of €2.3million mansion fans on the Sunderland terraces could only dream about. Johnson appeared to have the world at his feet.
By yesterday, however, he was on his knees. He has lost his job, his girlfriend and his reputation. He will almost certainly lose his liberty.
Following a trial at Bradford Crown Court, Johnson was found guilty of one count of sexual activity with a 15-year-old schoolgirl during a tryst behind a Chinese takeaway.
While he was cleared of a second charge relating to oral sex, at the start of the hearing he had admitted two offences of grooming and kissing the teenager.
Granting him bail, the judge warned him that when he is sentenced in two or three weeks’ time, a custodial sentence of anywhere between four and ten years is highly probable.
However long he serves, 28-year-old Johnson’s career is almost certainly over. Any team that was to sign him in the future would face protests from fans and boycotts by sponsors.
Because in Johnson’s case, it is not just his crimes that are so distasteful but how they exposed his belief that his status as a top-flight soccer player entitled him to live a life outside normal moral boundaries.
ASERIAL cheat, as his partner prepared to give birth to their daughter last year all he cared about was satisfying his own carnal desires. Having lured the impressionable teenager into his orbit with a gift of a soccer shirt, he demanded repayment in kind.
Not only did he know she was underage, he was far from put off by it, the subsequent liaison taking place in his black Range Rover with its personalised plates and opulent leather interior.
When finally rumbled, Johnson initially denied the charges against him, meaning he could continue to play soccer for almost a year, pocketing nearly £3million in wages in the process.
After all, there was the chance the pressure on his accuser would lead her to drop her accusations. And boy did she cop it.
Motivated by misplaced loyalty to the star player, following his arrest she would be subjected to foul taunts online and on the terraces by Sunderland fans.
‘She endured a year of being called a liar and a slag while you encouraged your fans,’ was how the prosecution put it.
Johnson agreed. His feeble excuse? ‘I was doing my job.’
Of course Johnson’s was a job that countless young boys all around the world dream of doing.
That he made it to the top was testimony to his great natural ability coupled with hard work and the support of his family.
He was one of two siblings, and his father and mother – Dave and Sonia – dedicated their lives to his dream.
Born in Sunderland in 1987, he was raised in Easington, Co. Durham, and at the age of eight he was invited to attend Newcastle United’s school of excellence.
The following year, after winning a skills competition at Butlins, he dazzled in front of England legends Johnny Haynes and Emlyn Hughes in a seven-a-side tournament at Wembley. Haynes told him: ‘You’re a great little player, you’ve got a lovely left foot.’
Not long after, he joined Middlesbrough’s academy, going on to win the FA Youth Cup.
It was just as well he had the skills to go the whole way, as he left school with only four GCSEs.
In 2005, Johnson signed professional terms at the club and was then selected for England Under19s. He would go on to gain 12 caps for England’s senior squad, being introduced to Kate Middleton during training.
But his move into the big time came in 2010 when Manchester City, one of the richest clubs on the planet, signed him for £7million. At 22, Johnson had entered the world of the multi-millionaire soccer star: arrogant, pampered and with an £80,000-a-week pay packet. He rented Cristiano Ronaldo’s mansion in upmarket Alderley Edge, Cheshire, on the outskirts of Manchester.
Stories started to emerge that he was partying hard. Pictures from the time show him laughing in a nightclub with fellow England stars Ashley Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Micah Richards.
JOHNSON turned up for training one morning with a black eye and his love life made the tabloids when his relationship with glamour model Sophie Reade came to an end after he bid £12,000 for a date with Katie Price (AKA Jordan) at a charity auction.
Reade complained: ‘If he wanted to raise money for charity then he should have run a marathon.’
One former worker at celebrity haunt The Circle Club in Manchester recalls how locally Johnson liked to play ‘the big man’.
‘He had about ten girls around him aged about 19 or 20,’ he recalled of a visit to the club. ‘He told a doorman that he wanted a people-carrier to take them all to a nearby hotel where he was staying.
He then joked: ‘I’ll need about 30 condoms to **** all this lot.’
On the pitch, Johnson’s progress stalled as he struggled to make City’s starting lineup. So he jumped at the chance of a £10million move to Sunderland in 2012 that would still pay him £60,000 a week.
Back in his native north-east, he had a chance to combine success on the field with happiness off it, having by then met Stacey Flounders, his partner.
When they met in 2011, the stunning young woman from Hartlepool was said to be ‘smitten’ with Johnson.
A mutual friend introduced them, and from the outset, the former air hostess seemed the perfect Premier League ‘WAG’.
In 2013 the couple moved in together. Their home was a gated property, set in more than two acres of woodland, boasting six bedrooms, Italian stone flooring and a spiral staircase to a mezzanine level.
AFAMILY member said: ‘Before Adam, Stacey had her own life, she was an air hostess and had a car. She liked her holidays, she saved up to go to Mexico.’ Ms Flounders became pregnant in 2014, celebrating at a baby shower in November of that year. But Johnson lacked the maturity to settle down. Ms Flounders had long suspected that he was cheating on her – and she was right.
On New Year’s Eve 2014, Johnson and the teenage girl began communicating. Over the next two months they would exchange 834 messages.
The girl was a huge fan, hanging around after home matches in the hope of catching a glimpse of Johnson and sporting a shirt with his name on it.
She first contacted him on Facebook. From the start she made her age known, telling him that she was a Year 10 student just one month past her 15th birthday.
Johnson met her on January 17 last year in a car park behind a Chinese takeaway in Co. Durham. During the 20-minute meeting he gave her a signed shirt.
Johnson’s messages took on a new edge, hinting he expected something in return.
‘I thought I would get a thank you kiss,’ he said. She replied: ‘I want to obviously.’ And so the soccer star pushed it further.
Johnson: ‘I will get this thank you it had better be worth it.’ Girl: ‘Ha ha it will.’
Johnson: ‘Confident aren’t you – am I only getting a kiss?’ Girl: ‘Depends on what you are after.’
Johnson: ‘I don’t know, it depends what you are up for... a little bit more.’ Girl: ‘Like?’
Johnson: ‘A bit of feeling, just see no pressure, lol.’ The teen posted a picture of herself on Snapchat wearing just a white bikini. He replied: ‘Send one with the bikini off.’ Johnson knew what he was doing was wrong – that he was grooming her – and told her to delete the messages. They met again on the afternoon of January 30 as Johnson joined his team ahead of a match the next day. Having kissed ‘with tongues’ again, it is then that the girl claimed Johnson digitally penetrated her and that she performed oral sex on him.
As this scene unfolded, Johnson’s partner was sending him texts begging him to repair their relationship. She also sent him pictures of their daughter Ayla, then just a couple of weeks old. Within minutes of parting from the girl, Johnson was messaging both her and his girlfriend.
He told the girl that ‘next time’ they should go in the back of his Range Rover, adding: ‘It was class. Just wanted to get your jeans off.’ Some 30 seconds earlier he had received a picture from Stacey of their baby daughter. He had replied: ‘She looks class.’
In the weeks that followed, news of the girl’s liaison with Johnson spread among her friends. In the end, she confided in her parents and police were informed.
Johnson, who, following the second meeting, had googled the term ‘legal age of consent’ on his smartphone, was arrested on March 2. As he was taken away for questioning, he told his girlfriend: ‘She said she was 16.’
It was another lie Johnson had told Ms Flounders, who told the court that he had since admitted cheating on her with ‘quite a few’ women.
Johnson and his girlfriend have now gone their separate ways, but questions will now be raised as to why his club stuck by him for so long. Suspended on the day of his arrest last March, within little more than a fortnight he was back playing.
In June he denied four charges, only admitting to grooming and kissing the girl on the eve of the trial.
The court heard that his bosses at Sunderland knew that he had kissed the girl and had seen copies of many of the messages. Yet they only sacked him when he formally entered his guilty pleas.
Yesterday, the club said it was repeatedly told that Johnson intended to defend himself against all the charges and that had it known that he had any intention of pleading guilty he would have been immediately sacked.
It all means that his appearance against Liverpool on February 6 could well be his last as a professional player.
At the end of that match, Johnson removed his club shirt and threw it into the crowd. Given what is now known about him, it is a souvenir that even the most blinkered supporter is unlikely to want to treasure for long.
Additional reporting: Sara Smyth