A former youth footballer has expressed devastation that no action was taken after he made a formal and detailed complaint four years ago about the abuse he suffered at one of the clubs now at the centre of the scandal that has engulfed the sport.
The player, who was a trainee in Peterborough United’s youth setup in the mid-1990s, went to the club in 2013 with serious complaints about how he was treated by Bob Higgins, one of the coaches now facing multiple allegations.
He wrote to the club and the allegations were passed on to the police and the Football Association, but the player says he was told that no action would be taken. Higgins has always denied abusing boys.
Speaking for the first time the player, Jon (not his real name), claimed his experience at Peterborough left him emotionally scarred and needing treatment for mental health issues.
He said: “I’m angry that when I came forward in 2013 nothing was done. I felt devastated. There was no apology from the club and the police just said they could not do anything.” Jon spent a month in the Sporting Chance clinic, set up by the former Arsenal and England player Tony Adams, and remains on anti-depressants.
Jon joined Peterborough as a schoolboy after writing to the club asking for a trial. He chose the club because it was accessible from his home in the north of England.
In October 1994, when he was in the under-16s, Jon was told he and his team‑mates would be going to Hampshire at half-term for a week of training led by Higgins. “He was this super-coach,” Jon said. “He had an aura about him.” The boys knew he had worked with players such as Alan Shearer and Matt Le Tissier. “I thought it was unbelievable I had the opportunity to work with him.” Le Tissier, who has said he was given a naked massage by Higgins, and Shearer have commended the bravery of footballers who have spoken out about historical sexual abuse.
During that week in Hampshire Jon said Higgins would try to provoke the boys to test their attitude. Jon remembers him standing on his genital area as he did sit‑ups and calling him a soft northerner. Higgins would pretend to point at something in the distance and then smash a boy in the face with his forearm when he looked. Players were forced to fight with each other.
Jon got his place on the club’s YTS scheme and was doing well. In May 1995 Higgins took over as youth‑team manager. A few weeks into Higgins’s regime, the boys were given a weekend off. “I thought: ‘Magic, I’m going home to see my mum and dad.’” But Higgins told Jon: “You’re running home to mammy and daddy, are you? You will never make a footballer if you are going to run home.” Higgins said he should go to Southampton with him for extra training. Over the next six months Jon was to go home only once.
He began to stay at the house of another player in Hampshire but would spend the majority of his time with Higgins and his wife at their home in Hampshire. Higgins once told him there were five important people in every person’s life – Jon was one of his. Higgins would cuddle Jon and say: “Your mum and dad don’t need to worry about you. I’m going to be your dad now.”
When they were apart Higgins insisted they talk almost every day. Jon’s football went well and at one point he was on standby for England under-17s but the relationship with Higgins became more disturbing.
Higgins often sat in his armchair at his Hampshire home with Jon and other players at his feet. “It was who could get closest,” said Jon. On one occasion, Jon said, Higgins rubbed Jon’s penis with his foot. “I felt really uncomfortable and scared, embarrassed and confused.” Later that day they were in Higgins’s home office. Higgins said he thought Jon would do anything to get a professional contract. Higgins said: “You probably would suck my dick, wouldn’t you?” Jon did not answer and Higgins initiated a cuddle.
“He would look into my eyes,” Jon said. “I felt like this man really loved me. I think to this day he did. I think he adored me. He would sit me on my knee and cuddle me. He would tell me: ‘You are going to be a star.’ I would be crying. All I wanted to do was play football and pay off my parents’ mortgage. I was a very vulnerable young man. I would have done anything to become a professional footballer. He must have felt like a god.”
At Christmas 1995 Jon went home to family in the north. He spoke to Higgins on Christmas Day. Higgins told him: “I’m not sure about your commitment. You’ve got too many distractions up there.” Higgins said he was going soft and should get on a train to Southampton on Boxing Day, which he did.
When Higgins was driving the team in the minibus he would get Jon to sit behind him. They would have a secret signal: Higgins would remove his own cap and rub the back of his head to show Jon he was thinking about him. “I would feel a million dollars.” Then he would get Jon to nudge him, and later this progressed to Jon putting his arm around the seat and cuddling the coach. Later still Jon said he was “manipulated” into putting his hand inside his shirt and Higgins would give him the secret signal to show him he approved.
Higgins told Jon he was a born-again Christian and could heal injuries by laying hands on him. He later baptised Jon in his bath, though the teenager had already been baptised. “I had already been baptised but he told me I had been living an unclean life. ‘You need to get baptised again so you can start afresh.’ I ended up getting baptised in his bath with another player.”
Higgins has said he baptised players at their request in his bath and that they wore football shorts at all times. He told Channel 4’s Dispatches in 1997: “Faith healing … I fully admit to this. I am proud that I have been given with my wife the gift of healing through God.”
Jon said Higgins told him he had been accused of abusing kids at Southampton. “I thought how could they do that to him, even though he was doing that to me. I was head and shoulders in too deep. I was under his spell and had been totally brainwashed by him. The power he had over me was frightening. I hung on his every word.”
In April 1996 Higgins broke the news to the team that he was leaving Peterborough. “I think he said it was on religious grounds,” said Jon. In protest, Jon packed his bags and left and was never to return to Peterborough. He and three others (“We were Bob’s boys”) joined Higgins in Southampton.
Other parents went and fetched their sons back but Jon went to Europe with members of Higgins’s football academy. While on holiday Higgins told Jon he could not train him any more and he had to go home.
Jon tried to make his way without Higgins. He went to other clubs and at one point had a professional contract. Higgins was the first person he called when he heard. But he could not settle. “I found myself having anxiety and panic attacks. When I was away from home I would cry uncontrollably. I could not explain why I felt unsafe away from my parents.”
He began to drink and could lash out. “I was angry with the world. I could be violent, I had a temper. I would drink because it made me feel happy for a period. Then I would get upset and I would run away. I kept playing but at times I couldn’t give my all because of what had happened. I had lost my spark – it was taken. I lost my trust in football. I felt cheated.”
Jon found maintaining relationships difficult. “He was my best friend but the friendship was abused. I was groomed from day one. From day one there was a game. I didn’t see it.”
They met once more, in Blackpool in 1997, when Higgins invited Jon to join him on a family holiday. Years later when Jon was back in Blackpool he called Higgins (he could still remember his number by heart), intending to tell him what he thought about him. “When he picked the phone up I was that vulnerable boy again. He still had that power over me, he always had that power.”
As he reached his 30s, Jon wrote to Peterborough in 2013 telling the club what had happened to him. “I had grown stronger and I knew what had happened to me was wrong.” He told the club that his experience had scarred him emotionally. The club wrote back saying the matter was being passed on to the police. “I was over the moon. I had admitted to what had happened to me. I was hoping to get closure. I thought others would come forward once they were asked questions by the police.”
No action was taken. The police investigation took months but in the end Jon was told it was his word against Higgins’s. “I was devastated. There was no apology from Peterborough. The club seemed blasé, not really bothered. They said there was nobody at the club from that era left and the club had changed hands. They didn’t apologise.”
When the abuse scandal blew up last year following the Guardian’s revelations, it reopened the wounds. He is settled down now with a wife and is a father of three. “I’m telling my story now in the hope that others will come forward.”
Peterborough FC admitted a complaint was made, which it passed on to the police. It said: “Peterborough United Football Club can confirm that a formal allegation was made against Bob Higgins in 2013. The club took this very seriously … The club received notification in 2014 that following an investigation no further action would be taken.”
Hampshire police looked into Jon’s allegations. A spokesman said: “Hampshire Constabulary received a referral in 2013 relating to an allegation of non-recent child abuse. After an investigation was completed, an informed decision was made, on the evidence available, for no charges to be brought.”
Peterborough have refused to comment further.
The NSPCC’s hotline is 0800 023 2642 and ChildLine for children and young people can be contacted on 0800 1111.
The National Association for People Abused in Childhood can be contacted on 0808 801 0331.
In the UK Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.
