The disgraced footballer Adam Johnson was told to “say goodbye” to his infant daughter by a judge who said that he faced five years in jail after he was found guilty yesterday of sexually touching a 15-year-old fan.
A year to the day since his arrest, the former Sunderland and England player was found guilty of the offence against the girl yesterday. He is the first Premier League player to face prison for such charges.
Johnson, 28, who was described as an “arrogant man” with “a core of deceit and lies” was cleared of another charge in which the schoolgirl was alleged to have performed a sex act on him. He has admitted to kissing and sending explicit messages to the girl, who is now 16.
Last night his victim said that she felt “used and let down” by her idol. “There have been times when I’ve tried not to show people how upset I am, but sometimes it hasn’t been possible and I’d just cry. I’ve felt so broken,” she said.
At one point in the trial, during which the victim endured two days of cross-examination, Johnson was admonished for his “discourteous” behaviour after he was heard telling a friend: “I hope this is finished by Friday. It’s a bit boring now.”
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Judge Jonathan Rose granted bail but warned him that a lengthy prison sentence was “an almost inevitable outcome”. He added: “You can say goodbye to your daughter. A prison sentence will mean you will not see her for some time.”
The judge added that his preliminary view was that the case fell into the category of a five-year term with a range of four to ten years.
Johnson, whose girlfriend was pregnant with their daughter at the time of the incident, exchanged 334 messages with the schoolgirl during a campaign of “grooming in its purest form”. The court was told that he had sent a string of lewd text messages to other women.
The victim was a Sunderland season ticket holder and regularly waited outside the Stadium of Light to pose with her idol for photographs. She befriended her “hero” on Facebook and on New Year’s Eve 2015 he agreed to sign a football shirt for her and talked about her having just turned 15.
During their second encounter in his Range Rover — arranged after he demanded a “thank you kiss” — the player, from Castle Eden, Co Durham, began sexually touching the girl. She told the court she felt “awkward”.
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In a statement the teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “I’ve had to face so much abuse after he claimed his innocence. I was made out to be a liar, if anything, I held things back because I didn’t want all of this to come out.
“What happened in his car has turned my life upside down. I have lost all of my confidence. My school work has suffered. There are people out there who have made assumptions about me and that alone has been hard to deal with. I have been unable to defend myself publicly.
“I’ve been in some very dark places over that time and I thought the trial and giving evidence . . . would give me closure. But it didn’t. It put me back into the same dark places and I felt worse than I’ve ever felt before. This was because I still didn’t feel believed.”
Johnson’s girlfriend, Stacey Flounders, 26, who was present through most of the trial, revealed in evidence that they had now split. He will be sentenced this month.
