"Let the others come after us. We welcome the chase. It is healthy for us.
We will never hide from it. Never fear."
- William Struth
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fight This Cancer

Written by: Nineteen-SeventyTwo
Thursday, 8th December 2016

McCafferty, the latest in a line of paedophiles at Celtic, or their boys' clubs, has quite strangely confessed to a catalogue of crimes in the Daily Record.

After the Celtic child abuse scandal came to light in the mid 90's, one would have hoped that policies and procedures would have been put in place across all of Scottish Football's youth football network, however, a generation of children have been failed, and further individuals associated with Celtic have continued to abuse children, with Neil Strachan, Jim McCafferty and John Cullen joining Frank Cairney and Jim Torbett in a list of child abusers and paedophiles at Celtic Park.

With long term employee Donna Quinn also alleging sexual harassment by former Celtic employee David Brannan in the Daily Record in September of THIS YEAR, she also claimed she was told not to go to the Police, and was made subject to a gagging order as part of a severance package.

Sexual Abuse or harassment of any kind should be unacceptable and should be tackled head on, not ignored or swept under the carpet.

It happened before at Celtic, and if the club had been punished previously, Quinn would not have been treated in such a manner.

Paying victims to keep quiet and stay away from the police is a shameful disgusting act that has allowed abusers to carry on regardless.

I have little doubt that more will come to light, but the evidence so far is that, in some quarters they would rather not report these stories, far less campaign for justice and procedure change to prevent it happening again.

While the Daily Record is a tabloid that plumbs any depths it can for a sensational story, it should be applauded for not hiding from this topic, while others are.

In fact, as it stands the only newspapers covering this are the Record and Sun.

It should be noted that every single day, a web page on BBC Scotland reports all the front pages of the Scottish press. Today, the Record's headline about former Celtic youth coach McCafferty was omitted, presumably because it is a negative Celtic story.

The SFA, instead of demonstrating some leadership and guidance by setting up an enquiry in to allegations like the FA are doing in England, has meekly said it will 'co-operate with Police'.

The lack of urgency and purpose about the SFA here is nothing short of shameful. What does it take for them to act?

The silence from the Scottish Government too is appalling. Just like their ignorance of thousands of Hibs fans invading the pitch and attacking Rangers fans and officials following May's cup final, they have not taken any action or made any statement to date.

This government seems woefully ill prepared to deal with anything in football, and if that approach is based on a trust that the SFA are prepared, then it looks like both organisations are incompetent.

I can only hope that as more and more victims find the courage to come forward, that the authorities and the media begin to take this seriously.

This scandal cannot be allowed to be a seedy tabloid seller story for a few days without real tangible action taken to stamp it out and punish all those responsible.

 

by Harry Hattrick
 
by Admin

   

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