You’re a figure in the public eye and you’ve been found guilty of child sex crimes. You’re going to be sentenced to significant time in prison in the next week…what do you do with your last few days of freedom?
Spend time with your loved ones, friends and family? Contemplate your actions? Take a lot of quiet walks in open countryside? Avoid the press at all costs and try to draw as little attention to yourself as possible because you know they’re trying to get pictures of you?
Well, if you’re Adam Johnson – the ex-England footballer who’s currently facing jail after being found guilty at Bradford crown courtjust over a week ago of sexual activity with a child – you hold an all night party at your mansion with lots of mates in a reasonably public fashion.
The Daily Mail and the Sun, who are undoubtedly currently camped outside his house, are reporting today that Johnson held an ‘all night party at his mansion’. They have ‘exclusive’ pictures of revellers leaving the former footballer’s house at 5.30am holding bottles of booze.
The Mail has pictures of ‘boozy party-goers stumbling out of [Johnson’s] £2million home in Castle Eden, County Durham, at 10.30am yesterday.’ The 28-year-old former Sunderland player is on bail at the moment, the conditions of which include a 7pm and 7am curfew which means he cannot leave the house at night. So, it seems, he decided to bring the party to his and have a blowout at home to get round the somewhat antisocial hours he now has to keep.
He met the victim when she was 14 years old and has been found guilty of grooming her via text message before engaging with her physically, by which point she was 15.
Since he was found guilty Johnson’s family have publicly backed a campaign called ‘Justice for Johnson’and claim that he has been wrongly convicted. His sister posted a Facebook page called ‘Adam Johnson Appeal Fight’ after the guilty verdict was announced. More than 1,000 people ‘liked’ it before it was taken down.
The disgraced ex-footballer’s barrister, Orlando Pownall, told the court that he intended to appeal against the guilty verdict. The jury at his trial, however, returned with a majority guilty verdict of ten to two. As a result, the Judge told him to expect a substantial prison sentence when he returns to court on March 24th. He could be jailed for as much as ten years.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.