Манчестер Юнайтед клубийн ажилтан асан бэлгийн хүчирхийлэл үйлдсэн хэргийг шүүхээр эцэслэлээ

He had just turned 14 — a devoted Manchester United fan, hoping to catch a glimpse of his heroes.

It was November 1986, Alex Ferguson’s first week as the club’s manager, when the schoolboy set off from home, catching two buses across the city to make his way to The Cliff, United’s famous then training ground.

We cannot use his real name because of an anonymity order, granted by the UK’s High Court after he brought a claim against the club, having first come forward in 2024 to allege that Billy Watts, a now-deceased member of United’s backroom staff, had sexually abused him during that visit to The Cliff. That is also why comments have been turned off on this article.

Today, though, that former autograph-hunter has decided to tell his story — how his childhood ordeal has affected him throughout his adult life and why speaking about it, he hopes, will help with the healing process. Now in his fifties, he says he is still coming to terms with what happened and remains extremely hurt that United have never offered him the apology he says would “help me get proper closure”.

As The Athletic revealed on Thursday, United reached an out-of-court settlement in March — without any public statement — to pay an undisclosed sum in damages, without admitting any liability. It is the first time the club have been sued for an incident of this nature in the 10 years since football’s sexual-abuse scandal broke. Other clubs have typically paid low five-figure sums, around £10,000 to £20,000, to settle similar cases.

United have previously accepted, in an inquiry into sexual abuse in football, that there have been reports of other alleged incidents involving Watts, including one in the training-ground showers and another in the sauna, and that youth-team players referred to him as a “pervert”. Watts, who died in 2009, worked at the club for another three years beyond the incident, then unreported, that led to this settlement.

“I’ve often thought to myself, ‘Who else has he done this to?’” says the alleged victim. “Or was I a test person? He had a lot of access to young people.”

The Cliff, on Lower Broughton Road in Salford, will always be famous as home to arguably the best conveyor belt of young talent English club football has ever seen.

It was here, on the banks of the River Irwell, that the Class of ’92 came through the United system and, before that, Matt Busby’s brilliant production line, aka the Busby Babes, who led the club to European Cup glory in 1968. Everyone who knows United’s history understands why their striker and later manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer once described this piece of land as “the DNA of the club”.

“As a kid, I always had a fascination with United,” says the then young football fan who was drawn to The Cliff out of his love for the club. “I’d been to Old Trafford (their home stadium) a few times, when I could save up enough money to go in the Stretford End, and I’d worked out the bus routes to The Cliff. I really wanted to see Alex Ferguson and hopefully get some autographs.”

What happened instead caused so much emotional damage that he talks openly about how, aged 19, he went to the highest floor of a multi-storey car park in Manchester city centre and contemplated throwing himself off.

Two older boys were also at The Cliff on that fateful day. Unlike him, they weren’t collecting autographs. He had already seen them go inside the main building, where there was little security in those days, to steal a pair of football boots. Then he heard them talking about taking one of the footballs lying at the side of the pitch.

“So when I saw (United goalkeeper) Gary Bailey going to his car, I went up to him. ‘You see those two lads over there,’ I said, ‘they’ve stolen some boots and they’re trying to get the Adidas Tango balls.’ Gary went back inside the main building. Then two members of groundstaff came out to grab these lads, and the police turned up to take them away.”

That was when Watts arrived on the scene.

Officially, he was the caretaker. Yet he also had several other roles, predominantly as kitman and groundsman, and was often the first person visitors would meet at The Cliff, standing behind the red metal gates that formed the main entrance.

“He was wearing dark-tinted glasses,” the schoolboy fan recalls now, becoming visibly upset. “He said to me, ‘Gary’s really impressed with what you’ve done. He would like your address, so he can send you two tickets.’ I gave him my address. I wish I hadn’t. After what happened next, that was scary. He knew where I lived and, for a long time, I thought he would come to my house to find me.”

Ferguson was in his native Scotland on the day in question, meaning the youngster never got to see United’s newly-appointed manager. But the trip was still shaping up to be a happy experience for a boy of his age.

“He (Watts) asked me how long I was going to be around. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you up to the canteen.’ He took me upstairs and I sat next to (United’s then captain) Bryan Robson. I could barely speak — he was my boyhood hero. They put a roast chicken dinner in front of me. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t even eat it.”

Bobby Charlton, one of the club’s all-time greats, was kicking a ball around on an indoor pitch and the young United fan was allowed to watch the 1966 World Cup winner in action.

“I watched Bobby for 15 minutes and, when I came out of the building, it was raining. I stood near the changing rooms and Billy Watts approached me again. ‘Why don’t you come in and have a shower or a bath with me?’ he said. And the next thing I knew, he had me cornered in a doorway.

“He sexually assaulted me. He grabbed at my crotch and started pulling at the top of my trousers, trying to undo them. I broke free. I ran, I scattered. I was absolutely petrified.”

He launched his claim — XYZ v Manchester United Football Club Limited — last November.

The impact of the abuse, he says, has been serious and long-lasting. His life has been scarred by depression, failed relationships, a gambling disorder, homelessness and other issues. He has an intense dislike of being hugged or touched physically.

Everything, he says, goes back to his childhood trauma, exacerbated by growing up in a turbulent family environment. After his encounter with Watts, he “turned into a s**t” and “didn’t give a f**k,” running away from home and doing badly at school. A psychological report last year concluded that he had post-trauma symptoms.

“I’ve had (Watts) in my head all my life,” he says. “I didn’t have the relationship with my mum and dad where I thought I could tell them. I didn’t tell anyone. As a kid, nobody knew. I’d try to keep myself busy, so I wasn’t thinking about it. But I’ve never been able to block it out completely.

“I’ve always had his face at the back of my mind. Even now, there are some days when I just stay in bed and stare at the ceiling.”

In 2024, he was invited to a safeguarding meeting at Old Trafford, shortly after writing to United in an attempt to alert Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire new shareholder who effectively runs the club for the Glazer family, their American long-term majority owners. At that meeting, he says he asked for Watts’ name but wasn’t given it. When he subsequently found it out for himself, he says United “closed me down” and told him he would have to direct everything to England’s Football Association.

“He (Watts) had worked there for years, going back to the Ron Atkinson and Dave Sexton (managerial) eras,” he says. “It felt like the club were just trying to get rid of me.”

In 2019, The Athletic revealed that United had reported several historic complaints against Watts to the independent inquiry, commissioned by the FA, into the sex-abuse scandal engulfing English football.

The four-year inquiry, led by Clive Sheldon KC, was launched in 2016 after ex-footballer Andy Woodward waived his right to anonymity in an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian detailing the abuse he suffered at the hands of now-deceased Barry Bennell, a former Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra junior coach and talent-spotter.

Bennell, described in court as a “child abuser on an industrial scale”, was sentenced to 36 years in prison, and there were so many follow-up complaints — a “tidal wave,” in the words of the FA’s then chairman Greg Clarke — it largely went unreported that a former employee at United’s training ground was mentioned in Sheldon’s findings as another potential offender.

“The club (United) was made aware in 2016 of allegations that, in the 1980s, the caretaker had made inappropriate comments of a sexual nature, physically pulled an individual into an office against his will, followed an individual into a sauna at the training ground and wrestled with him,” Sheldon’s report states.

“There was also an allegation that the caretaker had tried to touch another individual inappropriately in the showers; that the caretaker was referred to by youth team players as a ‘pervert’. There was a further allegation that the caretaker had tried to touch another boy and, when confronted, had said, ‘I’m only messing, shut up.’ The club referred the matter to the FA in 2016.”

Watts was in his fifties at the time — a smallish man, maybe 5ft 4in (162cm), with a strong Salford accent, a combover and nicotine-stained fingers. His alleged victim, speaking to The Athletic, describes him as “one of those people who obviously smoked a lot, with longish greasy hair that looked like he’d tried dying it”.

In 1988, Watts was featured among a series of staff profiles in the Manchester United Official Yearbook.

“We’ve never been able to find out just what Billy does!” the article read. “Suffice to say that he always seems to be busy and is quite a fixture now at The Cliff, our main training ground in Salford.”

“I didn’t see that picture of him until more than 30 years later, and my first thought was, ‘Jesus, I’ve described him to a tee’,” says his alleged victim. “It was shocking and overwhelming to see his face again. I thought he was taller than others have described him. But you have to remember I was just a kid. At that age, I was tiny.”

Watts was the subject of a disciplinary case, overseen by then United secretary Ken Merrett, in 1989. The specific nature of that complaint is not clear. Yet United confirmed to the Sheldon inquiry that they “redeployed” Watts to a new role at Old Trafford, taking him away from The Cliff and the club’s youth-team players.

Two further incidents were also brought to United’s attention after Watts’ death, and both were flagged up by the club to the Sheldon inquiry.

In the case of the former autograph-hunter, he wrote to the Sheldon inquiry in October 2019 to identify Watts — 10 years after his death — as a sexual offender. In that letter, seen by The Athletic, he tells Sheldon that he had also reported it to the club earlier that year.

United have previously stated that, although official records from the 1980s are not available, they believe Watts left the club within a few months of being disciplined and took a job as a cleaner in a police station.

For the schoolboy fan, trying to bury the trauma became impossible, he says, after an incident in his adult life when he alleges he was indecently assaulted in a work setting. He says he suffered a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The police investigated but decided there was not enough evidence to press charges.

Every day, he says, is a battle. He undergoes psychotherapy sessions, and it is particularly hard for him to understand why there has been no apology from United. It is, he notes, in stark contrast to the way Manchester City invited in more than 100 of Bennell’s victims for long, often emotional, meetings with senior boardroom executives. In the past few weeks, he has written to City director Simon Pearce to thank him for the club’s approach.

“It’s about getting closure,” he says. “Instead, it feels to me like United have taken the attitude of, ‘This has happened, we’ve paid you off, we’ve swept you under the carpet and we don’t have to deal with you any more’.”

United have not commented about the specific High Court case. In 2019, however, the club gave a statement to The Athletic in relation to this matter and referred back to it when the High Court claim was launched last November.

When contacted by The Athletic for this article, a club spokesperson said: “As we said at the time, we cooperated fully with the Sheldon review in an effort to make sure we were as comprehensive on this important matter as we could be. While it would not be appropriate to comment on individuals, we take any allegations of this nature extremely seriously and have met and listened to anyone who has come forward with dignity and respect.”