Johnson case ‘pure grooming’

ADAM JOHNSON was said to have groomed in its ‘purest form’ and has ‘lied and lied’, a court in his child-sex trial has heard. The former Sunderland and England footballer has admitted grooming as well as kissing and touching a 15-year-old schoolgirl during a meeting in his Range Rover on January 30 of last year, but he denies two further counts of sexual activity. During her closing speech, lead prosecutor Kate Blackwell QC told jurors: ‘By his own admission, Adam Johnson is not a man of honour. He lacks integrity through his dealings with (the girl), through his dealings with Stacey Flounders (former girlfriend and mother of his daughter) and through his dealings with the courts.’ She told the jury that he was a ‘selfconfessed arrogant man’ and said there was a ‘core of deceit and lies’ behind the winger’s evidence. Johnson exchanged 834 WhatsApp messages with the teenage Sunderland fan, in which he said that she ‘owed him’ for signing two football shirts during their first meeting on January 17. Blackwell added: ‘What’s clear through the WhatsApp messages is he guided her in a classic case of grooming. Grooming in its purest form. ‘He is a man of 28, why would he have gone to all the length of sending and receiving 834 messages? Why would he go to the bother of driving to a secluded area to give a 15-year-old girl a football shirt? We know why, it was building up to a sexual encounter.’ Defence barrister Orlando Pownall QC told the jury: ‘The important fact is that she (the girl) lied to you.’ The case continues.