Giving evidence for the first time, the England midfielder admitting kissing the 15-year-old but denied two more serious child sexual offences

The footballer Adam Johnson told a court he grew sexually attracted to a schoolgirl but is embarrassed and ashamed he sent flirty messages to her, potentially risking his young family and high-flying career.

Giving evidence for the first time, the England midfielder admitting kissing the 15-year-old but denied two more serious child sexual offences.

“I wasn’t a good person. I should never have did it. I can’t think of the words to describe how bad I actually feel about it,” Johnson told jurors at Bradford crown court.

Appearing to grow emotional in the witness box, the 28-year-old admitted he was not thinking of his family when he sent illicit messages to the schoolgirl after a sexual encounter in his black Range Rover last January.

Jurors heard the girl met Johnson in his car in a secluded car park in County Durham to give him a “thank you kiss” after he signed two Sunderland shirts for her days earlier.

Describing what happened at the meeting on 30 January, Johnson said: “We were chatting and I think [the girl] said: ‘Why we still talking, I’ve come for my thank you kiss’. Then the kiss happened.”

The pair kissed for around a minute, Johnson said. He continued: “I had all sorts of things going on in my head at the time. I was thinking: ‘What am I doing? I have so much to lose’. Outside a populated area with the Chinese and things, if someone seen me.”

When asked by his barrister, Orlando Pownall QC, why he continued to kiss the girl, Johnson told jurors: “Because I wanted to and I wasn’t thinking clearly how I should’ve been.”

Jurors were told that in a police statement following his arrest Johnson described his actions as “wholly unacceptable” and added: “She’s a child and ought to have felt safe in my company.”

The jury has heard that Johnson, capped 12 times for England, Googled “legal age of consent” on 3 February – days after the alleged sexual encounter.

However, Johnson denied that the internet search was in relation to his meeting with the girl, claiming he Googled it during a dressing-room discussion with other Sunderland players about laws around the world.

“It is nothing to do with [the girl],” he told the jury. “We were talking in the dressing room about a programme that was on a couple of nights before about different ages and things like that. There’s a lot of players in our team from other countries and we were having a discussion about different laws and ages in different parts of the world.”

The former Manchester City player admitted sending “explicit” text messages to a number of other woman, aged in their 20s, in January and February last year.

He said his relationship with his girlfriend, Stacey Flounders, was going through a rough patch at the time and that it was “all my fault”.

“I had been speaking to people who I shouldn’t have been speaking to and generally not being a very good person to her [Flounders],” he said.

Johnson said he grew attracted the schoolgirl as they exchanged messages on WhatsApp after he gave her two signed two Sunderland shirts. But he told jurors his “stupid flirting” was down to sheer boredom at the team hotel before Sunderland played Tottenham Hotspur the following day.

“When you’re in a hotel room, it’s easy to text. You’re bored and you get caught up in texting just to keep yourself busy. You spend a lot of time in hotels, it’s quite easy to get carried away texting,” he said.

“I was in a hotel room. I was bored. I’m ashamed that I did that. I know I shouldn’t have been doing that.”

Regarding one text in which Johnson said it would “defo have to be dark” when he and the girl met, the footballer said: “It’s flirting and inappropriate.”

Johnson said he wished he had cut off contact with the girl after giving her the signed shirts. When asked why he did not, he said: “I don’t know. I wish I did now. I was caught up in the texting and speaking to her as if she was any other person really. I should’ve known a lot better.”

Pownall asked: “What feelings did you have?”

Johnson replied: “I think the feeling started more from around these messages.”

When asked to clarify what feeling he had at that time, Johnson said: “Yeah, I was attracted to her.”

The jury has heard that Johnson asked the girl what year she was in at school within hours of them swapping texts, to which she replied that she was in year 10.

Questioned by Pownall about why he asked her age, Johnson told jurors: “At that time it was just conversation. I was chatting as normal.” When asked why he told her not to tell anyone she was messaging him, Johnson said: “Loads of reasons – I had a girlfriend, I knew what could be made of speaking to a girl that age, I didn’t want her to tell her friends and them to come and ask me for shirts as well.”

The footballer said it would have been an “absolute disaster” if someone had photographed him with another girl in his car.

Explaining his background, the 28-year-old said he left school with four GCSEs and joined Middlesbrough FC. “I think it’s every young boy’s dream. You get put on a pedestal, people screaming your name – it’s the best feeling in the world. But you also get everything done for you and get a lot of things easy.”

The trial continues.













