Shamed ex-Blues coach threatened to kill child Jail for football trainer who abused young child
FORMER Birmingham City football coach Mark Ellis has been jailed for five years for the sexual abuse of a child.
The shamed 57-year-old was found guilty of sexually abusing a young player, aged just 10, during a series of attacks in 1991.
Ellis, who lives in Birmingham, threatened to kill his victim if he ever spoke out about the ordeal, a court heard.
He was running a football team and training school in Scotland’s South Lanarkshire, where he was living at the time.
The player kept the awful secret for a decade, but then travelled 300 miles to confront Ellis at his home in the West Midlands.
“I’m sorry, I knew this day was coming,” the ex-Blues coach told him, the High Court in Glasgow heard.
The victim, now 37, went to the police, and Ellis first appeared in court in June 2015 – but denied the charges and protested his innocence.
Now the shamed coach has been jailed after a trial at the High Court in Glasgow, where he was found guilty of lewd and libidinous behaviour.
Passing sentence, Judge Johanna Johnston QC told him: “You were trusted by his parents, you were treated as a friend of the family. You abused that trust in the most grave manner.”
The jury heard how the young player was footballcrazy as a child and went on to be coached by Ellis, who also coached boys at Birmingham City.
The first attack occurred in the boy’s family home on Easter Sunday 1991, the court was told, and he was later abused at Ellis’ flat.
Prosecutor Shanti Maguire asked: “By the time it got to this stage, did you ever want to tell anyone?”
He replied: “No, because Mark threatened that he would have to kill the two of us if I told anyone.”
The boy was also attacked in changing rooms at a local sports club and in Ellis’s Land Rover.
Defence counsel Louise Arrol said Ellis maintained his innocence and said he was “well aware there is no alternative to custody”.
A spokesman for the NSPCC said: “Ellis exploited his position of trust to carry out horrifying attacks on a child in his care.
“He may have thought he had got away with his crimes but he is now rightly behind bars as a result of his victim’s bravery in coming forward.
“It is encouraging that victims of past abuse in football are now finding their voice, knowing they will be listened to and supported.”