GAG them. Hush them up. And, if necessary, bung them a wodge of money to make sure they keep their traps shut.
The response of Chelsea Football Club to allegations of sexual abuse made by their former youth-team player Gary Johnson against their now-deceased former chief scout Eddie Heath was entirely predictable.
Premier League football is a world in which extreme levels of secrecy are the default setting.
And a world in which the shadowy, ever-silent Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich feels at home.
Of course, Abramovich and his current board are not personally responsible for the abuse, perpetrated in the 1970s, which has blighted Johnson’s life.
But they did sanction the £50,000 payment to Johnson last year gagging him from speaking publicly about the sickening abuse he says he suffered at the hands of Heath.
How much money will make him shut up? Fifty grand? Decent money for Johnson, now a London taxi driver. Loose change to the billionaire Abramovich and his cohorts.
Spare us the sickening details. Just make the problem go away.
Chelsea point out that the dead hands of the legal profession and the insurance industry were all over this matter.
The story goes that Johnson, having been largely ignored by the police and the PFA, approached Chelsea and asked for compensation. At which point, Chelsea used their legal insurance.
So your company had an employee who molested young boys and wrecked their lives? Sure, we’ve got a policy which covers that. It’s not ‘hush money’.
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It’s a confidentiality agreement. Standard practice. Your premium’s unaffected. Job’s a good ’un.
Under Abramovich, Chelsea’s response to many a problem has been to throw money at it.
When the club were handed a worldwide transfer ban for apparently luring away Gael Kakuta from RC Lens in 2009, they made that one go away with a substantial six-figure payment to the French club, who then suddenly agreed that their own contract with Kakuta had been invalid.
But however they dress this one up, Chelsea’s agreement with Johnson was morally repugnant.
It may not have been illegal but it suggested that Chelsea value their commercial worth more than they value honesty and decency. And they are unlikely to have been the only club to have taken the same approach. But now a courageous group of men have blown the doors off the culture of secrecy which has blighted football for decades.
Former Crewe Alexandra player Andy Woodward was the first to speak out about being abused by an employee of a professional football club. Within days, dozens had come forward to make allegations. Two weeks later, there are hundreds.
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FA chief executive Martin Glenn, a former food company boss, sounded genuinely exasperated when asked about Chelsea’s hush money at a media conference on Thursday.
“These are CRIMES we are talking about,” he said, almost disbelievingly.
Glenn sounded like a man who didn’t realise he had walked into the Wild West when he took a senior role in our national sport.
His sense of horror, his naivety, was almost touching.
Did he honestly not realise that this is how they run football clubs? Gag them. Hush them up. Bung ’em some loose change from those TV billions.
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