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He has been accused of two separate rape cases on teenage girls, with one of the alleged victim 15-years old at the time of the encounter.
A leading figure in the English Premier League is at the centre of two alleged rape cases.
The unnamed figure is known, but The Athletic have opted against revealing his name in order to respect the UK’s privacy rules.
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The privacy rules grant anonymity to suspects in the early stages of a police investigation.
The player has been accused of two separate rape cases on teenage girls, with the second case on one who was 15-years old at the time of the alleged rape.
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He had recently already undergone an interview by the police over the rape allegation raised by the first woman.
While detectives continue to examine the ongoing complaint, it has emerged that he was simultaneously being investigated by a second police force for an alleged rape and possible child-sex offence from the 1990s.
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The second alleged victim contacted the relevant police force towards the end of 2021 and her complaint was referred to its specialist unit for investigating sexual offenses against under-16s. She alleged the rape took place at the man’s house.
However, detectives investigating her complaint realised it was affected by a little-known legal anomaly — under the 1956 Sexual Offences Act, the UK parliament’s legislation of the time for England and Wales — which children’s charity NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) has described as “devastating” and “heartbreaking” for the people it works against.
Police informed the second woman that she had waited too long to report the matter, because the legislation states that if the alleged offence took place between 1956 and 2004, and the alleged victim was a girl aged 13 to 15, she had to make a complaint within a year.
The time limit was abandoned when the 2003 Sexual Offences Act came into place in May 2004 but still applied if the alleged attack happened in the previous 48 years. The legislation applied only to girls aged 13 to 15, not boys.
After what the police have described as a complex investigation, a decision was taken by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for no further action to be taken in the case of Woman B. The man was not arrested and the case has been left on file.
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Victims of alleged sexual offenses are granted anonymity for life under UK law.
Those rules remain in place unless the relevant person is charged with a criminal offense, at which point he or she can be named. Otherwise, any media outlet that publishes details leading to that person’s identification can be open to a privacy action.
Under that cloak of anonymity, the man voluntarily attended a police station on June 12, accompanied by a solicitor, to answer the ongoing allegation from Woman A that he had committed a non-recent rape. He was interviewed under caution but not arrested.
The age of Woman A has not been released, and there was no mention of it whatsoever in a statement issued by London’s Metropolitan Police.
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