Case Against Celtic Boys Club

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's the Opperman Report, and now here is an investigator
at Opperman.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Okay, welcome to the Opperman Report. I'm your host, private
investigator at Opperman. You could find me at Opperman Investigations.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
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(00:40):
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(01:02):
it's always good to check the Patreon to see what's
up there, whether you're subscribed or not.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
The archives always free. You go to spriaker dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
I do a live showy Friday night at spreaker dot
com APM Pacific Eastern Standard Time, and there's a chat
room and you get an email notification whenever we put
up new content.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
So that's where you want to check out our archives.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
And if you go there and look up Celtic Boys Club,
we've done a couple of shows with Gordon Woods. As
a matter of fact, Gordon wrote a great book called
Being Put through the Hoops the Celtic Boys Club. You
should check that out too as well. We've had them
at least three times. But there's a podcast out there
now that's dedicated solely to this case, the Case against

(01:45):
the Celtic Boys Club. You can find them on Patreon
Case Against Celtics Boys Club or on Twitter, c ACBC
pod or once again Case against Celtic Boys Club. And
the host and the lead there's mister Peter Henderson. Mister
Peter Henderson, are you there.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
Yes, I am nice to hear from you.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, thank you so much, man, Thank you so much
for coming on the show and shedding lighter on the
Celtic Boys Club. Before we get into that, in your podcast.
Tell us about yourself. Who is Peter Henderson?

Speaker 4 (02:17):
Well I am. I'm a freelance journalist. I also do
PR work for different companies in Scotland. The main company
that I help with PR as a law firm. I
don't work for them. I work with them, and they
are the law firm that are currently leading the legal

(02:40):
action against Celtic Football Club. But I grew up in
a small village near the Scottish Highlands. I came to
Glasgow when I was seventeen to go to university. I
never left. When I left university, I began working for
the BBC and I worked my way up through the

(03:02):
BBC in the news department and spent around thirteen years
of the BBC working as a news producer, working on
current affairs, foreign affairs, Scottish news. I worked at the
Scottish Parliament for some time, so I at lead that
about Scottish politics and UK politics.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
And after thirteen.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Years at the BBC, I left to become the head
of communications for a very large civil law firm in
Scotland and I was with them for about eight years
and then left because I wanted to do other things.
I wanted to try doing other things, but you know,

(03:45):
at the same time carry on working with them on
a freelance basis, and so, you know, there are various
things I've worked on, various documentaries, but the one story
that I could never shake, being a former journalist having
worked with the lawyers was this case of historic abuse,

(04:07):
a huge historic abuse scandal which happened at Celtic Boys Club,
which is was a youth football team very closely connected
to Glasgow Celtic Football Club soccer team, which are one
of the most widely supported soccer teams.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
In the world.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
And you know, there's been a huge amount of interest
in that particular case. And so given I was free lance,
given I'd worked with the lawyers for so long, and
I'd built up close relationships with a lot of the
boys now men who had been affected by the abuse,
that it was suggested to me, you know what, people

(04:50):
have been interested in books, you know, documentares, but it
was suggested to me that podcasts, which I had not
much experience of before then, was almost really the perfect
medium to tell the story because it's so big and
has gone on for so long that podcasts seemed the

(05:12):
best way to do it. And you know, I've been
a radio producer. That was the medium I worked and
not television, was radio at the BBC that I was
able to use the skills i'd learned there to produce
this podcast. So I've been an idea that I've been
going on for a long time, and about two and
a half months ago we started.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
I've got help from a.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
Friend of mine, but you know, it's mainly me on.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
My own doing it.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
We decided to just release something and we've had a
pretty good response so far, and so that's how that
all began. So yeah, you know, I'm basically a former
news producer with the BBC who has worked on this
and could see it from both sides. And you know,

(05:58):
it's been good to do a bit of Journey again.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
It really has.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
I tell you, Peter, I'm surprised to hear you're from Scotland.
I thought from your accent you're from bay Ridge, Brooklyn,
but I guess I do detect a bit of a
Scottish accent.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
Well I'm using my Sunday Best voice for you.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh no, Sometimes you get these these Irish Scottish guts
on the show.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
And I can't I say.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
That because when I worked for the BBC. Actually one
of the things I love doing. When I worked for
the BBC, I used to work for the Breakfast Show,
one of the breakfast shows on the radio for the
National radio station, and I loved American politics, and so
I very often be on the phone to the States
booking people to do interviews, and quite often they think
I was Irish, you know, because I think, you know,

(06:49):
for people that are not on Scotland or Ireland, sometimes
the accents are quite difficult to differentiate. But yeah, American,
I'm using my best voice for you.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, American. So a naive ban of the world.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
We think people in you know, Saudi Arabia walking around
a camel's America is just so backward when it comes
to being worldly.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
But now, how did from when? Don't we start with this?

Speaker 2 (07:14):
What is the official story of this scandal at the
Celtic Boys Club?

Speaker 4 (07:22):
Well, the well, the official story are the official sequence
of events as the club, Glasgow Celtic Football Club would
would would have the public belief would be that a
youth football team was set up in nineteen sixty six

(07:43):
towards the end of nineteen sixty six by one man,
Jim Torbot. Jim Torbot, who was nineteen years old at
the time, approached the leadership of Glasgow Celtic Football Club,
who you've got to remember, are one of the biggest
voting institutions in Britain, certainly in Scotland, and are well

(08:06):
known throughout Europe and in parts of North America as well,
are very well supported and in Australia, so they're a
massive football club. So this young man, Jim Torbott, approached
the leaders of Glasgow Celtic back in nineteen sixty six
to set up a youth team and this idea was
warmly embraced and he was taken into Celtic and he

(08:29):
was allowed to use Celtic facilities. The strips and the
kit the boys wore, the blazers they wore were all
embossed with the Celtic Trust, with slight changes in the wording.
But from the beginning, certainly as far as the victims
and their families were concerned, the boys involved were concerned.
They believed that they were playing for the youth team

(08:52):
of Celtic. Abuse began of the children almost immediately. There's
about when it was first reported, but it seems clear
that from what you know the victims say, and when
you go back through newspaper archives that very quickly concerns
were raised, and that the abuse began very quickly, and

(09:15):
that Torbett himself was behind it. Then what happened was
that other men who have since been convicted of child
sex offenses began to join the boys club.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
As coaches, as helpers.

Speaker 4 (09:28):
And so on, and they were also abusing children. Now,
the only public record that I can find in terms
of newspaper documents is that it was first raised publicly
in the press in nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
So between nineteen sixty.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
Six and nineteen eighty six there was abusive children going on.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
And we know this.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
I mean it's a fact because there have been criminal
convictions of men involved from that period of time. The
official version from Glasgow's Celtic Football club is that this
was there were connections, There was a sort of, you know,
an understanding that this, you know, was connected with Celtics,

(10:14):
but not officially and certainly not financially or any of
the things that would lead to vicarious responsibility. The abuse
was finally blown completely apart when Torbot was convicted for
his first criminal offense in nineteen eighty eight. So between
nineteen sixty six and nineteen ninety eight. What you have

(10:38):
is some articles in the press about this, various rumors
and rumblings. Because Glasgow is a big city, but it's
also a small city, particularly when it comes to soccer
and football, that rumors would circulate about what was going
on at the Boys Club. So it had a tarnished reputation,
but nothing ever definitive until nineteen ninety eight conviction of Torbot.

(11:04):
Then nothing much happened. What really has turbocharged the entire
process is that there's been a renewed, you know, as
we know throughout the world, a new serious attitude towards
historic child sexual offenses, you know, whether it's committed by
the church or sports.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Clubs or whatever it might be.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
And so people then reporting abuse that happened to them
between sixty six and the mid nineties was taken seriously
by the police and it was investigated, and then that
led to a series of convictions of other men, all
very closely connected with Celtic Boys Club and personal friends

(11:48):
of Jim Torbott, and there have been multiple criminal convictions. Then,
of course what happened was there was a change in
the law in Scotland as far as civil law is concerned,
and what that meant was that cases which would have
been time barred I think in America got statue of

(12:10):
limitation for civil cases that was removed, which meant that
people who may have been abused in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
who previously would have been barred from taking civil action
were allowed to take civil action. So that led to
umpteen cases been filed against, you know, the Catholic Church, orphanages,

(12:33):
sports clubs, charities and so on. And as part of that,
Celtic and its relationship with Celtic Boys Club came firmly
into the crosshairs and led to what is now going
to be probably the biggest or certainly the most news
worthy civil case in Scotland and I think wider, although

(12:54):
we'd like more people to know about it, but that's Celtic.
The position of the Senior foot Ball Club is that
although we were connected and we had these historic connections,
we are not liable for this because the phrase they
use their legal position as the Boys Club and the
Senior Club were separate legal entities.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Therefore, we are not responsible under.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
Civil law for the abuse that these men committed. Now,
the club don't say that abuse wasn't committed. I mean,
as a matter of fact that it was, and there
have been these multiple criminal convictions. Their position is, well,
this went on and it's awful. It's nothing to do
with us. And that's what the podcast is about. It's

(13:40):
about trying to show people, by bit through first hand
testiny victims of journalists who covered it at the time,
journalists are covering it now, to help people build up
a picture in their mind and to make up their
own minds really about whether they think the Senior Club
is in fact responsible for this and at what points

(14:03):
throughout the whole period of time the club could have
stopped And that's one of the huge contentions of the
survivors of the abuse, is that this could have been
stopped quite early on, therefore saving really a generation of
young children from this abuse. But the fact is it
wasn't stopped. So that's what the civil case is about.

(14:24):
Obviously the criminal cases are part of that, and so
that's what I would hope that people listening to the
podcast will get a sense of, even if they're not
from Scotland, but we have a massive, massive sporting club
here who's been sued by thirty former boys club players
for abuse, and the lawyers and certainly the survivors and

(14:48):
the journalists and myself are in no doubt that there
are potentially hundreds of victims of this abuse out there
who have not come forward yet for their own reasons.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
You know a question, Pairer, Now this is full of
Torbot for him to get this shop at nineteen years
old running this youth soccer league, I guess it was.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Was it just a team? It all league?

Speaker 1 (15:12):
It was a team. It was a team. And so youth.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
Football is quite heavily organized in Scotland, so you have
different leagues. And I have two young children and they
both play for a youth team that's involved in its
own league. At that time in Scotland in nineteen sixty six,
these kids would have played in youth leagues against other
youth teams.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
So what Torbot did was he didn't set up a league.
He set up a youth club that would play in.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
A sort of set up an apparatus that was already
in place, but he set up that club with the
name and with the full backing at that time of
the Celtic establishment, and.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
He was getting paid for this role that was then apployment.

Speaker 4 (15:59):
Well, that's a matter of contention in Torbert's case. No,
in previous other pedophile coaches that have been convicted the
self to contend that they weren't. The lawyers say that
they have evidence that they wear for the actual civil
case itself, it's not necessarily it's not necessary to actually

(16:21):
prove they were being paid. But what Torbot did was well,
obviously he benefited massively personally from his association with this
enormous sporting institution, and he had his own business which
he set up which sold football memorabilia, and as time progressed,

(16:42):
his business expanded greatly, to the point where he became
a self made millionaire through his football memorabilia business. While
being closely involved with the Boys club. He employed other
men to work at his businesses selling this memorabilia, of
whom are now convicted p defiles. Some of the abuse

(17:03):
Torbet committed was on his business premises selling these trophies
and football you know, football memorabilia, and at least two
members of the Celtic Board of Directors were also directors
of his private trophy club business. So to Torbet didn't

(17:27):
need to be paid. As my view, Torbot was able
through his own.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Through his.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Idea to market memorabilia and went back in the late sixties.
The idea of football memorabilia and making money through merchandise was,
you know what was really nowhere and he had this
idea and given his connections with the hierarchy that ran
that club, he was able to construct a business that
became successful very quickly.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
How many you.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Work coaching his team here without compensation from the Celtic
Boys Club.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
Well, the timeline is a bit hazy in terms of
torb it and what his actual activities were. You can
get some idea of it when you go through the archives.
There's a large library in Glasgow called the Mitchell Library.
It's actually one of the biggest reference libraries in Europe.
So you can go in and read the books, but
it's not a lending library. You can't take things out.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
And in the.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
Mitchell Library is an archive of Celtics Official club newspaper.
Now that is the newspaper that is officially sanctioned by
the club. It's not a fansy, it's the official newspaper
of the club. And in this library they have every
additional dating back to the late nineteen sixties, and in
it you can see how Torbot was present for quite

(18:51):
a long time, for maybe about four or five years
up until the start of the seventies. Then he disappears
from view for a while and this is when allegations
apparently were brought to the senior management of the club
that things untoward things were going on. He was replaced
by a man called Frank Kearney. Now Frank Kearney was
not a successful businessman, but unlike Torbott, was actually a

(19:14):
very good football coach. Torbert had no football experience and
wasn't a good coach. He wasn't a football coach. He
was just a man with the idea and the business
idea of where he used to which he used to
make himself very wealthy. Kearney, who comes in as Torbert
disappears from view, is himself a convicted pedofile and started

(19:34):
abusing the boys almost immediately he arrived at Celtic to
be the coach.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
There is some dispute as to how he was paid.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
He didn't seem to have any other form of income
back in the seventies. It was probably cash in hand,
who knows, but he was not a wealthy man. People
can draw their own conclusions. But he was a bachelor.
He as all these Celtic pedophiles, well, they were all bachelors.

(20:05):
He it's hard to think how he could have sustained
himself without getting some kind of stye pend from the
club or some kind of remuneration, because how else could
he support himself? Because if you read the Celtic View
archives on the early seventies honors the guys in it.
Every week he writes a column for it. He doesn't

(20:26):
seem to do anything else with his life but coach
these kids.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
So how else.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
Could he have supported himself. People can draw their own
conclusion about that. But as I understand it, that doesn't
necessarily form a central part of the civil case because
you know, liability can be proved otherwise, he doesn't need
to have been a paid employee on the books. And
back in the early seventies in Scotland, the idea that

(20:53):
you know, people would have necessarily have been on the books,
you know, it's very easy to believe that people were
just paid cash and.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Many many business many businesses.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, yeah, myself, I was born in sixty two and
I remember when they tore down Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
I guess it was in the early seventies.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Me and my dad would go there to the construction
site and they would sell the memorabilia from Yankee Stadium,
like like framed pictures of Babe Ruth in a suit,
signing his contracts, stuff like that. Yeah, right, but for
like four dollars, five dollars.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
It was.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
You know, you don't become a millionaire, or now you do,
or maybe like any eighties in the nineties you did,
But you didn't become a millionaire back in the sixties
and the seventies selling that stuff. Okay, I'm sure you
didn't in Scotland over there, okay. Any it was there
ever been any allegation with this bunch that they received

(21:50):
some kind of compensation for giving people access to these
little boys?

Speaker 1 (21:55):
No, no, no, no, I've seen no.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
Okay, no, no, it's not a pedophile ring in that way.
They were not procuring children and then passing them up. Well,
they were procuring children for themselves, and they did have
links with pedophiles in other parts of Scotland and in
other parts of the United Kingdom. But kids for money, No,

(22:20):
I've seen no evidence of that at all. What Torbert
was able to do was to make himself very wealthy
by selling this memorabilia through a series of shops which
he was able to open, and he had the exclusive
contract from Celtic at that time to sell this merchandise,
and you know, it would appear there was a lot of.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Money in it, because you know, I mean.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
In the latest episode of the podcast, episode seven, one
survivor talks about how he watched the business grow and
grow and grow, and shops popped up in cities and
towns throughout Scotland because Celtic are in normlessly supported and
if you wanted to buy official celf Tic merchandise, you

(23:04):
had to go to one of these shops.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Gotcha, Hey, remember in a pre interview, I was going
to answer a question and I forgot what it was.
The question was how often do you release podcasts? Do
you have a weekly episode?

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Well?

Speaker 4 (23:24):
I tried to do one a week, or I started
off saying it'd be one a fortnight, and then when
things got going, because I had quite a lot of
material already, then I started doing one a week because
I wanted to try and build up some momentum and
also because I know quite a lot of journalists in Scotland,
they were quite interested in what I had discovered.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
So there had been quite.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
A few articles in the press in Scotland about the
podcast and about what was in the podcast, or they
would report it and then give me a credit, which
is fine.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
But then you know, it was.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
The summer holidays where we were out the country on holiday,
so then it went it went down to one a fortnite.
And you know, I'm doing this in my spare time.
I do have other jobs a lecture at the local university,
you know, in international journalism. So I've got all these
other jobs. I've got two young kids. So then it
went down to one a fortnite. So I'm going to

(24:17):
try and do them as often as I can. It
might be there might be sometimes when it comes out
one week after the other, then I might need to
take a break, but it certainly will never be longer
than one a fortnite.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
And a fortnite is once a month, no once every
two weeks, every day, okay, and let's see.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Okay, so that's how the show comes out.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Now, what what made Peter Henderson want to devote the
entire podcast to this one's happened.

Speaker 4 (24:52):
Well, there's a couple of reasons when you well, if
you've got a journalistic background, or or anyone actually, because
there's a lot of people who devote their own time
to this and are very interested.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
In this.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
When you realize just what a massive story it is,
even though you know, when I had worked as a
news producer, I had never really worked in crying, but
it becomes all consuming almost. I mean, the injustice of
it is absolutely monstrous. And I also built up, you know,

(25:31):
personal relationships with many of the men who've been affected.
So where I worked for the law firm, you know,
these guys would become involved with a law firm and
taking on their case, but a lot of them also
wanted to you know, speak about what had happened to them.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
So it was my job to you know, talk.

Speaker 4 (25:49):
To them, arrange TV interviews for them, radio interviews and
so on, and maintain contact with them. And you can't
help but be affected when you are dealing with people
this huge trauma that's happened to them when they were children,
and when you see the effect that it's had on
them in terms of you know, their mental health. You know,

(26:12):
people have you know, drug problems, alcohol problems because of
this abuse. And you know, I'm the father of two
young children who both love football. You cannot help but
be become emotionally involved. And I mean, I guess that

(26:33):
you know. It's all very well meeting you know, you know,
setting up interviews and making sure the survivors are safe
and that they're speaking to the right kind of journalists
and so on. But there's only so much you can
get from a newspaper article. And when you know, you
hear someone being interviewed in a podcast, and you can
hear the emotion and their voice, and you can hear
the pain that has been inflicted on them by what

(26:56):
this group of men did to these kids all these
years ago, you feel driven to do it.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
You know, you give up your time and you know,
and you bore all your friends and relatives saying, oh
my goodness, you're not thinking or talking about that again.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
But you you, I mean, I'm sure you've found this
yourself and many of the people that you've interviewed. I
guess it's the injustice of it, and the fact that
you know are wrong has been done, and responsibility has
not been taken, and apologies.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Have not been given, and you you just do.

Speaker 4 (27:37):
And I guess I'm lucky that because I worked as
a news producer for so long, I was able to
construct this podcast and I wasn't a big podcast listener
at all. So basically what I'm doing is constructing mini
radio documentaries. You know that that's the way they're constructed,
you know, with edited interviews, with introductions, interview outros, clips

(27:59):
and so on.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
And yeah, I feel that.

Speaker 4 (28:07):
I wanted to help these men do it in a
way that was safe for them. That they trust me,
which is good because you know, you get people that
want to become involved that are not honest players, you know,
and I knew that I was, and you know that
I would be fair and not indulge in kind of

(28:28):
wild speculation or crazy conspiracyies because you don't have to,
because the truth itself is outrageous enough that this was
an enormous cover up of decades long, industrial scale child
abuse against children who only wanted to play football.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
So it's only a spare. How many children do you
think we're traumatized?

Speaker 4 (28:53):
Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, I have no doubt about it. If
you consider that this began in nineteen sixty six and
it didn't end until.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
The early nineties, and.

Speaker 4 (29:09):
That there were numerous coaches involved, numerous and it didn't
have to be coaches that were actively involved at Celtic.
Some of the abuse, in fact, a lot of the
abuse was happening at small, other small junior youth soccer
teams in small towns throughout central Scotland, and these coaches

(29:31):
who were pedophiles were in contact with the pedophiles working
at Celtic Football Club. But the thing, the connecting point
in all of this abuse was that these coaches could
say to these kids and the parents are the kids,
your kid has to come here, he has to train
with me because there's a chance that he might get

(29:52):
a trial for Celtic.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
That was always the carrot that.

Speaker 4 (29:55):
The pedophiles dangled in front of the kids and their
parents to bring the kids in. And the men, some
of the men who were pedophile coaches at these small
soccer teams and these small little community towns in central
Scotland had connections with people like Jim Torbott, Frank Erney

(30:15):
and Jim McCafferty, another well known Celtic pedophile.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
So yeah, it was a network of football.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
Pedophiles who operated in central Scotland for decades, who always
used the lure of a possible trial for the giant
Glasgow Celtic football Club, who as you know, won the
European Soccer Cup in nineteen sixty seven, so they are
massive clubs, so famous. For any child in small working
class communities in Scotland, this was a dream, an absolute dream,

(30:48):
and these men ruthlessly exploited it. So how many victims
hundreds hundreds.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Now, when you're doing your podcast and you talk to
these survivors, I know how difficult that is.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Do you find yourself?

Speaker 2 (31:06):
It could be so draining, you know, and you start
stuff on a little PTS day, Like after the interview
you're going over in your head and even for the
for the survivors to relive these things in before the
interview they're thinking about it. Then after the interviews over
they're still thinking about it. How about yourself? How you
holding up dealing with this topic over and over?

Speaker 1 (31:26):
It's not fun, No, it's no fun.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
And you know, you know you see comments on you know,
comments you know when we launch the podcast about you know,
why would anyone want to do this?

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Surely they must have these.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
Similar kinds of inclinations, you know, believe it or not.
You know, I would rather have nothing to do with this,
to be honest with you. You know, I'm sitting there
readit in the podcast, and I have to send my
children out because I don't want them to hear anything
like this. I don't want them exposed to anything like this.
I would prefer that I was not exposed to this.

(32:01):
And I've spoken to many journalists and you'll know the
same thing that once you hear these things, you cannot
unhear it. And yeah, I've been in rooms with grown men,
hard men, you know, men from Glasgow's, hard Scottish men,
crying their eyes out because of what happened to them
when they were twelve, eleven, thirteen. And it's awful and

(32:23):
it's painful, but you know, you know, as you mentioned before,
you feel driven to.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Do it, and.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
You have to be fair and you have to be honest, and.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
You have to be so careful not to exaggerate and
come up as a while which kind of discredits the
whole topic.

Speaker 4 (32:48):
It does, it does, and you know that there is
some of that goes on in particularly when you're dealing
with you know, soccer clubs and you know, you'll know
that you know, European soccer clubs and Scotland no different.
I mean it's a tribal, an ingrained tribal loyalty to
your football club.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
And you know the two big Glasgow.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Football clubs have that ingrained loyalty. I mean you are
brought up, you're born into supporting this club. I mean
it's more than a club, and the same goes for
the other Glasgow.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Club, Rangers.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
You're born into supporting that club and it's part of
your family's identity, your cultural identity and your history. You know,
in Glasgow, I can tell from someone's name almost which
club they will support because it's the family you're born into.
So that kind of loyalty, that kind of tribalism is

(33:42):
a furtive breeding ground for conspiracy series and hyperboley and exaggeration.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
And what I.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
Always say to people is the actual crime itself, that
the cover up and the scale of the child abuse
that went on It's Celtic Boys Club needs no exaggeration
in itself. It was you know, I contend and certainly
the survivors, many journalists and the lawyers do this was
the biggest child of you scandal in British sport by

(34:14):
a mile, if not European sport. I mean, I was
just reading up about what happened at Penn State, and
I was aware about Penn State. I knew a bit
about Penn State. So you know, Sandowski was one man.
He was convicted of reviewsing ten boys and it went
on for about what seven or eight years something like that.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
And it was one man. What we were talking about
was Glasgow. Celtic is.

Speaker 4 (34:42):
Maybe nine or ten pedophiles maybe more, operating with either
directory with Celtic Football Club or Celtic Boys Club or
these small youth community teams around central Scotland for about
thirty five years. So the scale of it is enormous.

(35:02):
But it happened in a country with a population of
five million people.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
Wow, yeah, tiny country. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
And now what about if it's so systemic in this team,
this club that comes from the top down, how well,
well you.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
Go ahead, well you see that's what we see. That's
the that's the trick, isn't it. And that's the contention
of the civil case. Now nobody, nobody disputes the fact
that multiple men who worked as coaches at Celtic Boys
Club or were associated with Celtic Boys Club or we're
scouts or we're friends with you know, maybe one step

(35:43):
removed did this.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
That's not in doubt.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
I think people just can't get their heads around the
scale of it and the sheer, the sheer size that
how the tentacles of it spread out in a pre
internet age. How did all these men contact each other?

Speaker 1 (36:00):
How did they all know?

Speaker 4 (36:01):
Well, they clearly did because it happened. But what came
from the top? So Jim Torbot, who was a pedophile
at nineteen set up Celtic Boys Club with the blessing
of Celtic Football Club. Now I have not seen any
evidence at all that the people that controlled Celtic at

(36:24):
that time knew what he was.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
I don't believe they did.

Speaker 4 (36:29):
The controversy in the scandal is that it became clear
quite early on that things were a miss. And at
what opportunity did the club, the senior club, Glasgow Celtic
have to stop this? And that's the contention. It would
appear that there were numerous occasions when it could have
been and it wasn't, and why wasn't it and why

(36:54):
because other football clubs in Scotland and other football clubs
in the United Kingdom have had this issue, but none
of them even approached the scale of what happened at
Glasgow Celtic and Celtic Boys Club. So why was that
and why were all these previous opportunities missed when it
could have been shut down? And that's that's that's what

(37:18):
we hope to try and give listeners some appreciation of
in the podcast.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
There.

Speaker 4 (37:25):
You know, there are issues to do with the fact
that several directors of the Senior Club of Celtic had
direct financial connections with Torbott and his highly successful business.
What role did that play in their not it's not
even turning a blind eye because it was reported to them,

(37:46):
It was directly reported of them. They say they investigated it,
they say they uncovered nothing, and then the people who
blew the whistle and tried to report it were ostracized
and then removed from from the Senior Club. So, you know,
people that we're in charge of the club at that
time have some very very serious questions to answer about

(38:06):
why they did what they did and why it wasn't
stopped because it could have been stopped. It could have
been stopped almost a couple of years in but it wasn't,
and it carried on until the early nineties.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
There was an issue too with one of the fellows
in this this group here also traveled to United States,
New Jersey and committics and crimes in New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yeah, yeah, he did well.

Speaker 4 (38:34):
One of the one of the things about Celtic Boys Club,
and you'll find, I'm sure that this is common with
the you know, perophile behavior in any setting, is that
one of the things these men did was that they
would arrange trips away. They would arrange trips to England,
they would arrange trips to France, to Scandinavia. But one

(38:56):
of their favored places to go was North America, in
particular Kearney in Hudson County, New Jersey, where bizarrely given
her it was Kearney, Kearney, the.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Town in New Jersey.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
The man who led most of the trips was Frank Kearney.
Why they went to North America a lot, perhaps it
was because you know, people speak English, you know, there
was that strong Scottish Irish connection with you know, New York,
New Jersey, Philadelphia, these places, and so they liked to

(39:33):
go there and they went there all the time, and
certainly abuse took place while they were there, and it
probably was taking place from quite early on in these trips,
because they were making these trips in the early seventies onwards. Well,
undoubtedly abuse was happening there, as it did on other
trips to England, trips to the continent. Children were being

(39:56):
abused there too, But certainly abuse took place in the
United States dates without a doubt.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, Keuney, New Jersey, is a small town, and I
think one of the only attractions there there's an amusement
was that there was still today, but back as long
as the eighties there was an amusement part. They're really
the only attraction or reason to go to County, New Jersey,
where there would also be a lot of kids.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
So and one, if that had anything to do.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
It, I don't think so.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
I mean, I think I mean, as you know from
American history, you know, when people emigrated to the United
States from different countries in Europe, they quite often settled
in small communities in one spot. And so people then
would you know, maintain close contacts with their friends and relatives,
whether there was back in Ireland, back in Scotland, you know,
back in Poland, wherever and it would seem to be

(40:47):
that there were a lot of people who'd come from
Scotland in some parts of Ireland and had settled in Kearney,
and so that's what the connection was. It's, you know,
it's you know, a diaspora. Think a Scottish Irish diary
for lots of people in Kearney in New Jersey, you know,
who had been born in Scotland or come from police

(41:08):
who supported Celtic in Scotland and Ireland. They'd moved there,
the families had kept up the connection with the old country.
I think it's that simple, to be honest with you.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
Because you know, we used to go to Kearney quite
a bit.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
My girlfriend's taker kids there and I don't call too
many Scottish accents around the around.

Speaker 4 (41:30):
Yeah, it's when you look through the archives of Celtics,
the official Celtic archives in the library, there is barely
an addition goes by without an article about the Kearney
Celtic Supporters Club.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
And you can see that the people.

Speaker 4 (41:44):
Who are involved, they all have Iridish and Scottish surnames.
So you know, I mean, I think that's I think
it was probably they started going there because there was
friends relations that.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
You had either been born there or who had moved there.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
The spell of Kearney. Has he been brought to justice
any any justice with this one?

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Well, yes and no.

Speaker 4 (42:06):
I mean Kearney was originally tried in nineteen ninety eight
with Torbot. When Torbert was first convicted. He was found
not guilty in that trial. In nineteen ninety eight when
interest in this issue emerged again, it really started again.
There was a big BBC investigation into Jim Torbott again

(42:32):
in the I think around twenty sixteen there was a
big investigation done by the BBC in Glasgow about the
historic sexual abuse of kids in Scottish football and as
part of that new survivors of Jim Torbot came forward,
survivors who he had abused but never been charged with

(42:54):
abusing or tried for.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
So the BBC worked on that.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
I actually know the journalist that turned that documentary and
they're very very good journalists.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Really like brave guys.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
And they discovered that Torbot was hiding out in Los
Angeles and they tracked them down to Los Angeles and
by that time the Scottish police had had enough evidence
to charge from Jim Torbot for new child sex offenses,
which they did the moment the police in Los Angeles

(43:27):
found out that he was back on a plane back
to Glasgow where he was immediately arrested and put back
on trial again for you know, and that's the trial
that happened in twenty eighteen. Now, as part of those investigations,
other victims started to come forward, many of whom had
been abused by Frank Kearney, and so Kearney was charged, tried,

(43:50):
found guilty, didn't get a very long prison sentence because
the sentencing in Scotland, I think their American listeners would
be appalled to hear how light the center cizarre in
this country for child sexual offenses. He went to prison,
he subsequently came out of prison. He was then recharged
with new offenses and new victims would come forward by

(44:12):
that point, so this would.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Be about two years ago.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
He then said his lawyers said that he was suffering
from a form of dementia and was unfit to stand trial.
So then there was a process by where the Justice
department in Scotland, which is called the Crown Office, had
to determine whether he was in fact suffering from some

(44:38):
form of dementia, and they decided that he was and
that he was not fit to stand trial for what
would have been his third trial. And I'm sure he
would have been convicted again. Now in that case, the judge,
although it was ruled that Kearney was not fits to
stand trial, the judge made an unusual ruling, which was
that he couldn't find him guilty because he didn't appe

(45:00):
in court. But you made a legal ruling to say
that Kearney did abuse these children. So Kiarney is currently
sitting in his puce somewhere with dementia, or so he says. Now,
you don't try and second gest doctors and psychiatrists. But
a lot of people feel that Kiarney gained the system.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
You know, I think you'd be surprised yourself. Here in
the States, the average sentence for this kind of crime
is eight years, and they serve three and a half
years of an eight year sentence. That's that's what happens
here in the United States. And let me tell you
something else. If you're if you're related to the victim,
it's even less.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
I know, people think, you know, oh death penalty, you
should have the death They're not even getting twenty years.
You know it's not And then everyone thinks, say, oh
this justice in the jails and they're getting all in prison.
There kangaroo courts in prison. That doesn't really happen either man.
It's not like people think one thing about this glass

(46:00):
us go the Celtic Boys Club that we don't have
the case against the Celtic Boys Club.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Did You can find on the podcast, it's on Patreon.
You go on.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Twitter, c acbcpod case against Celtic Boys Club. But one
thing you unique about this case because when you talk
about Cancora School for boys, everyone's outraged.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
But with the.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Football clubs, the soccer clubs, the fans of these clubs
are either saying it never happened or that they're all fighting.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Back and forth about this right, they're trying to make excuses.

Speaker 4 (46:32):
Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's called what aboutery, isn't it.
If you say, well you had you had these child abusers,
you had these, then they'll say, well, well thought about
the ones you had, well thought about these?

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Now.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
Look, Celtic are not unique in Scotland or in Britain
for having having their youth development set up infiltrated by
pedofiles because pedofiles are drawn into where they can gain
access to children. You know, other clubs in Scotland have
had people who wear pedophiles and who abuse children at

(47:09):
those football clubs. That is true, that is the case.
What is different about Celtic is the scale of it.
It was on a scale unlike any other football club
in Britain or Europe as far as I know, and
the length of time it went on. This went on
for thirty five years, involving multiple men with who were

(47:33):
all maybe not passing the children around, but they certainly
knew what each other was up to and there was
an understanding between them that they all knew what was
happening and Celtic. I mean, they were drawn to Celtic
Boys Club like moths to a flame. And that simply
did not happen at other football clubs. Other football clubs
had their issues, other football clubs would do you know,

(47:55):
would find out about it and then quietly slip these
these defiles out the back door, allow them to go
to other clubs and not say anything. But what makes
Celtic unique is the scale of it, the length of
time that went on, and the fact that it was
reported and it could have been stopped but was allowed
to continue. And these are the questions that people who

(48:18):
were in charge of the club at that time have
still not provided answers to. They say, well, we don't
remember nothing, we don't remember anything, no things that are
completely unsatisfactory about this. And of course the current situation
is that people that currently run Glasgow Celtic Football Club,
which I've actually been told is one of the top

(48:40):
five or six supported soccer teams in the world, although
they come from this small country, is they say their
composition is, oh, well, it was awful, but it was nothing.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
To do with us.

Speaker 4 (48:51):
And that is one of the that's a contention currently
of the civil case and that is one of the
things that we look at in the podcast and we
try to do it through first time testimony of the
people who were affected.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Well, Peter Henerson, we only got about a couple of
minutes left.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
What would you like to leave us with?

Speaker 4 (49:13):
What I would like to leave your listeners with is
that that although this happened in a small country, you know,
in Scotland is a small country. It's a population of
five million people, that this went on for a very
long time. You know the sporting club Glasgow Celtic Football

(49:33):
Club are a very very famous football club, and that,
I suppose one thing that always kind of puzzles and
upsets me is that people, particularly in sporting clubs, and
this is not just Celtic, this is other sporting clubs,
that people can rationalize or excuse a monstrous crime against
children because they happen to support that particular club or

(49:56):
they dislike another club. In particular, this this is a
monstrous crime against children in a sporting setup. You know,
you've had the scandals at Penn State, You've had the
scandal and American gymnastics are disgraceful going on in American gymnastics.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
This is at least of that scale.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
But don't dismiss it, and don't think that it's not
as awful because it happened in this small country Scotland,
that people don't normally associate with this sort of thing,
and that it's ongoing because the people that could or
should have stopped it still really won't engage with the
process or accept any responsibility. And so I would want

(50:39):
people to listen to the podcast and to think about
the kind of long term effect that this sort of
abuse has on children where you have men in their
sixties and seventies, you know, with multiple suitic side attempts
because of what was done to them and they were
thirteen years old. And really to take that away with
you about how abuse of children is one of the

(50:59):
most more screens and it's not historic abuse because the
guys I talked to and the guys you listen to
in the podcast lived with us every day of their lives.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
I was just talking to a potential client and her
son attempted suicide at nine years old.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
So this is a serious business. Guys.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
We've been talking to Peter Henderson from Scotland. His podcast
is called Case Against Celtic Boys Club. Now you can
find them on Patreon but also to all the podcast
platforms and on Twitter at Case against Celtic Boys Club
but also c ACBC pod and also a great book

(51:37):
on this is being put through Hoops The Celtic Boys
Club by Gordon Woods. We've had them on the show
several times. You can go back and listen to the
archives of Gordon Woods. We've had on the show talking
about in detail about this topic for years and years
and years. I think even a little bit before twenty sixteen,
so mister Peter Henderson, thank you so much. Good Night,
good I Peter