Celtic to face Class Action over Boy's Club abuse

At the very least we should be setting up an external independant anti abuse team that includes investigators counsellors etc, with anyone in the club able to contact anonimously if they wish to and raise any issues that arise within the club at all levels.

Never again must be the ethos.

 

Hopefully, the victims and survivors will be able to find some form of peace of mind and psychological support.

I want the club to offer face-to-face apologies and issue a statement explaining why they handled things the way they did. Celtic's previous statement that we take our responsibilities seriously because we had strong links to the BC sounds pathetic, given that the court rejected our separate entity defence.

As I said earlier, the current board aren't guilty of any crimes — previous board members surely had questions to answer — but their image, and therefore the club’s image, has been tarnished probably beyond repair.

The priority is the victims, though, and an out-of-court settlement is an admission that the separate entity argument was f*ckin’ awful.

 

Nine more victims have come forward, and there will likely be far more.

It’s well past the point that the board needs to be proactive and behave like human beings.

The club and the BC were linked. Celtic managers, owners and the club newspaper saw the BC as an integral part of the Celtic pyramid. We are only admitting it now because we had no choice.

It’s horrendous what happened to these boys, and yes, it was rife in Scottish football, but it was off the scale at Celtic and the BC.

Sick fed up of their nonsense statements and * taking now.

I would also welcome a full, independent enquiry about who did or didn't do what, going right back to Michael Kelly and any other people still alive from back then.

The board don't seem to give a toss about the damage done to the victims or the embarrassment and conflict the Celtic support feels.

 

Another shameful embarrassment which has been handled in a completely dispassionate and cack-handed way by the board.

 

They need to get right to f**k, mate

 

Totally agree.

 

I’ve felt like this for years mate regarding some of our fans denying everything. These people deserve justice. They suffered sexual abuse at our club. They should be compensated and more. We’re all adults here, the club should own responsibility and thankfully they did. Makes us look like scum if we didn’t do that.


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Hear, hear.

 

Totally agree. Victims of absolute animals and well entitled to their compensation.

 

It's an absolute * disgrace the way the board have handled it.

 

No doubt there's a legal way to handle this, but there's also a just way. For me the just way is to pay up.
These victims have suffered enough and shouldn't be made to jump through hoops to get compensation.
This was badly dealt with when it was happening, it was badly dealt with when it came to light, and it's still being badly dealt with.

It's time it was properly dealt with, stop dragging it out in the hope that the number of claimants might be reduced through death.

Just own it and * sort it.

 

They ARE guilty of not * sorting it. They ARE guilty of making these poor victims wait for compensation, they ARE guilty of allowing this to go on longer than it needs to.

It happened, we did it, so own up and * sort it.

 

Man City had a similar situation and they handled it the right way.

This board don't have empathy, they don't care about anyone but themselves. Fergus would have had this done by now, and maybe had some of the old board shamed while they were younger.

Lawwell is too busy playing games with Brendan, than thinking about this.

 

Its one of those situations where doing the right thing from an ethical perspective is also the correct answer from a football club/image perspective and what most fans want to see happen. Its another poorly handled situation in a long list of bad decisions.

 

No... It was handled in a completely legal way, by the clubs lawyers. And we all know there's no morality or conscience in law...

The problem is everyone is caught in a catch-22 at the moment where it can't be resolved without the club accepting some responsibility and compensating in some manner, but unable to do so because accepting ANY liability would trigger the victims lawyers to push FULL liability and seek extortionate compensation, and then draw in a multitude of new claimants on top of those already known about...

The victims want it to be finished, the fans want it to be finished, I'm sure the club wants it to be finished but the legalities are stopping it from getting there... I think we got close, under NDA circumstances, but a lot of the victims don't feel they should be silenced - and have a * good point!

 

Shame on Celtic for their long term handling of this, although to be fair the the current stewards have made and are making some progress - but now they need to anti up and make the right reparations to all victims instead of micro haggling via the courts.

As a side note, how can we allow ourselves to essentially donate to HMRC over £12M in corporation tax from huge profits whilst also denying some victims compensation?
It's essentially free money that with a bit of creative accounting could have been used for compensation.

 

Must admit I don't really know a lot of the detail involved. For instance I thought it all took place in the 60s and early 70s.

It was only a few minutes ago I found out, that although the main perpetrator left the club in 1974, he was then allowed back and there are allegations that it went on in the 80s and 90s.

However if we've agreed payouts to 24 victims surely we can now quickly settle all outstanding claims and others that come to light, and make it a decent settlement as well.

 

Not an expert on it myself, but everything I do knows about it reeks to high heavens... It's so difficult in the current day and age to grasp how openly a lot of these old things took place and were widely ignored...

For what it's worth, I think the club will actually make significant moves once the settlements are completed and they're unbound from the litigation. I certainly hope so anyway...