A grubby footballer and a very troubling question
NO ONE could dispute that footballer Adam Johnson is a bad man. A serial cheat and liar, he is set to serve a lengthy prison sentence for grooming and abusing a 15year-old girl.
But so many questions about this case remain unanswered. Yes his victim was only 15. And yes, as a 27year-old, Johnson’s behaviour was not just illegal but morally abhorrent. Yet there are unspoken elements of this case which society refuses to confront which are just as troubling.
The fact is, 15-year-old girls, growing up in today’s pornography-ridden world, are often already highly sexualised. Around a third of young women in Britain today now lose their virginity before the age of 16 — and far more will have been sexually active in other ways.
Lord knows what advice their mothers are giving them about their still-young bodies; about restraint and self-respect; about waiting to meet someone they care about and, more importantly, meeting someone who cares about them.
I repeat, Johnson is a despicable man. But he didn’t drag that girl into his car. It was she who sought him out on Facebook. And, though she did make her age clear, she never asked him to stop his grubby advances.
Indeed, she admits she was besotted with him. He was her hero, she said — and exchanged numerous flirtatious text messages with him after their LADY GAGA’S performance at the Oscars was remarkable — and not just because she was wearing some clothes for once, as she tinkled away at the piano. Stranger still was that each time she raised a fist from the keyboard — as part of an act protesting against the brutality of men — the piano kept playing. first kiss. That does not excuse his behaviour one jot, but it does put it in some context.
This, don’t forget, was a footballer earning £60,000 a week. There are plenty of girls who would find that rather alluring. Go to any nightclub that footballers frequent and you’ll find them queuing up to bag a multi-millionaire footballer.
When Johnson’s victim returned from their ‘sexual encounter’ in his car she was, one of her friends said, ‘excited in a good mood way’. In the weeks that followed, she boasted to friends of their plans to have sex when they next met.
It was only when her story started spreading though her school — and she became the target of online bullies — that she tearfully confessed what had happened to her horrified father and the police were called in.
I have nothing but contempt for Johnson and pity for those whose lives he has ruined. But when you look at the hard facts of this case, we are entitled to wonder: was he the only one to blame?
Yes, he was guilty. But so is a society that almost seems to encourage teenage girls to behave in such a selfdestructive way.