• Johnson is immediately recognisable
• Reports indicate Johnson would be reunited with his four-year-old daughter
Image: /REUTERS
Adam Johnson is not a normal sex offender. He is normal in that the public are understandably repulsed by him but his release from HMP Moorland in the dead of night, is a sign of his fame and the wider interest in his case.
There may be a sex offender living on your street. You wouldn’t necessarily know that. Johnson is different. He played football for England.
He is immediately recognisable. For the foreseeable future, he always will be. So what to do with him, given he has been released three years into a six year sentence, so we presume good behaviour during his time inside?
What to do with him, given that he will not be made to wear an electronic tag, so cannot be considered a high risk to re-offend?
What to do with him given that he abused the trust of a young, female, football fan, that he knew she was 15, groomed her and engaged in sexual activity with her?
What to do with him, given he is plainly the worst type of person, ‘immature, arrogant and promiscuous’ as he was described in court, which seems rather mild in the circumstances.
There is a new play by Bruce Norris at the National Theatre. Downstate asks many of the same questions. It doesn’t necessarily have the answers.
Four electronically-tagged sex offenders live in a group home in Illinois. A victim returns to confront his abuser. What unfolds is not a simple depiction of right and wrong, but a deeper look at how society lives with those whose behaviour has moved totally outside its bounds. All of the offenders lie and dissemble around their crime.
Johnson does, too, judging by the brief video of him talking to fellow inmates at Moorland. “It’s not like you f****** raped her,” says one. Johnson intimates that, for this sentence, he wishes he had.
One presumes he will be more contrite in his first statement after release, if there is one. It will not matter. Nothing he can say can erase the disgust, no words will outweigh the tabloid shorthand of ‘footy paedo’ attached to his name.
Johnson is not actually a paedophile. He is a sex offender. Paedophiles are attracted to pre-pubescent forms. Johnson’s victim was a teenager. It does not make his crime more palatable, but it does reflect society’s attitude in seeing all offences of this type as the same, all deserving of equal opprobrium.
Reports on Friday said that Johnson would be reunited with his four-year old daughter, the unwritten coda being that this was unusual, or a risk. No redemption, no rehabilitation. So far, every club that has been asked about taking Johnson has run a mile. At 31, once fit, he could well be an asset to those in the lower divisions, but the backlash would be enormous.
Costly in terms of sponsors, some of whom would undoubtedly desert, distracting for the circus it would create. And if no club will take Johnson, no matter what he now says, or does, that is understandable and yet, in a wider context, troubling.
Football, more than ever, is aware of its safeguarding responsibilities and he groomed a 15-year-old fan. That is not a good look around the youth teams, the junior sections, the mascots.
Yet as a society that believes crime and punishment ends with a road towards reintegration into the community where does it leave Johnson?
He cannot return to any form of normality, not while he is still recognisable as the former England international and footy paedo.
He cannot work, he cannot shrink into the background, he cannot get the second chance in precious anonymity, because society regards his behaviour as forever indefensible. Yet here he is, out and among us after three years, with many decades of life ahead. So what to do?