Ex-England footballer Adam Johnson has been found guilty of one count of sexual activity with a girl aged 15.<\/p>\n
The jury at Bradford Crown Court found Johnson guilty of a charge of sexual touching, but not guilty on a charge relating to another sexual act.<\/p>\n
The former Sunderland player had previously admitted grooming the girl and one charge of sexual activity.<\/p>\n
Judge Jonathan Rose has warned Johnson he faces a potential prison sentence of five years.<\/p>\n
The judge said his preliminary view was that the case falls into the category of a five-year prison sentence with a range of four to 10 years.<\/p>\n
He said: “The defendant must understand there is a very high probability of a significant custodial sentence.”<\/p>\n
Johnson, 28, showed no emotion as the verdicts were delivered and he has been granted bail until his sentencing, which is due to take place in two to three weeks.<\/p>\n
Johnson met up with the girl on 30 January 2015 after agreeing to sign football shirts for her, the court heard.<\/p>\n
The player admitted kissing the teenager but told the jury the encounter in his Range Rover “went no further”.<\/p>\n
However the girl told the court the former winger “put his hands down her pants” and she performed an oral sex act on him.<\/p>\n
The jury, which had been deliberating since Tuesday morning following a three-week trial, cleared Johnson over the oral sex claim but convicted him by a 10-2 majority on the sexual touching charge.<\/p>\n
Johnson was sacked by Sunderland after admitting on the first day of his trial that he had kissed the girl.<\/p>\n
‘Gifted’ footballer’s fall from grace<\/p>\n
He began communicating with the girl at the very end of 2014 while his partner, Stacey Flounders, was heavily pregnant with their first child.<\/p>\n
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a Sunderland season ticket holder and was “infatuated” with Johnson.<\/p>\n
Johnson told the jury that when she sent him a friend request on Facebook he recognised her as a Sunderland fan.<\/p>\n
After he accepted the request he began a communication which involved 834 WhatsApp messages in little more than a month before the exchanges moved on to SnapChat and were not recorded.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ex-England footballer Adam Johnson has been found guilty of one count of sexual activity with a girl aged 15. The jury at Bradford Crown Court found Johnson guilty of a charge of sexual touching, but not guilty on a charge relating to another sexual act. The former Sunderland player had previously admitted grooming the girl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}