A kicking he doesn't deserve

TOM ENGLISH

ANEANDERTHAL at Tynecastle - not hard to find these days - shouted "Beast" and "Michael Jackson" at Graham Rix as the new Hearts manager made his way into the stadium on Tuesday. The moral outrage was quite something, it seems. From the Cossack-kicking to mocking songs of young love being blared from the stereo of a Jag, it was repulsive but riveting at the same time.

The puritans of Tynecastle are preaching at the moment and judging by their extreme reaction to Rix's arrival, they are a godly people on Gorgie, virtuous and pure. Apart from the bigotry, that is. The media also spent the week in the pulpit. To borrow a phrase, we are the people who detonated the hate, who branded Rix "a sex perv", who wrote of the "fury over sex rap boss", who gave free rein to the cranks and their baloney about a paedophile being in charge of the club, who asked Rix in a press conference if he could give assurances to the parents of young Hearts supporters that he won't molest them at games.

The witch-hunt has been grotesque, much of it conducted against a backdrop of ignorance and the most mindless hypocrisy. We won't name names, but one daily newspaper that can't point to a red top as a defence against charges of sensationalism was astonishing in its treatment of the story. Instead of seeking to get to the bottom of the Byzantine series of events that led to Rix's conviction, they tapped into the worst excesses of the mob at Tynecastle and immediately put a noose around his neck.

Who among us has had the stomach to study the sleazy Rix case in detail? And, for that matter, who among the Hearts support that railed against him so completely last week would continue to abuse their manager if he turns out to be a winner? Would they still be disgusted if Rangers and Celtic and Hibs are seen off in turn? Would the righteous men of Tuesday afternoon view a Hearts championship as tainted glory because of the "Beast" in their midst? Of course not. They're serious about Rix's past but they're not that serious.

As unpalatable as it may be, let's revisit the case. Some elements of it at any rate. Rix had unlawful intercourse with a 15-year-old girl on or before February 27, 1998, but it was not until the August that the authorities were informed.

Not that there was any need for another layer of sleaze but the fact that the girl's father went to the News of the World to tell of his daughter's anguish doesn't exactly portray the victim's family in a sympathetic light. The father then got Rix around to his house and secretly tape-recorded his admission of guilt.

Whatever the newspaper paid for the story - a figure of £70,000 was reported at the time - it got good value. The transcript is excruciating, the low point coming when the father goes upstairs in his house and insists his daughter, against the wishes of his wife, comes down to face Rix.

Father: I want you to tell my daughter what I asked you to tell her, and it better be good. Come on.

Victim's mother: I don't think we need to do this.

Rix: I'm sorry.

Victim: I want him to say sorry.

Father: Well, say it, Graham.

Rix: I am really, really sorry. I apologise. It was a stupid thing to do. I am sorry. It was a stupid thing to do.

Father: No it was a horrible thing for you to do.

Rix: A horrible thing.

Before labelling Rix a sexual predator (which he's not) it's instructive to note that the father, in the transcript, accepted that the sex was consensual as well as accepting Rix's plea that he was unaware that the girl was still two weeks short of the age of consent. The girl told him she was older. You could say that he should have known better. You could say even if she was 16 that a man of 41 (at the time) and with a wife and children shouldn't have been anywhere near her. And, of course, you'd be right. Rix broke the law and betrayed his family. He behaved appallingly and deserved to be punished. But nobody can legitimately argue that he didn't pay his dues in full.

"Beast" shouted one of the lynch mob on Tuesday and that is a word that would have a dark resonance with Rix. For 184 days in 1999, he shared cell K49 at the Vulnerable Prisoners' Unit at Wandsworth prison with an evil monster called Graham Smith, otherwise known as The Beast on the Buses. Smith was serving 14 years for almost 60 counts of rape, attempted rape and indecent assaults on seven boys and young men.

I don't want to come across as an apologist for Rix but, I ask you, was it right that he be considered in the same category as an animal like Smith? Was this not abuse, too? Rix made a cataclysmic error and held his hands up to it the moment he realised it. To share a cell with a paedophile, a man who dressed in a London Transport uniform in order to lure his victims to his flat with promises of work, must have been beyond harrowing. There are no words to describe what that must have done to Rix, though he tried to find some for the diary he kept throughout his sentence.

Rix did his time and remains on the sex offenders' register. I would argue that he shouldn't be, that the people who police these things would be better off tracking those who are a real danger to our children instead of wasting their resources on Rix. But that's beside the point. What's relevant is that Rix held positions at Portsmouth and Oxford after coming out of prison and the reaction to his appointment was largely positive on both occasions. Few people threw his past at him. They didn't exactly applaud him from the rafters but they accepted that he'd been made to pay for what he'd done. His was not a life sentence.

Only a horribly intolerant and prejudiced society would have damned. But that is what he walked into last week and it was shameful to witness it. I know little about Rix as a coach but I wish him well, both in his pursuit of the title and in his attempt to open up all those narrow minds that will confront him at every turn in his new job.

Surviving the ordeal that awaits him will not be easy but it will be a picnic compared to what has gone before in his life.

Taken from the Scotsman