- Chances missed to stop Bob Higgins abusing schoolboy players
- Club apologises over abuse there from mid-70s to late 80s
A string of missed opportunities allowed the predatory paedophile Bob Higgins to sexually abuse scores of schoolboy footballers while he worked as a coach at Southampton, a damning report by the children’s charity Barnardo’s has concluded.
Higgins, regarded as a “god-like” star-maker by youngsters who dreamed of a career in football, was able to operate “seemingly undetected” at Southampton from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s and continued to work elsewhere in the sport until 2016.