By Tim Parsons
Former English manager, Graham Taylor, was involved in a cover-up at Aston Villa in connection to paedophilia activities, it has emerged. Taylor’s cover up led to other boys being exposed to a paedophile working for the club as a scout, who was later convicted of a string of offences over a 13-year period.
Taylor allegedly discouraged Tony Brien, one of Ted Langford’s victims, from reporting his ordeal to the authorities. According to evidence presented to the inquiry, Taylor told the victim that he should “move on” after the teenager informed Villa in the 1987-88 season of his personal experience of sexual abuse from the same perpetrator at a feeder club in Leicester City. Brien was convinced other boys were at risk of similar abuse, but was shut down by the former England manager.
AD: Capeesh Restaurant
Taylor sadly died in January 2017 , however the inquiry is also looking at a separate allegation relating to his first spell at Villa, from 1987 to 1990, that another of Langford’s victims came forward with information that could have saved other boys from similar ordeals. Clice Shieldon QC, the barrister handling the inquiry has also heard evidence that Taylor discourged another victim from reporting his ordeal of sexual abuse to the authorities when visiting the boy with another member of staff. In the original case of Brien, Taylor spoke to him on the telephone and told him that if the story reached the newspapers it would make the player, then at the start of his professional career, a target for terrace taunts.
Taylor, asked him to imagine what it would be like hearing the crowd’s obscenities every week. Brien, who was 18 and had just broken into Leicester’s first team and did not want anything to spoil it. Fear of being further victimised by unscrupulous and insensitive football fans made it very difficult to go public and expose the abuses. However, it would have been the right thing to do.
Langford, the alleged abuser,continued to work for Villa until the summer of 1989, raising questions for one of England’s biggest clubs about what they knew, what they did about it and how many boys potentially suffered as a result.
AD: Oysterian Sea Food Restaurant And Bar
Langford, was finally convicted in 2007 for offences related to four boys from 1976 to 1989.He admitted three charges of indecent assault and four of gross indecency and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Langford appeared at Birmingham crown court in December 2007 and was described by the judge as someone who “held the keys” to boys’ dreams, molesting youngsters who “would have been in awe of you, unable to quarrel with you or reject your advances”. The team were Dunlop Terriers, who acted as a feeder club for Villa and, previously, Leicester.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE
All the victims suffered psychological damage, the court was told, including one who had taken an overdose which left him in hospital. Langford’s lawyer said his client regarded the boys as “easy victims” because of their dream to become professional footballers. Brien said, would play those games with love bites on their necks. In his later evidence to the inquiry, he was asked to describe Langford and talked of him being “always in tracksuit bottoms, little goatee beard, yellow fingers from smoking his Park Drive and small hands”.
Langford was the manager of Dunlop Terriers, who were based in Birmingham, and Brien was there when they had links with Leicester, where Richardson was youth-team manager from 1980 to 1987. Brien was eventually taken on by Leicester but at the age of 12, Langford told him that if he wanted to make it as a footballer he needed to show the club’s doctors he had a special gene that could be found only in sperm. Langford would then drive him to the Hilltop golf course in Birmingham, close to Brien’s school, and abuse him in his red Ford Granada.
O’ Brien now regrets not reporting the abuse earlier, saying he was discouraged from taking any actions.
“They discouraged me from going forward and never offered me a chance to go to the police or anything like that,” Brien said, answering questions from Sheldon and a second barrister, David Bedenham. “We used to look up to Dave Richardson as though he was a father figure. I’ve still got a lot of admiration for Dave Richardson, [for] what he did for me when I was a young man being coached. I thought he was a brilliant coach. But when I thought I was doing the right thing by reporting it to somebody who I trusted I felt let down and I didn’t know what to do.
“I was an 18-year-old child – well, child, man, whatever you want to call it – and you just don’t know what to do next. You’ve actually gone forward and told somebody, but they’ve just said: ‘Well, yeah …’ They’re like: ‘Whatever …’ and you’re in shock.” The whole story is shocking and disappointing, but nothing new when it comes to football’s shameful past and present. When a highly placedindividual in many settings in commiting an offence, rather than punish and expose them, the tendency is often to protect them instead. Those who colluded in the protection of vile paedophiles must be punished, no matter how many years later the information comes out.
AD: Heritage And Restaurant Lounge Bar