05/12/2016 Scotland 2016

With more allegations of child sex abuse in football,

the SFA's boss speaks out for the first time.

The Scottish Football Association has apologised for failing to deal

with an allegation of sexual abuse against a former youth coach

And Strathclyde University students decline official status

But should the majority be allowed to stifle

He coached hundreds of youth team footballers and was an SFA

But 12 years after his death Hugh Stevenson has been accused

of a series of child sex offences in Scotland.

Pete Haynes has waived his anonymity to tell the BBC that he was sexually

abused for years by Hugh Stevenson from the late 70s.

His claim comes as police forces across the UK say that

hundreds of alleged victims from within football

And separately in a statement tonight, a spokesman

May 19 79. It was football fanatic Pete Haynes first game. But this

would rob him of his childhood. But aged 50, he has waived his anonymity

and spoke publicly about the abuse he says he suffered at the hands of

a football coach and top-flight referee, his name is Hugh Stevenson,

pictured at Wembley two years earlier. He came up to the House, he

was wearing his SFA blazer, very official. Very reassuring, I would

imagine for my mum and dad. At them politely if he could take me to the

match. I still have that programme. Because that day was the day my life

changed. I was confused. I was 12, coming up for 13. It was the start

of three, possibly for years of intense abuse. At the hands of Hugh

Stevenson. He done things to me that I find difficult to talk about in

great detail. But it was every depraved sexual act you can think

of, up to and including rape. I was raped dozens of times. What kind of

effect did this have on you, you were just a child? I was ashamed. I

felt dirty. My schooling went down rapidly and I got into trouble with

the police and I ran away from home. I would cut myself. You didn't feel

able to tell anyone what was happening to you? I tried to hide

it. Every time I saw him coming had another child in his car. What does

that lead you to fear? That he could do what ever he wanted, to whoever

he wanted. Whenever he wanted. There comes across... Stevenson was a SFA

match official between 1964 and 1983. Let's have a picture of the

linesman to write. This should be interesting. He also held coaching

roles in the late 70s and 80s with the East Craigs boys club who often

played on these pitches in Paisley. One of the many places Pete says he

was preyed upon. Hugh Stevenson had contact with hundreds, if not

thousands of boys over three decades. Pete Haynes says he doubts

that he was his only victim. It would be ten, long years before Pete

felt able to tell someone what had happened. I contacted the police in

Paisley. I am sure that in a short space of time, Hugh Stevenson was

arrested and charged. What happened to the charges against him? I have

no idea. He was never taken to court? No. And you never had from

the police? No. Police Scotland say Hugh Stevenson was subjected two

police reports in the 1970s. They did tell me that Hugh Stevenson was

known to them. But, he was no longer a SFA affiliate. They said they were

very sorry what had happened to me and gave me some sort of apology,

gave me a tour of the building. Your compensation was a tour of the

building? Yes, that was the last I heard about it. His mother learned

of her some's story around the same time as his visit to SFA. I always

knew there was something, something terrible in that kid's eyes. It was

horrible, truly horrible. Even now, sorry... It is still painful. I just

cuddled him. That was really all we could do. Hugh Stevenson died in

2004 and will never answer these allegations. Pete now hopes to put

this behind him and achieve closure, but first he has a message for

others who suffered like he says he did. I encourage them to come

forward and give information. They can do that anomalously or, like

myself, speak out about it. Anything like that would help this stop. At

the end of the day, we got older now, we have children. They need to

be protected as well. And separately in a statement

tonight, a spokesman for the Scottish Youth

Football Association said... "After we were informed

of allegations relating to a period prior to the SYFA's formation

in 1999, we have placed a member of staff on precautionary suspension

while further investigations The BBC understands

that the suspension was in relation to the handling of the Haynes'

family's allegations in the 90s. Well earlier today Mark Daly spoke

to the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association,

Stewart Regan. I am sickened, as a father, as a

director of the Scottish FA. It sickens me to the stomach to think

that somebody has been abused and has tried to report it and has

received no positive feedback, no help, no assistance in actually

taking the matter forward. Clearly, at this stage we need to understand

the information and we are grateful to the BBC and grateful to Pete

Haynes for having the guts and the bravery to come forward and speak

about something that must be pretty uncomfortable for him. That is the

issue, he did come forward in the 90s, he told the police. He says it

went nowhere. He told the SFA coming he says that went nowhere. He never

heard from the SFA game. Do you have something to say something to Peter

Haynes? Absolutely, we apologise deeply to Peter Haynes that this

matter wasn't taken seriously. It was an issue that clearly him and

his parents felt so strongly about that they tried to do everything

they possibly could and the Scottish FA at the time didn't appear to

listen and nothing came of it. That is an acceptable. It is something

that certainly today we would not tolerate. We would operate with a

zero tolerance towards any form of child abuse, we have put in place,

procedures, policies and directives going forward. But they won't be of

any comfort to historic victims and I do hope that those out there that

are listening to these allegations this evening will actually pick the

phone up and let us know if there is any information they feel we should

be aware of and I will be absolutely clear, we will take action if we

have any evidence whatsoever of child abuse or of any wrongdoing. We

will take action and deal with it in the strongest possible way. Have you

already had big numbers of complaints? No, we haven't. We have

set up a partnership and information sharing protocol with NSPCC. We are

ready to receive any information that listeners, viewers want to

share and we will take its savour sleek. I can assure people of that.

Can parents have confidence in their children playing football in

Scotland, are safe? I believe we are doing everything we possibly can to

give parents the comfort and the confidence that the club environment

they go to, whether that be at a senior club level or a community

club level, is making sure those responsible for the coaching of

children, those responsible for the well-being of children are looked

after and are safe in that environment. What is the SFA going

to do for people like Pete Haynes? What are you going to do about those

who have suffered abuse like Pete Haynes has? First of all, this

matter has only been brought to my attention in the last 24 hours. It

is important that we are allowed a little bit of time to reflect on the

information brought forward. And put in place our own plan to investigate

and review the facts that are on the table. Once we have established the

facts we can put a plan in place in terms of dealing with those facts.

Is there going to be an enquiry into this? Certainly, we will be looking

to fully investigate the fact you have brought to our attention. I

give you my word we will take this seriously. The Scottish FA is

responsible for leading the game in Scotland and we need to make sure we

take on board everything that you have said and put a plan in place to

deal with it. As far as people like Pete Haynes is concerned, I would

urge all those viewers watching with any information, any knowledge, no

matter how small or trivial they might think it is, to pick the phone

up and speak to our hotline. Give us the information, let us deal with it

with NSPCC and the police and we will take those matter seriously and

make sure that any historical victims of child abuse are dealt

with swiftly. Will you personally speak to Pete Haynes and apologise

for your organisation's failings in the past? Yes I will. Thank you very

much. Thank you. Every month seems to bring new

sensor censorship at our universities. It is called no plaque

forming where people said to have extreme views are not allowed to

speak at public events. Now that issue has flared up

at Strathclyde University. Students here are used to debating

controversial issues but concern has been raised the official students

Association is denying the right to free speech to some of those voices.

In this case we're talking about one of the most controversial issues of

all, abortion. Jamie McCowan is part of a group which speaks out against

abortion. It was refused a request by the university student

Association to become officially affiliated because of its point of

view. Jamie says it is an attack on freedom of expression. Any

unreasonable idea introduced into society, we can challenge it. That

is what is happening here. It is not just the case for this university,

it is a pro-life case in general. Very common theme unfortunately of

censorship. The union itself has also contradicted its own

constitution because it allows giving University status of any

race, or any belief. This is a philosophical belief. That has been

denied. But it is seems like these,

anti-abortion protests in the US, that have concerned the University.

It says that giving a platform to groups such as these would

contravene university policy. The student President Jacob Zuma says

students also have the right to change their position in the

referendum. Any group of students who want to start a society will

generally just be a group saying let's start a society, so that would

not stop me from going and meeting with groups of students. In the same

way that it would be far like a student for myself to change a

policy in the union. I would grab some of my mates to trigger a

referendum or put in a policy through our different democratic

procedures. It is a democratic institution, and it has to be sued.

-- and it has to be so. The platform of no-platforming has arisen in

recent times. The debate will continue.

Well, to look at the wider issues of free speech,

I'm joined from Dundee by sociologist Dr

Well, do you think there is a serious threat to freedom of speech

on university campuses? Yes, I do, yeah. I think it has been a problem

for quite a long time in terms of the no-platforming issue, but I

think if you meet just about any student Association member now, they

are very often the most chronically offended, then skinned type

individuals, who have a kind of aggressive form of victimhood and

they generally speaking are extremely keen on having more

regulations and more controls. Essentially, they seem to look at

the student body as being profoundly vulnerable and think about the

university as a place that should be safe, as it has been discussed in

America. It has been like your home, where you are protected. So rather

than universities being seen as places where you are challenged and

you have your ideas and your comfort zone shaken up, and you have

lecturers who will express very different and at times very

controversial opinions, you are starting to get the move from

American particularly universities coming into Britain and this

argument for safe spaces, for trigger warnings, and for the need

to protect students from words, ideas, organisations like you just

heard there. So I think it is a genuine problem. But student

associations are democratic bodies. Isn't it inevitable that they will

reflect the views of the growing body of students? No, they are

actually not really. People do not pay to be a member of a student

Association. They are just formed. Hardly anybody is involved in

student Association politics and usually these things get passed by

sort of 50 or 200 people out of universities that are made up of

18,000, is now I do not think they are very representative at all. It

is not a representation of what students think at all. In the case

of Strathclyde, the student's Association is not saying that you

can't campaign on these issues. It is just saying that it is banning

pro-life students from setting up an official group, so it is not a ban

on free speech as such. How was it not? If you stop an association from

forming, surely you're limiting the capacity of that group to have the

same benefits as every other group, every other group I imagine gets a

bit of funding from the University and so on. You are trying to stop

that group from forming like every other group. You are discriminating

against a group because you do not like their ideas. That is basically

what is happening. So should a student Association give funding to

a far right group that advocates racist policies or a religious group

that some would see as being homophobic, perhaps? They should.

And this is the problem because you asked that question because you feel

I should be on the defensive about that because unfortunately left wing

people and people who call themselves liberals for 20 or 30

years have argued for no-platforming against far right organisations.

Actually, if free speech means anything it should mean free speech

for every organisation, so that you can challenge them. You can't hide

from difficult ideas. You can't try to oppress them and use

authoritarian type measures to quash bad ideas. Bad ideas will exist and

the way you get rid of bad ideas, if you think they are bad, is that you

challenge them. You challenge those ideas and you get students to

challenge them and are due and actually I think this is a real

problem. We have lost the art and the expectation even to have hard

arguments. How do you think that has come about? How will we got to the

stage in society? Well, we got to this stage partly because people who

should have known better, which is people who are liberal and radical

people who have historically defended free speech because they

recognise they need to fight for rights and against inequality have

become increasingly nervous over the last 20 or 30 or even 40 years, to a

certain extent. And lost trust in both their argument and the public.

It is a bit like... You do not want to get onto Brexit, but the Brexit

thing is fascinating where the Brexit vote comes in and suddenly

everyone who votes Brexit is called a racist. People who vote for Trump

are all called a racist. It seems to be as soon as people do something

that people don't like, they get called names. And there is quite a

censorious climate that challenges anyone that raises an issue, whether

it is about immigration or something else. They clamp down and call them

a bigot and a racist. It is a very restrictive culture that we live in

at the minute. OK. Thank you very much for that.

Here now to talk about that and some of the day's other stories

are the former Labour MP Tom Harris and discrimination

Well, Tom, you better kick off with this. Do you agree with what we were

discussing their, that people who were pro-Brexit have been labelled

racist? I agreed with almost every thing he said. It is true that, as

far as Brexit is concerned, I wonder if the opponents of Brexit have

considered for even a minute that may be 52% of people voted for

Brexit because they actually want Britain to leave the EU, not because

they don't like foreigners and not because they feel disenfranchised or

disillusioned, but actually because they took to the question on the

ballot paper and they agreed with the proposition to leave the EU. And

it is very frustrating. There are certain things you cannot express

without the ultimate accusation being made in the 21st-century

Britain or Scotland on the ultimate accusation, the ultimate insult is

you are racist. And it is used so frequently now that it is starting

to become devalued. And the same with the word fascist. People will

call Donald Trump fascists. Do think in some ways it devalues the English

line which? I think it does and particularly around Donald Trump and

around some of the more further right parties that are being elected

in Europe. The bulk of fascist amnesties and I think the people who

lived through the war, they would probably see that it is not nearly

as bad as it was and it is actually undermining how bad it was before

and it almost is like we are three generations now and everyone has how

bad it actually was, but if history teaches us anything it is we should

learn from what has gone before rather than making comparisons when

comparisons don't actually exist. All you surprised about the

situation in universities, which is to be bastions of free speech? It is

incredibly depressing. I can find no upside in any of this. This culture

of safe spaces. A spokesman for the students at Strathclyde University

said that allowing this pro-life group to become an official part of

the student association would be to Coppermine is the rights of Persons

with uteruses. Now, in my day, we called them women. At the University

couldn't even bring itself to describe woman as women in this case

and it said it would compromise the safe space policy. If you are a

young person and you are considering whether to go to university, if you

need a safe space, stay in your bedroom, closed the curtains, and

don't switch on the television. If you want to be challenged and you

want to have rigorous debate, by all means go to university. What

Strathclyde University has said about safe spaces, isn't that is

protecting students from potential intimidation? I think there is part

of that and I think the reason they denied the pro-life group officially

shown to the student union was because of their policy that they

support equal and bars right to choose and it is a democratic body

that has passed policy that isn't support of women's right to choose,

and I think they were right to make that decision and if the pro-life

wants to affiliate themselves or get their views heard within the student

body then they should stand for election and win votes. We heard

more and -- claims of sexual abuse in football. For years after Jimmy

Savile and still more allegations are coming out. What can be done

now? I fear that even more will come out in this area. And something that

really does concern me and I say this as a parent is there are so

many people out there, good people, who are volunteering and training

kids in football and other activities, you are doing it for the

right reasons and now because of these revelations and other historic

revelations and accusations, parents have another reason to feel

suspicious about the good motives of good people doing a good job and I

think that is a tragedy. It is great bravery for people to come forward.

I think it is something about the macho culture of football that baby

has prevented people from speaking. I think there is part of that and

also because people generally haven't been believed. We have seen

an array of scandals around sexual abuse over the last couple of years

and it has come out that people just have not been believed and I think

the numbers, the amount of Biba that are coming forward now, there is

some sort of solidarity for the men that and the other they may not be

targeted to the extent that they once were. I think that is a huge

issue in terms of the coming forward issue but also in terms of

professional sport you people are very passionate about their own

careers and the people love huge power over young people and that

needs to be taken into account. The Supreme Court today ended the first

day of its hearing on whether ministers and parliament have the

final say on the timetable for Britain leaving the EU. This annoys

a lot of pro-Brexit supporters. Does this annoys you? Not in the

slightest. I am glad it will finally be decided in the Supreme Court

because I think that is the court that needs to decide when it comes

to the constitution, but all of these constituency believes that

unelected judges, and we only have unelected judges in this country,

thank goodness, are conspiring sit -- against the democratic will of

the people. That is nonsense. Particularly English the legendary

Lady Hale, she seems to have been called a feminist NATFHE by the

Daily Mail for the last couple of weeks and there is a concern at the

end of the day that a judicial oath have to mean something and when

people are appointed to judicial office their job is to

professionally look at things on a legal point of view setting aside

feelings and policy and it is a cornerstone of civilised society and

I think that attacking judges and looking into the background and

where they have got holiday homes and all the rest of the kind of

thing that has been happening is something that should not be

encouraged at all. I'd is one, Tom, if the Government loses its appeal,

as people widely expect it to, then it is the possibility that the court

might suggest legislation or at least a vote in Parliament. That

could scupper or at least change the shape of Brexit. Is that a worry? I

voted me because I believe in British Parliament recently. I want

or Parliament to have a say in how we leave the EU. So I have no

problem at all with our MPs having a crucial role in this. I think MPs

themselves would be ill-advised to try to delay this process or trick

it up or even block it and I don't think that will happen on even the

Government loses this appeal. I am not quite so sure as you are

incidentally that they will lose it, but it doesn't really change very

much if they do. And you think Government should have a say as well

as ministers - the Parliament? That seems to be what it is about but I

agree with Tom. I don't know what difference it will make because you

would hope that the MPs would vote the way that their constituents

voted which means that really what difference would it make? What about

the Scottish dimension to this. If there is going to be a legislative

consent motion in the Scottish Parliament, it that says it does not

agree to Brexit, or that great a constitutional crisis, as Alexander

has claimed? Interestingly, Alec said that a constitutional crisis

would be good for Scotland. I think he meant it would be good for the

SNP. Who knows what the Supreme Court will decide? I am not a

lawyer. But my understanding is that the convention is a convention. It

is nothing to do with what is written in legislation and I think

the court will recognise that. Thank you very much for that.

Now, the Supreme Court will also hear the case

Join Laura McIver for tomorrow night's programme

I went up to her at the end of the class -

she said, "Where did you copy this essay?"

Because she couldn't believe that a little chubby black girl

with her pebble lenses could write an essay like that.

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