Weaponising & Profiting from the misery and suffering of Child Abuse victims
With no silverware to celebrate, Rangers fans are weaponising child abuse crimes to target Celtic, while hypocritically ignoring their own club's historical abuse cases.
After 131 days of not being able to watch Celtic, the record equalling 9-in-a-row Scottish champions take to the field tonight in a pre-season friendly against French side Nice in the Veolia Trophy. But for some in the Scottish media it is the right time to highlight the horrible crimes committed at Celtic Boys Club once again.
Once more we are seeing a trial-by-media mentality within the Scottish media when it comes to Celtic Football Club fuelled by an ambulance chasing lawyer — who is doing all he can to avoid the courtroom — and a venemous fan base from across the city looking to stop Celtic, from continuing their dominance, by any means necessary.
But now former Talksport and BBC journalist, Adrian Goldberg, looks to produce a documentary on the crimes committed by those at Celtic Boys Club and links to Celtic Football Club, with a date of September for publication.
Sadly for Goldberg and Laurence Lennard — director of the documentary — it has already been hijacked by bitter and twisted Rangers fans who ploughed donation after donation into their GoFundme page raising £15,000 in the process. Not that they’d care who donated given they have reached their total in record time.
While I cannot testify to the reasons behind Goldberg and Lennard’s production of such a documentary, there are plenty of reasons why Rangers fans have in their thousands donated £15000 to their fundraising page and it has nothing to do with justice for the victims.
There are also question marks around why such a documentary is focusing firmly on Celtic Boys Club and links to Celtic FC, rather than encompassing abuse in Scottish Football or British Football as a whole — given the huge number of victims and perpetrators across the game. I’ve asked Goldberg the reasons behind this but have yet to receive a response from him.
Goldberg has already dipped his toe into the Child Abuse scandal at Celtic Boys Club on his podcast two weeks ago, racking up over 5000 hits in the process. The biggest listenership of any of his podcast episodes to date. From a podcast show with only 57 followers on Soundcloud that is pretty impressive — until you look at who is boosting the numbers from his usual listener base. The same people donating to his documentary. The same people weaponising child abuse for their own sick agendas, the same people who ignore the crimes committed by their own club employees [Neely, Dunn, Chalmers & Watson] while venomously spewing their bile about crimes committed at Celtic Boys Club.
Goldberg, in quotes to the Evening Times today, claimed: “I’m conscious some elements of this story have been told before. I want to take it somewhere else and tell something new.
“I want to drive towards there being positive things in this story, no matter how hard it will be. These terrible things have happened, but how can we stop that happening again?
“I want to do justice to the victims, the survivors. I want to give meaning to their stories and to bear witness to their stories.
“People have offered their money and put their faith in me. I feel that obligation seriously and we want to deliver the best film we can.
“They feel Celtic FC and politicians haven’t always given them the respect they deserve.”
The people that have offered their money to Goldberg are not the victims of Child Abuse, they are the victims of Celtic Football Club’s dominance of the Scottish game and of their club’s inability to muster anything other than firing blanks each season when they are supposedly challenging for the title. They are the victims of their own Napoleon complex — where they believe they are superior to everyone else and that anything that they say and do is gospel. They are the victims and the perpetrators of their old club’s demise and now their new club’s inability to muster up a challenge — minus the tax dodging scams of yesteryear — has led to them weaponising the suffering and the horrors that Child abuse victims endured at the hands of the likes of Torbett, McCafferty and others for their own gain.
While Goldberg will almost certainly profit from his one-sided documentary, the profiteering for Rangers fans is trying to stop Celtic from winning 10 in a row. Trying to stop them from winning 55 titles. In the hope that anything that comes out in the media and the courts — when the ambulance chasing ‘no win no fee’ lawyer decides to eventually take his cases to the courts rather than the usual suspects in the press — will bankrupt Celtic. Will end Celtic.
The people that have put faith in Goldberg and his very one-sided documentary are not looking for justice for the victims, they don’t care about the truth. They don’t care about the rule of law or innocent until proven guilty. They don’t care about the continued suffering of the victims or their families. They don’t care that their lies and baseless claims being peddled on their forums or on social media could cause damage to potentially upcoming court cases — all they care about is ending Celtic like Rangers ended themselves thanks to their tax dodging scams, orchestrated by David Murray and his lawyer-turned-porn-actor.
Goldberg then goes on to speak about politicians and Celtic not giving these people [I guess he is now speaking about the victims and their families] the respect that they deserve. Where to begin with this claim?
Celtic have left the dealings of what happened at Celtic Boys Club to an independent investigator and the Police to uncover and investigate — without prejudice from the media, from anyone in the club, from ambulance chasing lawyers, and from bitter & twisted Rangers fans looking to weaponise every little thing negative about the club, its players, management, and fan base.
As a club, Celtic have issued a number of statements denouncing the crimes committed by those at Celtic Boys Club and have already paid compensation to one victim because of the abuse by Jim McCafferty, not because he was a coach at Celtic Boys Club, but because he worked at Celtic in their youth setup — which was and is separate from the boys club — the club were liable for that once abuse case and a court found in the favour of the victim after proceedings were undertaken and evidence heard.
Is Goldberg really wanting the rule of law and court cases to be ignored and circumvented?
We live in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty and to date no court in this land or elsewhere has found Celtic as a club, or as an institution, guilty of a cover-up or of being party to a paedophile ring — if you believe the bile that is posted on a daily basis from Rangers fans who can’t talk about football for 5 seconds without mentioning their obsession for such a sickening crime.
This is the same stance that the likes of bandwagon jumping SNP MSP James Dornan and Tory MSP Adam Tomkins have taken also, looking to ignore and circumvent the rule of law to pressurise Celtic into paying compensation out to victims — whether they are liable or not.
Tomkins, just like his fellow Rangers supporters, have weaponised the abuse scandal to target Celtic Football Club, to not only play party politics against the Scottish Government, but also to target chief executive Peter Lawwell on social media — simply because he didn’t meet up with him when he demanded to. But when reports of crimes committed by Rangers employees were published in numerous media reports, the very vocal crusader Tomkins disappeared going AWOL and to date he has still steadfastly or should that be staunchly refused to comment on his own club and the abusers employed by it.
Then you have the Grays. A family mourning the loss of their son and brother, a victim of Torbett. A man who lost his life after a tragic swimming pool accident in Australia while on holiday, who never got to see the justice that he deserved. That is where my heartfelt sympathies end for the family.
Sadly for Andrew, his mother and sister have allied themselves with Rangers fans weaponising the abuse and suffering he endured for their own gain. In fact, his mother’s twitter account has been handed over to a well-known Rangers social media troll while his sister Michelle — who is coincidentally one of the people speaking to Goldberg in his documentary — obsessively comments, likes, and favourites any tweets that mentions or even has a hint of Celtic and child abuse in the context. Not caring one iota if what she is interacting with is true or not. The comments made and the language used by Michelle Grey and her ‘mother’ will do nothing to boost their case and instead help to prejudice the case before it even gets to court, and I am surprised that the previously mentioned ambulance chasing lawyer has not taken them to one side and explained this to them — unless it is part of his strategy?
In fact, the Greys are so interwoven with the Rangers fans weaponising Andrew’s abuse that they now use the horde of social media Rangers child abuse obsessed trolls to target individual Celtic fans who question their motives over working hand-in-knuckles with Rangers fans. To the point where a number of people have had to report threats and abuse to Police.
Goldberg, in a roundabout way, claims that the Greys are not afforded the respect that they deserve — I’m sorry but the only person that should be afforded such respect is the victim, Andrew. Sadly it can only be posthumously. Michelle Grey and her ‘mothers’ willingness to use Rangers fans weaponising the abuse meted out to their son deserves no respect at all. Their conduct and language on social media towards Celtic fans deserves no respect at all, and their staunch refusal to comment on anything related to Rangers and child abuse deserves no respect at all. A fan base who ignored their own club telling a child abuse victim, that the suffering and horrors that he endured had nothing to do with them and to go speak to the liquidators — as they tried to play the club/company card to escape fronting up to their potential liability that Rangers fans demand Celtic do so venomously.
The Rangers supporters, who obsess 24/7 over the crimes committed at Celtic Boys Club and turn ignorant when anyone mentions the crimes committed at Rangers, deserve no respect at all. Weaponising childrens’ suffering for your own sick agenda — because your football club isn’t good enough to win titles or trophies without cheating — is nothing but sickening and questions must be asked about their upbringing, about their own background, especially those with children themselves. In fact, these gutter dwellers should be vilified for the scum that they are.
Not one Celtic fan I know, ignores what happened at Celtic Boys Club. What these Celtic fans do though is leave it to the courts to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. They have also stated that if Celtic are found liable in a court of law that they should deservedly pay compensation and apologise to the victims. Unlike those across the city who resort to the ‘See no evil, hear no evil’ mentality when their club is involved.
These people are not real football fans, and they are certainly not activists against Child Abuse. Their hatred, their bigotry and their so-called moral crusade weaponising the suffering of child abuse victims is nothing short of disgusting.
A journalist for When Saturday Comes, and coincidentally a Rangers fan also, Anderson wrote a piece for the magazine several years ago about his fellow supporters targeting Jock Stein over the child abuse scandal at Celtic Boys Club.
Anderson wrote: “The less said about the whole horrible [Torbett] affair the better, one would think. However, the chance to link Celtic’s greatest manager — no matter how tenuously — with the crime du jour of the tabloid hysteric has proved too tempting for a mindset that has recently infected sections of my club’s support.
“I have shouted and sung some pretty horrible things in my 30 years of watching Rangers. To say that I was young/drunk/caught up in the moment doesn’t let me off the hook. But at no point did I ever try to present my most hateful, knee-jerk outpourings as fact. “Big Jock Knew”, however, is being proclaimed as the gospel.
“I’m bound to ask if it’s not a horrendously confused by-product of the recent disappearance of sectarian chanting at Ibrox. The two phenomena have certainly run parallel. When ground closure or Champions League points deductions were mooted last season, anti-Catholic lyrics sung at Ibrox for decades were dropped with alacrity. This clamp-down has since been adhered to and self-policed. It has exposed, once and for all, the bluster behind so much of our support’s previous sectarian posturing. Yet such a sudden culture change on the terraces almost demands a horrible side-effect.
“You need only see the pictures and hear the testimonies of him helping with the victims of the Ibrox disaster to know about Jock Stein as a man. This is partly why, three days after his death in 1986, the entire Rangers support at Kilbowie Park, Clydebank, stood in perfect silent tribute to the manager who’d given us some of the hardest times in our history. Now, by abusing his memory, we’re doing ourselves far more damage than even Stein could manage.”
The Rangers supporters who obsess and who weaponise child abuse to beat Celtic with are only showing themselves up for what they really are — pond life.
Child abuse is a problem on a scale that many of us cannot even fathom, whether it is in Britain or the world as a whole. It must be stamped out and those perpetrating such a crime punished to the full extent of the law in their respective countries.
Rangers supporters peddling their filth, their bile, their sickening agendas on social media, on forums, on the terracing are not moral crusaders against such crimes committed against children. They don’t volunteer for charities, they don’t work in children’s charities to help alleviate their suffering of the victims. What they do predictably is celebrate with much gusto and glee when another article is published or when another documentary or investigation into Celtic Boys Club is announced. They are the only people who celebrate child abuse crimes being committed.
These are the same people that have now donated £15000 to Goldberg’s documentary, a one-sided documentary that will almost certainly not lift the lid on the Celtic Boys Club scandal that has not already been covered by the likes of the BBC and Mark Daly before. That has not already been uncovered by the court cases that found Torbett, Cairney, and McCafferty guilty.
We don’t need another one-sided hatchet job fuelled by those weaponising the crimes committed for their own sickening needs simply because it pays well via hits on a website, on a podcast, or in viewers on a youtube video.
Goldberg, as an investigative journalist, should have encompassed Scottish football as a whole when looking at child abuse in our game. It has already stretched all the way from grassroots football to the heights of the senior game to the Scottish Football Association themselves. How could child abuse become so prevalent within Scottish football and how it can be weaponised with much glee and celebration? That is the bigger story.
Or is Goldberg simply looking at how he can profit rather than the bigger picture in all of this? After all how much of that £15,000 is really going to the production of the documentary and how much of it is being used as a ‘wage’?
I doubt we will ever hear Goldberg’s reasonings behind focusing solely on Celtic Boys Club and ignoring Scottish Football as a whole. Likewise, why he did not cover the Barry Bennell child abuse scandal — which was even more prevalent than what has reportedly been uncovered in Scottish football and specifically Celtic. He has staunchly refused to comment and I doubt he ever will.
What does that say about Goldberg’s integrity and credibility as a journalist?