Seeking Accountability and Future Implications

From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story I'm Manvin Ranna Let me take you back too nineteen ninety nine. A young Tony Blair is in number ten Brit art are vying to rule the cultural life of cool Britanynia. and in a media overrun with lads mags and powerful tabloids, an up and coming glamour model, who we're calling Florence is getting ready for what she hopes will be one of the most important moments of her career A meeting with a media mogul Oh my Godd, I'm gonna to see David Sullivan Only because he's a big, powerful man be the same v I was meeting the king, justust that, o my God Before he became Chairman of West Ham, a position he resigned from on Saturday, David Sullivan was one of the most powerful players in the world of porn and Gamour magazines, owning half of the adult magazine market and the tabloids, the Daily Sport and the Sunday Sort Florence, whose words are being read by a producer to protect her identity New at an appointment with David Sullivan be her big break She was just twenty years old when she arrived at Sullivan's mansion in Essex for the meeting We dve round pulled up outside the house. I remember there being steps up to the house, a massive, great big door I've ever seen a house like it Nervously clutching her portfolio, Florence took in the ostentatious furniture, the elaborate chandelier and the large sweeping staircase Florence says she was led to Sullivan's private office for the meeting He didn't get up when I walked in. I did notice he was wearing the scruffiest tracksuit And I was really surprised because I'd made such an effort I'd worn on my little heels and my business seat. And it was such a beautiful house Florence sat down and handed Sullivan her portfolio I was so pleased with my portfolio I'elt so grown up and so proud of my portfolio And I remember him just going ust flipping through it. I remember thinking why isn't he looking at them And then The meeting took a very dark turn And we should warn you, this episode does include some graphic language I just remember him saying, I'll give you a little bit of work because you've taken the trouble But if you let me fuck you then you'll be one of my regular girls You'll be in all the magazines, I can give you covers, I can give you centerfolds, and you'll be one of my sport girls. During this supposed work meeting Florence says that she felt forced to have sex with David Sullivan when she didn't want to Florence is one of seven women who accuseed David Sullivan, the billionaire owner of West Ham foootball cllub of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour in claims dating back to the nineteen eighties In his statement on Saturday, Sullivan announced his immediate resignation as joint chair and director of West Ham saying the false allegations had been sensationalized and none related to his time in football he added After a lifetime spent building businesses in the adult industry, in which I have met thousands of women It is sadly inevitable that a small number of improper conduct claims are being made against me. I categorically deny these claims. He said he will not be making further public comment at this stage and reserves all legal rights in relation to any false or defammatory allegations He remains the club's majority shareholder After two years of dogged investigation by our joint team at the Times and BBC Panorama These allegations can finally be revealed The story today former West Ham boss David Sullivan, accused of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour. So there have been rumourors about David Sullivan's behaviour for a number of years. I ultimately we don't report on rumours. So it wasn't until twenty twenty four, when the investigations team was approached by a source with some quite serious claims about his conduct We decided to start investigating properly Charlotte Wace is investigations correspondent for the Times and one of the team of journalists who've been working on this story. One of the first stops in this story was quite unusually Oxford University, followed by the British Library. So both of these institutions hold piles of old sport copies and so we went through them, just trying to find names of former sport models who we could speak to. I mean, sometimes we would try and contact people based on specific tips and information, but mostly it was just a case of Tracking down form models of the bllue really, just to hear about their experiences working on the papers But it's actually quite tricky because a lot of these women didn't actually use their real names and some of the details, their ages, where they're from, they might be quite limited. So we had well over a thousand names, I think, of people to try and track down. So obviously we only managed to speak to some of them. And then when you do obviously get to this point of speaking to people, you're aware that you don't know what to expect. You have to be extremely sensitive when you're approaching people It's obviously a really, really difficult thing to speak about. The whole investigation for various reasons has been really hard. Shanty Das is a senior investigations reporter for the Times, who's also been working on this story Getting in touch with people out of the blue, you know, sometimes we would try to reach them vbe Facebook or you know, if we managed to find a phone number for them, we would give them a call Hi, I'm so sorry to bring you out of the blue. My name is Shanty Das. I'm a reporter on the investigations team at the timimes. U I appreciate this is a little bit out of the blue The reason I'm getting in touch with you, other times we'd be driving quite a long way, you know in the hope that we'd got the correct address for them and giving them a letter How hard has it been calling women about really difficult parts of their lives It's really really difficult before you make that call or before you kn. and you just don't know what are going to say in some cases people would be genuinely really happy to have been contacted that this is something that they wanted to speak about or that they'd kind of been almost weren't surprised that someone had contacted them about David Sullivan In other cases, Obviously, you know, it's a really sensitive Ia' something people often haven't spoken about te family or friends let alone to a journalist. Just tell us broadly about this investigation It's clearly taken some time to pull together So in a nutshell, David Sullivan has been accused of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour in claims from seven women dating back to the nineteen eighties We've spoken to these seven women as part of a wider investigation, which has involved speaking to dozens of people working in the modeling industry. over several decades and people who have given us accounts of their experiences with David Sullivan People who don't know much about David Sullivan, know he's become a big figure in the world of football. He became the co owner and chairman of West Ham, although he's resigned as chairman on Saturday ahead of the publication of this investigation. But He had a whole career before that too. so just take us back to the beginning. What do we know about David Sullivan? So he was born to a working class couple in Cardiff and he went on to study economics at Queen Mary College, University of London in the late nineteen sixties And it was after graduating that he and a friend rented a studio and had some photographs taken of tooppless models These were then sold through classified ads in magazines so they increased their product base, and it was by the age of twenty five that he made his first million, basically selling soft porn by the late nineteen seventies, He was also producing blue films and owned half of the adult magazine market, according to reports at the time. So he had a really big adult entertainment empire So he's set up in the porn industry. He's making a lot of money at a very young age. He's now publishing half of the adult magazine market At what point does he become a more mainstream? media, mover and shaker. Yeah. so throughout his kind of beginnings in the adult entertainment industry, he was getting a lot of is he was tracting a lot of stick for his business. In nineteen eighty two, he was jailed and spent seventy one days in prison after being convicted of living off the earnings of prostitution from massage parlourors. And a headline at the time said King Porn has been caged at last, but he's always maintained his innocence came out of prison. that's when he kind of started to go a little bit more mainstream So he launched the Sunday Sport in nineteen eighty six with a business partner The daily sport came a few years later in nineteen ninety one. and the newspapers were I mean, they had news stories in them, but very, very sex oriented content. So there were lots of stories about crime and specifically rape cases, lots of things about teenagers and the ta is also notorious for quite silly stories so alongside these shocking crime pieces that were made up articles about planes landing on the Moon And there was one that was really well known about aliens supposedly turning a boy into a fish finger A fish finger. yeah. But I think the thing that the papers became most known for was being crammed with photos of topless women So there were things like the sort of countdowns to sixteen. So that was where you would have a fifteen year old who would be photographed, but they would run sort of a countdown until she was sixteen and she could be photographed toppless. Oh my God. So the law today, it's now eighteen, but back then the nineties know it was legal for girls to appear topless at the age of sixteen. I mean, it sounds very inappropriate now. at the time though, it was surprisingly popular. You remember this is a very different media landscape back in the eighties and early nineties. Give us a sense of how popular the papers were and how influential he became. What was his reputation like at this time So the papers became a really quick success. We don't know the exact circulation figures, but the sport was claiming that by the late nineteen eighties it was selling five hundred thousand copies a week. The papers also became well known as a way to get into the glamour modelling industry. So they'd run competitions where aspiring models around the country Aateurs would send in photos and enter kind of competitions that promise to propel them to being a page three star. same The combination of those two things, the good circulation figures and the fact they were regularly running these contests, the fact the sport offered this opportunity to get into that world of page three and topless modeling. essentially gave the owner of the papers a lot of influence over models starting out in their careers and really sort of cemented David Sullivan's position as one of the few gatekeepers of the adult industry in the UK. And was he getting a reputation for abusing that position Yeah. so we know that four decades ago, David Sullivan was Well known for his promiscuity, he often spoke about having a lot of sexual partners. In one interview, he said that he'd slept with a thousand, almost a thousand women in one year Other articles sort of described his relationship with models for his publications And he's all talked about, what's the point in owning a sweet shop if you can't have a few sweites as well as those articles about his reputation for liking sex. There were also articles that alleged inappropriate behaviour quite early on So in nineteen eighty one, there was an article in The News of the World, which was an undercover piece, and it reported allegations of exploitative behavior by Sullivan for the first time So the article was by a journalist called Tina Dalglich, and it said that The investigation had been launched after the newspaper received a complaint from a woman who said she'd applied to Sullivan for work And she told the paper that she'd failed to get a job after refusing to go to bed with him. The News of the World Reporter wrote that she'd responded to a job ad in one of Sullivan's magazines, which was offering up to one hundred and fifty pounds a night for what it called promotional entertainment work She went for an interview thinking she was going to be meeting a sales director called Don Bell When she arrived at the address, it was actually Sullivan's then home in Chigwell, Essex. Douglast wrote that Sullivan told her that when women would come for interviews, he would ask them if they'd be interested in doing anything sexually and then he'd judge their performance. And she wrote that within fifteen minutes he'd reportedly asked her, so are you coming upstairs with me for ten minutes to see what you can do Dougleash wrote that Sullivan asked her to undressed to her underwear so that he could see what her figure was like which she did. She says she then left and the article ran under the headline, Come to bed of you're seeking a job So claims like that were quite well known, yet even as early as the nineteen eighties We began by hearing about A woman we're calling Florence So just to put this in context, when she's looking for a job effectively She met with David Sullivan. the heyday of these tabloids, you know, when it really could make or break your career in that industry For her What would a meeting like that mean As an up and coming Page three model, she thought that David Sullivan potentially held the keys to her future career Ver, very scared because I was meeting an all powerful person although it was quite widely known among some in the industry that he had this reputation around that time, you know, these chs of inappropriate behaviour Florence says that she was oblivious to that when she was introduced to him So she was fairly new to the industry and she'd not heard any of those rumors. She's sort of a young outsider. I mean, tell us a bit about her. How did she actually end up being connected to him So you Florence was twenty when she met David Sullivan. it was early nineteen ninety nine And she was a relative newcomer to the industry, so she'd done a little bit of magazine work, but not much else. She remembers that she was taken to the sport offices by an industry contact that she'd worked with and she met Tony Livy. So he was the editor of the sport at the time, and he's now a BBC radio presenter She says nothing came up in the conversation to suggest that Sullivan might expect sex and she wasn't aware at the time that she was about to experience what she now calls the worst day of her life. If sex had been brought up, she wouldn't have gone. She told us that she met Tony Liven, she had this conversation with him and that he then got David Sullivan on the phone and passed her the phone so that she could speak to him She says, while Sullivan was on the phone, asked her to get out her diary and arranged an appointment for Let's go and see Did it strike her? as odd that she was supposed to be meeting him at his home Not in an office Over the course of the investigation we spoke to people who described how Sullivan would hold meetings at his mansion Birch Hall in Essex, often in this home office that he had And it wasn't just models that were invited to meet him there. He also hosted business meetings with people in the publishing and football worlds, as well as in modelling They not unusual Yeah. so it's not unusual. I mean, at the time, she says she was really quite new to the industry and she just understood that this was something she she had to go and do and to meet the owner. and she was told that that's where the meeting would be When approached by the Times and BBC Panorama about Florence's claims, Livsey said he had huge sympathy for her, but that he had no recollection of putting her on the phone to Sullivan and played no part in it He said it wasn't part of his role to introduce women to Sullivan and that he had practically zero contact with anyone appearing in the paper So she arrives at his home She hands him her portfolio. and as we heard at the start of this episode, he doesn't seem very interested. I remember thinking, why isn't he looking at them Why isn't he looking at my portfolio He's not taking this seriously What happened next She says that after looking through the pictures, he leent over and told her to go into a bathroom to freshen up He told me to go and freshen up And I'm so so naive. I still get a bit embarrassed when I think back I went in And I was like, all right freshen up. Ill have a wee, wash my hands add a little sample of perfume like cheet my lipstick. I walked out And I just remember him looking at me. And he went No Aent strips down to your underwear she later said to us that she silly in that moment, she was naive and new to the industry and she just felt silly for not thinking of that in the first place. So she then says she went back into the bathroom and she got undressed to her underwear at Sullivan's request scurried back in, took my clothes off, down to my underwear and then When she walked back out, she said that Sullivan asked her to walk for him and to spin for him. before telling her to remove her bra When he asked me to take my bar off, I took my bar off. She described that she sort of thought this was normal. She was auditioning to a page three model and she sort of just went along with it because she thought that what she should do But she says that things then took a bit of a turn. I just remember him saying, well, you know, thank you for coming to see me today. I'll give you a little bit of work because you've taken the trouble. If you let me fuck you Th you'll be one of my regular girls You'll be in all the magazines. I can give you covers, I can give you centerfold It'll be one of my sport goals And I was not expecting that. that was a curve ball I mean, it's Horrifying to think That was the response she met with How did she react She said that she panicked and her first reaction was to try and make excuses. So she said to Sullivan that her boyfriend, who'd gone with her to the meeting, was waiting outside too which he replied, That's okay. We won't be disturbed And it'll only take a minute And he never has to know She also told Sullivan that she was on her period, but she says that he kind of ignored that too. And this is the bit that will haunt me forever He lifted his pinky in the air, his little finger And he went, it's all right I'll only put it in a little bit She told us that she was giving these reasons for why she didn't want to have sex with him, but that it didn't seem to matter and that Sullivan persisted anyway I don't know how the next bit happened. I don't know how he manoeuvered me Florence remembers that Sullivan then pressed his body against hers. and the way she remembers it is that he then manoeuvered her into a room and onto a bed Sullivan disputes her recollection of the layout of the house and says it makes her claims implausible She says that As she was lying on the bed, Sullivan then removed his tracksuit bottoms and pulled her underwear to the side and began having sex with her And she says as this was happening, she zoned out and she says that she dissociated. She told us that she felt forced into having sex with David Sullivan and that she didn't want it to happen. Would he have known that she didn't want to have sex with him? She's not sure how loudly she said it But she says that after reflecting on this, She's almost one hundred percent sure she told him she didn't want to She can't be sure that he heard her I've been fighting this for many, many years and so I don't know if that voice of Tao is just that In my heart I'm ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent sure that I said I didn't say no. I said I said I don't want to. I don't I don't know how loud I said that. I don't know whether it was a whisper. T you It wasn't a scream She said that she tried to make clear that she didn't want to have sex with him in other ways, obviously saying her boyfriend was waiting in the house and telling Sullivan that she was on her period And her boyfriend was waiting in the house the whole time Did she tell him what had happened So Florence told us that their relationship was abusive and she feared that if he found out he would turn violent She said that hadadd he got an inkling of what had happened, he would beat her up And so that combined with the fact that she was alone in this room with David Sullivan And she says that there was this massive power imbalance I mean, she's asked herself why she didn't physically fight him off and says she found herself dissociating mentally. while he was on top of her. And for years that's something that she sort of struggled with But she says that looking back now She views things differently Cing out We hear directly from one of David Sullivan's accusers At this point my fair did kick it. And my immediate thought was If he tries anything, I'm going to screen this now done She took her allegations to the police in just a moment We've just been hearing the horrifying story of Florence or the woman we're calling Florence She was one of the people you spoke to Ch onn it Tell us about another woman you've spoken to on the record. Tell us about Sasha So Sasha is a former model who had a more unusual entry into the industry. She actually worked in finance before, along with a friend deciding to try and seek a career in show business. And so she initially had some topless photographs taken particular photographer looked at both of us and he said to me, you should be a page rem mododel. and a photographer made an introduction with the sport. So it was a Sunday afternoon. She was twenty four. she was working a lunch shift at her mum's pub when the landline rang a very vivid memory of my mum saying There's a phone call for you. David Sullivan's on the phone. She says she didn't know how he knew to call her there and she was shocked that someone so powerful wanted to speak to her. I go to the phone hello and she says, I've seen some pictures of you And we would like to send you to my photographer And we're going to get some pictures done and we'll go from there Would you like to do that From there, she was signed to a leading British modelling agency and then invited to go and meet Sullivan in person So she took an afternoon off from her job, still working in finance at that point. And it was august nineteen ninety eight. She was expecting, she says to be going to an office, but actually when she arrived there, it was Sullivan's very palatial home in Essex instead I remember walking up and getting to the gate and I couldn't see the house from the gate. and so it's only when I've turned into the gate and gone around the corner and gone God What is this house It is quite a shock when you walk around a corner and you're not expecting. a proper mansion I can't So she rings the door, answered by a member of staff goes in and she was surprised when she first met Sullivan. She said her first thoughts were that he was Very small. My second reaction was He looks Girly I'd come in weap in stripes suit from the city You know, I was all dressed up and thinking, you know, it's important casting and all of this kind of thing. and he was in T shirt, some shorts and flip flops She's there for a big meeting. Yeah. she was as she says herself, she waspecting expecting a meeting. So she went in and he was looking through her portfolio and she says she can remember. She can she remember him starting to say veryery nice. and so the way he was acting started to feel quite uncomfortable Then he looked up at me and said, rightight, I need to see you Which I wasn't expecting at all I's riot And he said follow me So I've followed him out the lounge and he's gone to go up the stairs. My immediate thought is where are we going now And at this point my fear did kick in. And my immediate thought was If he tries anything, I'm going to scream this Now done That was my thought. But on the other hand, I was like, G' got to be a topless moder, I can' No want to show what I'm going to show to the world, you know So she says that once upstairs, Sullivan sat down and directed her to get underested in and ensuite She went into the bathroom. she undressed her underwear. And so I stood there kind of doing what I thought was the pagery pise and Sullivan, she says, then told her to remove her brush. G. takes my bra off And so I'm still standing as far away from them as I can be And it's at this point you weren't Right, comea sit next to me I knew then that this wasn't right. I immmediately said I was like, man, this guy is ultimate sles, ultimate sles. So she did go and sit next to him, but she said it was as far away as possible. And that is when he started to proposition her, she says He started to talk Tim me unsaid. Do you know and said a certain model's name? I was like, yeah He said, Well, she's one of my special friends Would you like to be one of my special friends and She says that she turned around to him and went, If you think I'm going to sleep with you to get in the paper, you've got another thing coming. I don't need to do you that And then he just leant over even more and went What not even a blow job I know I was like Definitely not And at this point I'm up because at this point it's like, mate I'm not having this. I didn't come with this. She remembers Sullivan telling her to calm down. And so she ran into the bathroom, pulled on her dress, went back into the bedroom. So she grabbed her handbag, her portfolio But then she says she's tried to leave And when she tried to open the door, she realized it had been locked. That was when I was really scared. I'm sor can open the door, open the door now. and he's like, Wh why Ke your knickers on, Key knickers on Then he did unlock the door. And I legged it. I literally legged it straight out the doors, straight out the driveway and out to the end of the road. She says she remembers actually Sullivan shouting at her as she left, You're going about at the hardway. you'll be going about at the hardway. I was like Oh my God, I cannot believe that just happened. I was in complete shock Did she tell anyone what had happened to her She did. So she told someone close to her at the time. She says that Sullivan had propositioned her And we've spoken to that person who confirmed that And it was actually over twenty years later that Sasha actually shared her story publicly and you know was effectively the first person to publicly share an account like this. Properly blow the whistle. Yeah. ye. So it was twenty twenty three that Sasha decided to publish an online post about her experiences as a glamour model and she described what had happened to her at a newspaper boss's house without referring to him by name And she said there was quite a quick response. So even though Sullivan wasn't named in her blog post, people reached out to her asking if it was him, having recognized elements of her account U And this included someone she says, who also claim they had a negative experience with him. And it was that response that prompted Sasha to make a report with the police later in twenty twenty three. Shad As Sasha did actually share Sullivan's name and write about him naming him, but that wasn't until the following year in twenty twenty four But in twenty twenty three, she made a report. She went to the police. How did that go? I mean, what was the response like She did have a full interview but was ultimately told a few months later that the police would be taking no further action in relation to her case. And actually it was that that prompted her to decide she would post online about Sullivan using his name Other women gone to the police. I mean Do you have any sense of how many claims they've officially heard of Many of the women we spoke to never went to the police. Florence told us that she didn't go to the police and when we asked her The reason for that was. she said it was because she believed that she wouldn't be taken seriously She said essentially that schoolgirls who complain about predatory behaviour are sometimes criticized for wearing skirts that are too short. And so if they were going to get that kind of reaction. What kind of response would a glamour model? who'd sort of willingly taken off their clothes in someone's home get from the police So for years, she said she didn't tell anyone about it We understand that at least eight women, including FSA have disclosed allegations about Sullivan to two police forces over the years Sullivan hasn't ever been charged in relation to their complaints So there was one occasion in july two thousand eight. when Essex pololice questioned him after he was accused of nonconsensual sexual touching by a twenty five year old woman No further action was taken in that case and he denied any wrongdoing And So more recently there was a review into the handling of another complaint against Sullivan. And in that case, a police chief sort of looked at how the investigation was dealt with and he upheld the decision not to take any further action but he criticized the failure to search Sullivan's property for items to support the investigation. and he said that that was a missed opportunity I mean, that's just so startling that women have been making allegations plananning decades including the ones to the police So where does it leave things now? So we can't make a judgment on those specific cases and why they weren't progressed. We know that recently Essex Pice conducted a review into sexual abuse allegations involving Sullivan. And it found that in all the cases, there was insufficient evidence to prove that the sexual activity was nonc consensial in a statement Essex Police told us that they'd opened an investigation in twenty twenty three after being passed an allegation by the M police is said that as part of that investigation They'd reviewed allegations of non recent sexual offenses made in two thousand eight and twenty twenty one The Force told us that it had sought early investigative advice from the Crown Prosecution Service and that after receiving that, it had taken a decision to take no further action The Met said it took allegations like this extremely seriously, no matter the length of the time that had passed Both of the forces urged any victims of sexual offences to get in touch. When you went to David Sullivan with these allegations What did he say So Sullivan denies all of the allegations against him couple of days before our investigation was due to go out. he announced his immediate resignation as Joint chair and director of West Ham that these allegations are out there After all these decades, what happens next Yeah we don't know what the response will be or what happens next This doesn't just relate to David Sullivan now, there are also now questions for the wider glamour modeling industry, for instance And more specifically, there are questions about what other people in the industry might have known So many of the women we spoke to described how they first met Sullivan, and that was often through agents, photographers, editors or others who were kind of quite senior in the modelleling world And in several cases, these women say that they weren't warned or they weren't aware of Sullivan's reputation amongst some for this predatory behaviour. So you know, in the course of our investigation, we spoke to sources who said that it was common knowledge., it was an open secret. But obviously that didn't always feed down to the women who were going to meet him and who are now speaking out with these allegations And there are questions for the foootball association and for West Ham about what they were aware of The FA, the foootball Association said it cannot comment on specific matters and quote We take all safeguarding allegations and concerns very seriously, and we investigate each case within our jurisdiction thoroughly Appropriate action is always taken against individuals who pose or may pose a risk of harm. And then when we reached out to West Ham, they said the club has, quote, clear and robust safeguarding measures in place, measures that are independently assessed and audited on an annual basis The club is unable to comment or provide details on any individual safeguarding matter as per standard practice in the industry. Shanti? We've both been speaking to these women for so long It's taken years to get to this stage. What do they now want to happen The thing that's come up repeatedly through these conversations with the women is that they just want some accountability and they want these allegations to be publicly known That's what Sasha said when we spoke to her. I'm sharing my story with anybody that wants to hear it for the learning of everybody to understand that Ghost should be allowed to model their figure if they want to but it shouldn't be about pushing them into sex. You know, Florence said to us in her interview that she felt that David Sullivan was untouchable So it's not only the accounts of the seven women in this investigation that we're sharing you know, the disclosures to police over the years that we know about We know that the foootball association is also aware of complaints involving David Sullivan And we understand that West Harm has been aware of some allegations involving him for some time. And there have been these kind of various things that have happened over the years And yet Sullivan remains in this position of power. one of the richest men in the UK, and although he's stepped down from his position as chairman of West Ham, he's still the club's majority shareholder. M importantly, He hasn't faced any kind of public scrutiny over what these women say happened and what our investigation suggests is pattern of predatory behavior dating back more than four decades It was Sasha Wall and many thanks to her for sharing her story with us You also heard from the Times investigations reporter, Shanty Das And investigations correspondent Charlotte Wace And the producer, Kate Lamball, voiced up the interview from the woman we're calling Florence The prodroducer for today's episode was Mikaela Armerson. The executive producer was Tarn Siegel and sound design and theme composition were by Mal Lasetto. If you want to get in touch with us, do drop us a line to the story at thetimes. com Thanks for listening We'll be back tomorrow