Why are you so stuck on this?
It’s been covered on here loads.
What is it about sexual offences that make men do everything they can to try and stick up for the guilty party?
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I blame my penis; the little feller is unionised.
Adam Johnson Stag Parties.
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At least he stands up for his rights! 
I haven’t read the whole thread for one. Secondly, when you’re at school you get told about the not having sex with an under 16, but not that you can’t do other stuff.
I also fail to see where I’m sticking up for him. I think he’s guilty. I also think 4 years in prison minimum is very harsh, especially when you look at sentences like the Graham Rix one. That’s not sticking up for him, that’s having an issue with sentencing. The sentence seems inconsistent with the crime in my eyes.
WTF are the media doing attacking Sunderland on all the main news bulletins last night? They made their position very clear and acted exactly right IMO. No one knew he was guilty before he changed his plea. It is not the club"s fault he did what he did.
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To be fair, may fuck them up for Saturday, so carry on…
Naïve 15 year-old girl clearly a criminal mastermind, say wankers
A victim of grooming and child abuse was basically gagging for it, according to some appalling human beings.
http://newsthump.com/2016/03/04/naive-15-year-old-girl-clearly-a-criminal-mastermind-say-wankers/
Exactly, but “Sunderland does the rigt thing” is a shit headline
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But are (were) Sunderland telling the “whole” truth? Their version and the version Johnson stated under oath in court are different, so either there is a Perjury charge to be added to Johnson’s crimes OR…
Likewise yesterday I saw a snippet statement from the Police on Sky News that simply said Sunderland were aware of ALL the facts in the case.
I understand there is a careful legal line to draw under Employment Law as well as the financial issues of putting 100k a week out to grass while still “not proven guilty” but think this is going to run for a while yet. Brits are so good at Moral Outrage but there are other laws that come into effect, morally it was wrong to keep playing him, but if there was no specific “morality clauses” in his employment contract, they could have faced not only legal issues but you could be sure that Morally Outraged Brits would have been demanding his right to be innocent until proven guilty, so a circular argument.
IMHO the acid test for Sunderland is that they (Morally) should now SUE Johnson for the return of his wages IF they believe he lied to them. They won’t, they need to go down as they have (again IMHO) proven themselves to be not worthy of EPL status on or off the pitch
The official line from Sunderland Football Club remains: ‘We thought Adam Johnson was going to plead not guilty.’
Ask yourself this, however. Armed with the information that your employee HAD committed child sex offences, would you then support them in their bid to cheat justice?
This, in essence, is what Sunderland are admitting to. For chief executive Margaret Byrne, as was said in court and later confirmed in a club statement, did have possession of key evidence in May of last year.
I would lean towards giving Sunderland the benefit of the doubt, probably based on the immediate action they took when he pleaded guilty.
There were no legal facts to tell the club prior to the case being heard, just allegations.
Being aware of the allegations is one thing, having your employee say he denies them and will plead not guilty leaves them in a very difficult position, and to sack him prior to him being found not guilty would have been a huge and costly error.
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Didnt we send David Jones on “gardening leave” when the allegations of kiddy fiddling were made against him?
On the plus side, Johnson will be the richest lag in the limehouse when he eventually gets sent down.*
* assuming he didn’t spend the lot on boy band merchandise in pursuit of his interests.
This article, by the ever excellent David Conn, makes for very intereesting reading. Having read this, I can fully understand the attention now being focussed on Sunderland, and on their CEO in particular. And let’s not forget Johnson’s legal team, who seem to be out of the spotlight at the moment. As Conn puts it:
Sunderland’s statement weaves a claimed justification while avoiding the assertion landed on the club’s chief executive, Margaret Byrne, by Johnson’s barrister, Orlando Pownall QC. He said in court, apparently seeking to portray Johnson in some kind of better light, that on 4 May last year, Byrne saw the police interviews that showed Johnson admitted he had exchanged hundreds of messages with (ie groomed) and kissed the 15-year-old supporter and customer of Byrne’s club.
In the focus that has rightly turned on Sunderland, the nasty effects of Johnson’s legal case could be lost: Pownall’s argument that Byrne knew Johnson admitted it applies to his client too. Yet presumably with legal advice including from Pownall, Johnson decided to put his schoolgirl victim through a nightmare, by playing on for his £60,000 a week and not pleading guilty until the doors of court. The victim said in her statement how “horrendous” Johnson’s public denials had been for her, because “I’ve had to face so much abuse after he claimed his innocence”.
The impression is that Johnson’s lawyers calculated the victim might crack and withdraw her allegations as the ordeal of giving public evidence grew closer and Johnson pleaded guilty only when she stayed strong enough. Neither Pownall nor Paul Morris of Burton Copeland, Johnson’s solicitor, responded to the Guardian’s questions about their conduct of Johnson’s case.
Even if the club had believed Johnson to be innocent, the correct thing to do would surely have been to place him on gardening leave for the duration of proceedings. Given that they had seen all of the evidence (specifically several hudred text messages), I find it inconceivable that they could have believed him innocent. My view is that Sunderland, like Johnson’s legal team, hoped that the victim would buckle. So, for this, a young girl and her family were put through several months of hell. Nice.
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A lot of offenders of various crimes wait “until they see the whites of the victim’s eyes” before making a plea in the hope that the victim or witnesses will buckle. It sucks but you can’t blame them. There are incentives for early guilty pleas but clearly not enough for many alleged offenders to try it on. Perhaps instead of giving credit at the beginning and lesser sentences those found guilty after pleading innocent should get longer sentences?
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Gets to pay a fine.
Sky News Newsdesk @ SkyNewsBreak 18s18 seconds ago
Margaret Byrne has announced her resignation as # Sunderland chief executive with immediate effect over role in # AdamJohnson criminal case
Mmmmm…an unusual twist to the saga.
I wonder if she was persuaded to fall onto her sword to head off any chance of Sunderland having points docked?
why would they have points docked?