It was at the moment the door to the police interview room clanked shut that
Dave Jones knew something was horribly wrong. The place was dank and
windowless. It smelt like a hospital ward with paint peeling off the walls.
Fear seemed to engulf the manager of Southampton Football Club as he sat
there, alone, waiting. He was jolted from his thoughts by the door banging
against the wall. Two officers entered the room. One of them started to
speak, but what he said seemed somehow incomprehensible, yet at the same
time as dark and threatening as the room in which Jones was sitting.
“David Jones, you are under arrest.”
Jones felt his stomach lurch and his skin crawl. “Arrest? What for?” he
replied.
“Physical abuse and . . . [it seemed to Jones the second part of the sentence
was spoken in slow motion] . . . sexual abuse of minors.”
As the officer charged him with paedophilia, Jones felt his world collapse
around him. Everything was shutting down and he was floating above himself,
watching what was happening. Everything was a blur. He could hear a voice
inside his mind shouting “This is not real”. And yet it was real. He had
been accused of the vilest of crimes, and the police seemed confident that
they had their man.
The facts were simple. In 1986, while he was trying to break into football
league managment, Jones had taken the fateful decision to top-up his income
by working at the Clarence House School on Merseyside, a home for children
with educational and behavioural problems. For three years, he started work
around 7.30am, making sure that the kids got up, were washed and fed and
ready to go to school 50 yards away. He was also responsible for getting
them to the gym and playing football, just the type of activities that might
inspire the youngsters.
For Jones, unlike many of the other staff, the job was not a vocation, but a
means of earning money as he waited for his break in football league
management. That came when he was offered the youth-team job at Stockport
County in 1990. He seized his opportunity, becoming first-team manager in
1995, before hitting the big time by landing the manager’s job at Premier
League club Southampton. And then in 1999, at the end of his first full
season at The Dell, as the club’s ground was called, just as his career
seemed to be soaring, Jones received the news that would transform not only
his own life but also those of his wife and family: two of the boys he had
worked with at Clarence House had accused him of sexual abuse. Little did he
know then, though, of the court battle that lay ahead of him and of the
enduring trauma his own children would suffer because of the cruel stigma of
those allegations. Little did he know then that, whatever the result of his
trial, he would be forced to live out the rest of his life under suspicion.
It is a warm day in the Welsh capital. The sun is slanting across the sky,
lighting up the stands at the new Cardiff City stadium. The press are here
en masse to capture the official opening of the plush dressing rooms and
many of the investors who have helped to raise finance for the new stadium
are here too, standing around in their sharp suits.
Peter Ridsdale, the chairman of Cardiff City FC, makes a short speech,
thanking everyone for having made the dream of a new stadium possible. Then
a man standing at the back, wearing flipflops, shorts and a T-shirt, shouts
out that everyone will be fined for wearing black-soled shoes in the
dressing room. Everyone laughs.
Jones has always had a sense of humour, although he has had little to laugh
about in the past few weeks. As the manager of Cardiff he endured an unlucky
finish to last season, losing three of the last four matches to miss out on
a spot in the playoffs by a single goal. “It was a cruel blow,” he says as
we drive the few miles back to his home in the countryside just outside
Cardiff. “That is the kind of thing you just have to deal with as a football
manager.”
It is not the only thing he has had to deal with. Even now, nine years after
the case against him collapsed in spectacular fashion at Liverpool Crown
Court, Jones has to endure the mockery of opposition fans, knowing that his
wife and children are also hearing the sickening chants from the stands.
“Paedo! Paedo! You like to play with young boys!” The same kind of innuendo
also occasionally strays into the chatrooms and fan websites.
I ask if Jones has come to terms with what happened. “I am a strong person and
I believe in picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and getting on with
things,” he says. “If I was to have sleepless nights and constant
bitterness, it would be like conceding defeat. That’s why I will not allow
any anger or resentment to keep a hold of me. I have my head down, I am
carrying on and I am enjoying the challenges of managing Cardiff.”
But personal trauma does not dissipate so easily, however strong-willed the
victim. Jones’s wife Anne, a more emotionally open person than her husband,
fills in some of the detail. “The scars will never heal and the paranoia
will never depart,” she says. “I simply cannot trust the police any more and
I find it difficult to believe in justice or fairness. What we went through
was so horrific, so painful for all of us, that it is difficult to recover.
I will never see the world in the same way again.” The Joneses, who have
been married for 33 years and have four children: Lea, 32, Danielle, 28,
Chloe, 24, and Georgia 14. They were all ten years younger when the
allegations broke.
I ask Anne how they have coped. “It has been very difficult for them and they
are still traumatised by it,” she says. “Just try to imagine what it was
like for them, at school or work, with those allegations spread across the
newspapers and on television. During the build-up to the trial we also had
to endure the indignity of social services coming around to see whether they
should take our kids away. I can’t begin to explain how sickening that was.”
On the first day of Jones’s trial, his daughter Chloe, who was then 16, gave
him a card, in which she had inscribed the following message:
Dad, I never say this to your face, so I’m telling you on paper how much I
love you. I’m not the world’s most perfect child and I’m at an age where I
never show affection towards my parents, but you mean the world to me. I
want to take away your pain, but I can’t. The people accusing you are
nothing and you are everything. Stand up to them, Dad, and show them you are
strong. They will never break you. I don’t believe in God because I don’t
see how He can allow these things to happen to such a good man. But I do
believe in hope and faith, and most of all I believe in YOU.
Love, Chloe
Jones consistently protested his innocence and condemned the police for
bringing charges on the basis of the initial testimony of two former pupils
at Clarence House: one a transsexual arsonist, the other a convicted armed
bank robber. Jones believes that their testimony was obtained as a result of
“trawling”: a widely criticised technique in which the police go to prisons
seeking evidence from inmates with which to convict those on the outside.
“How could they take their word above mine?” Jones asks. “They were in jail
and had nothing to lose from seeking to condemn me. And they were well aware
that if the charges stuck, they might be in line for compensation from the
state. They had nothing to lose. Me? I lost £400,000 fighting to clear my
name, but that does not begin to cover the emotional cost to my family.”
It was at Liverpool Crown Court in 2000 that Jones was finally exonerated. By
this time, the police had found four former pupils prepared to testify
against him, but two dropped out as the trial began. Under cross examination,
the testimony of Jones’s main accuser foundered: the man admitted in court
that he had concocted his story and claimed he had been given police
guidance on how to plug the holes in his testimony, in contravention of
statute.
The judge dismissed the case, declaring Jones innocent of all charges. “No
doubt there will be people who are going to think there is no smoke without
fire,” His Honour Judge David Clarke, QC , said. “I can do nothing about
that except to say such an attitude would be wrong. No wrong-doing
whatsoever on your part has been established.”
Jones says: “You know, that is a phrase that I used to use a lot. ‘No smoke
without a fire’. It just seems obvious that if there is a controversy
surrounding someone, then something has to be wrong. But that is not a
phrase you would hear me saying now. I have learnt the hard way that it is
possible to be accused without there being a shred of truth.
“There is only one thing that I can never forgive. When I was first charged
the police told me that they would not release the story to the press, but
as I left the police station I could see two reporters skulking outside.
They must have been tipped off, and it took a matter of a few hours for the
story to break. I did not even have time to warn my parents, who saw the
story for the first time while watching the news on holiday in Portugal.
“It was a huge shock for them and two days after they got back to the UK my
dad fell ill and went into a coma. I am convinced that the cause was the
shock of those allegations: I think it is called septic shock. He was a
gentle man and he just could not cope with what was going on.
“A few weeks later the family took the really difficult decision to switch off
his life-support machine. My case was the last thing we had talked about
before he fell unconscious. I never had a chance to tell him that things
would be all right. That I would be cleared.
“Before we sent him on his way, I kissed him on the forehead and said, through
the voice in my head, ‘Pass in peace, Dad. I’ll make sure everything turns
out OK. I promise’.”
No Smoke, No Fire: The Autobiography of Dave Jones by Dave Jones and
Andrew Warshaw is published by Know the Score Books, £17.99. To order it for
£16.19 inc p&p call 0845 2712134 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
The wrongly accused
In 2001, the former MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine,
above, were arrested and questioned over false sexual assault claims made by
Nadine Milroy-Sloan, a trainee lecturer. In 2003 Milroy-Sloan was jailed for
three years for perverting the course of justice after she was revealed as a
fantasist who had planned to sell her story to the press. Neil Hamilton
later spoke about the “horrific” and “humiliating” experience and about a
growing trend towards fabricated accusations for money.
Craig Charles, the actor, spent nine months in prison in 1994 before
being cleared of rape. “Although I was not guilty of the crime of which I
was accused, the resulting media coverage makes me wonder if I shall ever be
innocent again,” he said. But he rebuilt his career and today has his own
radio show and a top role in Coronation Street.
Matthew Kelly, the TV presenter, was arrested as he came off-stage from
a pantomime in 2003 by detectives investigating claims of child abuse. He
was later cleared of all charges, but was subject to adverse media attention
during his month under suspicion. “If you don’t have your name, you don’t
have anything, and that was the thing that was most frightening,” Kelly
later said. A year later, he was picking up the Laurence Olivier award for
his role in Of Mice and Men.
In 2003, the dancer and choreographer Michael Flatley was sued by a
30-year-old estate agent, who alleged that he had raped her in a Las Vegas
hotel. The case was dropped after the police found no merit to her claims.
Flatley later countersued the woman for blackmail and extortion, resulting
in a payout of $11 million. Today, his Lord of the Dance tour continues to
play to sellout crowds and he is the head of an empire said to be worth £350
million. “I am awful careful now who I say I’ll have a dance with,” he says.
“I feel sad that the whole thing happened. But there are people in this
world who will do anything for money.”
