Children's charity call for footballer to be sacked.

[DingleDangleDiva]

Story here

The basics are that a 20 year old professional football player in one of the SPL teams has been placed on the sex offenders register and convicted of indecent behaviour towards a 12 and 14 year old on the internet, yet he is being fully backed by the club.

What are your thoughts on this?

Personally I think it is shocking and yet another example of letting 'celebs' away with much more than Average Joe. In my opinion this was the time to stand up and make an example that this type of behaviour won't be tolerated.

The Children's charity, children 1st is campaigning to get him removed from the team.

Does anyone actually know what this Nonce did?

Aitch - there was another thread on this with a link to a Scottish paper (you probably know what they are better than I do). He befriended the two girls on fb and sent them indecent photos and dodgy emails. He didn't actually meet up with either of them though which is why (I presume) he has not got a very harsh punishment. One of them told her parents and that's how it all came to light.

Sex offenders aren't allowed to work with children for understandable reasons, and they are restricted in other ways. Are you saying that sex offenders should never be employed, full-stop?

Here's the other thread.

Hmm ... this is a difficult one Cogito because he used his position in the club to contact girls. And footballers are role models to a lot of kids.

Sorry I searched but I guess i never used the right terms

Cognito no of course they should work but if you are in a high profile career then you should'#nt get away with it so easily. Whether he sent them images or met up with them makes no difference to me. He initiated contact with young girls, pressumably because of his 'career' and went onto send explicit material to children.

He should've been sacked or atleast suspended for a while to show that they do think he did wrong rather than saying it's not his fault.

But it's not the job of his employer to act as a moral guardian. He's faced the law and received his legal penalty. Him losing his job isn't going to make him less likely to re-offend, in fact it may even make him more likely. As long as the club doesn't allow him any unsupervised access to kids (which these days would be highly unlikely anyway), I still don't think it's their job.

@Scuttlebutter

I'd sack any employee that I disliked or distrusted. Perverts don't rank highly in my estimation.

yes he should be sacked.
footballers do a lot of work with young children(well our local team do) so the very idea of him being around children is quite sick.
suprised that his team mates still want him on the team

Agree with OP.

He has been suspended now. Good.

Difficult one. Since when did we let children's charities be judge & jury? He's already been tried, convicted and served his punishment.

And is it right we serve a harsher punishment and trial by media on a person just because he is a "celeb"?

But the contact with children part is an optional part of being a pro-footballer and one which is easily avoided.

I think the key phrase missing is that as a person on the sex offenders register he's not allowed any employment where he would have unsupervised access to children.

So for example, teachers, social workers, police etc.

I hardly think it would be reasonable to say ban a sex offender from working in a shop because a child may come in with their parents.

With Football, you could argue as long as he doesn't get involved with the youth team, he's no direct contact at all with children.

I like the fact that the main sponsors pulled out. Footballers get paid a huge wage and part of that is because of their public profile and assumed role model. The club is supported by children attending games and children are an integral part of football clubs.

So yes I think he should lose his job, my husband would if he got on the sex offenders register just for having a record.

Banning someone is one thing, but I would think most contracts have something about criminal records and termination of employment.....especially plcs.

Yes but it should be up to the club to make that decision. Footballers get paid huge amounts of money by their clubs because football generates a lot of money and they are valuable assets.
The role model argument has nothing to do with it in my eyes, if the club feel that keeping him on makes financial sense then so be it. Ditto sponsors. They will drop them if they feel that keeping them on despite their actions has the potential to have a greater negative effect on the clubs finances than letting them go and accepting losing a valuable comoddity. Nothing more nothing less.

It was dim of the club to keep him on IMO. Clubs like Hearts rely a huge amount on their local community to support them - without the fans, there is no club. Training sessions for kids and PR around schools is a really good way of getting supporters in early and most people don't tend to change the team they support through their life so I would argue that is a critical part of his job, not an optional extra. Having a convinced nonce on the team is not the best idea they ever had, however good a footballer he is.

I'd agree. I think it's a shocking and impractical decision even from a completely detatched logical approach without bringing in any morality.It's going to put off sponsors and fans alike. Playing him is just going to continue the poor publicity so essentially they have the choice of continuing to pay him a couple of thousand a week for not playing or else play him and deal with the continued fall out from their own fans,the opposition fans, the players and the media before eventually selling him for a fraction of what he's worth.
However I would argue that it is the clubs bad decision to make and if a professional football club wants to hire a convicted paedophile/murderer/rapist then they should be able to in the same way a tax firm/supermarket/factory can.