Former England and Liverpool star Paul Stewart speaks out about being sexually abused ‘on daily basis for 4 years’ as a toddler by paedophile coach

Former England, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool star Paul Stewart has given his most harrowing account yet of the sickening abuse he suffered as a boy at the hands of a paedophile football coach.

Speaking on a podcast, released today, Stewart, 61, talked in depth about how he was sexually and physically abused every day for four years by the coach, who he doesn’t name but is believed to be Frank Roper, a scout for Blackpool FC who died in 2005. 

The midfielder-turned businessman told hosts, Mike Wood – father of Hollywood actress Aimee-Lou Wood – and former Manchester City star Kevin Horlock, how he was preyed on within three weeks of joining a youth football team in Manchester called Nova Juniors.

He spoke about how the coach started grooming him with gifts for both him and his family, before isolating him from his school friends and asking him inappropriate personal questions during awkward moments in his car.

FA Cup winner Stewart said the sexual abuse started around his 11th birthday and continued nearly right the way through his time with Nova Juniors up until he started his professional career with Blackpool FC.

In 2016, he first revealed the torment he suffered, bravely waiving his right to anonymity, when a wave of historical child sexual abuse revelations were made by other former players including Andy Woodward and Gary Cliffe.

Talking openly and candidly to the Woody Unscripted podcast, he revealed for the first time horrifying details of how he was groomed and then abused by Roper who would turn up outside the school gates and at his home in Wythenshawe, Manchester, where he would bring round expensive new football boots and sportswear as well gifts for the family. 

He said: ‘Pretty much two weeks into me joining, this coach is coming round the house all the time, and he’s giving gifts out, not just to me but my parents as well. He bought us our first colour TV and he’s filling their heads about me being good at football.

‘Then he started turning up outside my school gates waiting for me to finish school and if he didn’t give me a lift home, he’d follow me home in the car and when I got in the car, if he saw me talking to any of my schoolmates, he’d go “what you doing talking to them from school?”

‘He said “you want to be a footballer don’t you?”. That’s all I dreamt of being. He said: “Well, I don’t want you mixing with people from school, you’ve got to be dedicated if you want to be a footballer.”

‘I’m thinking he must know what he’s on about because he’s the coach and I trusted him.

‘He used to take us out in the week. He used to take us to the pictures, ten-pin bowling, I used to go to the speedway at Belle Vue on a Friday. He started dropping me off last, started telling me dirty jokes, making sexual innuendos, asking me if I’d masturbated the night before.

‘I didn’t really know what to say but I remember he insisted on me giving him an answer. Being so young and uncomfortable in that scenario, I just made things up because I didn’t really know what he was asking me.

‘That was the first mistake I made, I should’ve told my Dad. I should have said “Dad, this is what this coach has done” but I didn’t want my parents to not get these gifts and my brothers not to get these gifts, you know what I mean?

‘I thought maybe it’s something and nothing. Shall I just ignore it and hope it doesn’t go any further?’

But worse was to come when Roper took Stewart and a number of other Nova Juniors players to Blackpool’s Bloomfield Road ground to represent the club.

He continued: ‘I’d only been at the club three or four weeks and he was associated with Blackpool and he used to take a number of us down – it was probably the five players who went on to play professional football – to represent the club and on my first trip we’re in the car and he asks “does anyone want to drive the car?”

‘Well, you imagine as a youngster it’s like a massive look into the grown up’s world, driving the car.

‘It was like you’d sit where the handbrake was, one foot would be in the passenger side, one foot in the driver’s side, across where the handbrake was. There was no automatic cars, they were all geared. And you’d lean across, just stretch across and steer the wheel. Everyone was dead excited, including myself, to drive this car.

‘Everybody has a go, I sit there do what I’ve just said. Left foot in the passenger side, driver’s side my right foot but as I lean across, his hand goes up my shorts, touches my penis. I freeze. 

‘At first, If I’m honest, I’m trying to hope and pray it was an accident because he was changing the gear and then I’m thinking he’s telling me dirty jokes, he’s making sexual innuendo, asking me about masturbation. It wasn’t a mistake.’

Stewart admitted to the podcast hosts that he should have exposed the paedophile coach at that point but he continued to suffer in silence.

He told the hosts: ‘I genuinely did think that if I told my dad, my dad would kill him and go to prison and I’d lose my dad.’

He revealed the moment – four weeks after joining Nova Juniors – how the abuse started to ramp up dramatically.

He said: ‘By now this happy-go-lucky kid is completely changing, you know, wary of this coach. He’s dead nice when he’s in front of my parents. They loved him. He’s now integrating himself within the family. If he’s not outside school, he’s sat on the sofa when I got back like a long lost uncle. I get home this one evening, I have my tea and he goes “right, we need to do some extra training.”

‘Well my parents just thought it was great. We’ve got this coach with a professional club. But what that extra training consisted of was being driven to a secluded spot, close to where I lived, where I was sexually abused.

‘When he finished he just nonchalantly leant across and went “Tell your mum and dad or brothers, I’ll kill them.”

‘He said: “If you want to be a footballer, this is what you’ve got to do.”

‘From that day, I was sexually and physically abused every day of my life for four years. I never really knew when I got in the car what was going to happen first and what I mean by that is, if he saw me integrating with my own family, if he saw me engaging with my brothers, showing love and affection to my mum and dad, when I got in the car, he’d beat me. Trying to separate me from my own family.

‘I often say I don’t forgive people for questioning. Surely mum and dad must have seen the bruises and all that.

‘You know yourself – on a council estate you fight with your brothers, you fight with the lads on the estate and get, you know, the odd bruise and he was very, very clever in the way in which he’d beat me. He’d bend my fingers back or hit me in the throat or punch me in the arms and legs so he knew exactly what he was doing.’

Stewart said his abuser would continue the twisted behaviour when Nova Juniors played abroad in the summer in the mid-1970s, including four visits to the United States, where he and his team-mates would stay with the parents of opposing players.

He said: ‘He would always make sure that one or both my brothers were on the trip and even though my parent’s had never said anything to him, when we got to the destination, the family I was with, he’d go to them and say that my parents had requested that he stay with me because I get homesick and I’m frightened of being away from my home. And not only did he have to stay with me, he had to stay in the same room.

‘The reason he bought one or both of my brothers was to hold that threat over me while I was over there and say ‘If you say anything to anyone, I’ll kill your brother or brothers.’  

‘Nobody could do anything, we’re thousands of miles away from home. Those trips just became a living hell because of how he manoeuvred his way into being able to abuse me.’

Stewart is now a businessman in Blackpool who has developed his own Safeguarding in Sport Online Course which has been adopted by the English Football League and other national governing bodies to educate coaches, parents and volunteers working with children in sport.

Recalling his own experiences he told the podcast: ‘I often say there wasn’t even a duty of care, let alone safeguarding. You don’t want to cause any trouble because you don’t want the coach to think you’re a problem and you’re just left to get on with it and I remember, certainly growing up when I was at Blackpool, I was really angry all the time. I wanted to fight the world.

‘My disciplinary record was shocking but I didn’t understand why, I didn’t know it was because all this had happened to me as a child.

‘I have a lot of regrets in my life but the coach who was abusing me was associated with Blackpool so when I went there and joined as a 16-year-old I had to see him every weekend and something I rarely share is I’d see him with a boy, the same boy all the time and I knew what was happening and you know what I used to do? 

‘When I walked past him, I would say hello. I didn’t go and tell somebody that that boy is… because I didn’t have the strength to do it.’

Stewart went on to play for Manchester City after Blackpool before joining Spurs and Liverpool but he admitted his playing career was marred by drugs and alcohol adding: ‘I had so much going on. You imagine, I’m at Spurs and I’m lining up against Man United, I’ve got Roy Keane at the side of me, I’m at Old Trafford and all I’m thinking of is where I’m going to get my hit from that night.

‘Before the kick off at 3 o’clock I’ve got all this going on in my head about where I can get drugs from, how I’m going to get so drunk after this game.’