By Jonathan Copping, Lawyer, Stone King LLP, London, UK
On 17 March 2021, The English Football Association (the FA) published the long-awaited and major Report by Clive Sheldon QC into child sexual abuse in football between 1970 and 2005.
The Report is 710 pages long and was published following an independent review by Clive Sheldon QC.
The Report was prepared following an interview in ‘The Guardian’ newspaper on 16 November 2016 with Andy Woodward, a former professional footballer, now 43 years old. In the interview, Woodward talked publicly about the abuse he suffered from the age of 11 by one of his coaches, Barry Bennell (now a convicted paedophile serving a lengthy prison term). As a result of Woodward’s interview, the FA decided it was necessary to investigate events that had taken place in football and how child sexual abuse was able to take place.
Sheldon’s review took four years to complete, due to the sheer scale of the review, including examining in excess of one hundred thousand pages of documents and interviewing more than two hundred witnesses.
The following points set out some of the key findings, as referenced in the executive summary to the Report:
The Sheldon Report also includes thirteen recommendations to strengthen safeguarding within football.
These recommendations include:
In response to the Report, the FA released a statement, in which it confirmed that steps are already underway to implement the recommendations set out in the Report as part of the wider safeguarding strategy of the FA.
Jonathan Copping may be contacted by e-mail at ‘This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.’
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