THE S*N HITS ANOTHER NEW LOW WITH LATEST CELTIC BOYS CLUB STORY
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Jun 30
- 3 min read
We have, sadly, come to expect cheap jibes about child abuse from the very worst elements of other teams’ supporters.
However, We don’t expect to see national newspapers joining in on this sick obsession. And yet, for the second time this year, The S*n has done just that.
The S*n’s Latest Headline Grabbing Attempt Shows no Regard at All for Celtic Boys Club Victims
We know that earlier this year Celtic reached settlements with around 85% of the victims in the civil case regarding historic cases of abuse by convicted paedophiles Jim Torbett and Frank Cairney.
I said at the time that I hope it gives the victims some kind of closure, but no amount of money will ever take away the trauma inflicted on them.
Meanwhile, The S*n’s Bill Leckie saw it as an excuse to go ahead and write a full-on poison pen letter about Celtic, again with no regard for the victims. It was all about taking as many shots at Celtic as possible, and totally ignoring the fact that sexual abuse in Scottish football is a cancer that afflicted a number of clubs.
The same glee that Leckie showed in his venomous editorial earlier this year was on full display in The S*n again over the weekend, as they revelled in the fact that more victims will come forward and more compensation will be paid out.
I’m sure this is music to the ears of the sick minority who follow another, smaller club, who have for years clung to the fantasy that these compensation payments (which should have been paid out years ago) will somehow bankrupt Celtic.
They won’t. Celtic’s insurance will take care of these costs. The S*n knows that, but chooses to ignore it.
The S*n’s thoughtless bit of revelry today may have actually put those claims in jeopardy. It will force the defendants onto the back foot, and could well delay payouts which, as I have already said, these victims should have received decades ago.
There will not be “years of more claims” as The S*n proclaims in its headline with a sick sense of optimism. Others will come forward, and each case will be heard and settled on its own merits.
The fact that Celtic and the victims have already reached settlements in 85% of the cases brought to date will actually expedite any future cases. A clear precedent has been set, and that will make it easier for presiding officials to levy judgement.
Once again, in their hate-fuelled pursuit of anything negative to write about Celtic at all, The S*n once again buried what should have been the main focus of the story at the very end of the article. You know, the part that most S*n readers have neither the intellect nor attention span to get to.
In the penultimate paragraph The S*n quotes one of the victims, whose case has already been settled, as “calling for a public inquiry into sexual abuse in Scottish football”.
Not “Celtic”, Scottish football as a whole. There are dozens, probably hundreds of victims out there, because we know that the two beasts implicated in the Celtic Boys Club cases were not the only offenders operating in Scottish football at that time.
Indeed, if The S*n actually cared about the victims, they might want to conduct investigations into these additional and numerous allegations of abuse, rather than just provide free advertising for the law firm representing the Celtic case.
Paedophiles are predators. They don’t care what team their victims support, or who they hope to play for when they grow up. Celtic Boys Clubs is the biggest publicly known case of this kind, and Celtic allowed all this to drag on for decades longer than it needed to. However, now we need to cast the net wider.
All of these evil, subhuman scum need to be caught and held accountable, and their victims compensated, regardless of what club employed them.
However, that would require actual journalism. That would require asking tough questions and investigating people who don't want to be investigated. The S*n clearly has no interest in that, just as they have no interest in the welfare of the victims of Celtic Boys Club.
