Young and promising football player

At City, John­son received a good con­tract, but two years lat­er he moved to the mod­est Sun­der­land. He did not live up to high expec­ta­tions: he was a good play­er, but not a grand super­star.

At Sun­der­land, Adam became one of the lead­ers: he delight­ed with his unusu­al drib­bling and pro­duced beau­ti­ful goals. He was a promi­nent play­er in the Pre­mier League, but in 2016 it all end­ed: the foot­baller was sent to prison for 6 years.

Prison sentence for having sex with a 15-year-old fan

John­son was con­vict­ed of hav­ing sex with a minor. In Decem­ber 2014, John­son met a fan on the Inter­net. The girl had a sea­son tick­et for Sun­der­land match­es and con­sid­ered Adam the best play­er on the team. She reg­u­lar­ly wait­ed for him after match­es to take a pho­to as a sou­venir.

Accord­ing to the foot­ball play­er, the fan lit­er­al­ly fol­lowed him. “I’m on my way to a home game and she’s already wait­ing for me in the park­ing lot. This went on for about six months,” John­son recalled.

One day, a fan got into Adam’s Range Rover. The foot­ball play­er signed a cou­ple of T‑shirts for her, after which they kissed. At the same time, the girl was intox­i­cat­ed.

Two months lat­er, the police came for John­son — he was detained on sus­pi­cion of sex­u­al activ­i­ty against a minor. Adam denied guilt, but lat­er admit­ted that there was a kiss.

John­son was released on bail and con­tin­ued to play for Sun­der­land under intense pres­sure. In Feb­ru­ary 2016, Adam scored against Liv­er­pool, and a month lat­er the court sen­tenced him to six years in prison.

Family destruction and wife’s abortion

When a crim­i­nal case was opened, Adam was dumped by his girl­friend, Stacey Floun­ders. The cou­ple raised a daugh­ter and were expect­ing a sec­ond child, but Stacey could not stand the betray­al and had an abor­tion in the tenth week of preg­nan­cy.

“I couldn’t bring anoth­er child into this world after every­thing that hap­pened,” the woman explained. “My heart was break­ing, but I felt like I had no oth­er choice.”

In court, Stacey tes­ti­fied against her hus­band: in par­tic­u­lar, she stat­ed that Adam had cheat­ed with “many women.”

When John­son went to prison, Sun­der­land and all adver­tis­ing spon­sors ter­mi­nat­ed their agree­ment with the foot­baller. Many were espe­cial­ly put off by the fact that a few days before his rela­tion­ship with a minor, Adam searched the Inter­net for infor­ma­tion about the “age of con­sent.”

Life in prison and the end of a football career

While in prison, John­son reg­u­lar­ly filed appeals, which were reject­ed by the court. They didn’t like him behind bars: once in the prison show­er, Adam got into a fight with a pris­on­er, refus­ing to clean the drain. The foot­baller arro­gant­ly added: “Get out. You know who I am?”

For this, John­son’s face was cut with a razor. He com­plained to the prison author­i­ties that they want­ed to kill him. One of the pris­on­ers told Adam about the impend­ing assas­si­na­tion attempt — using a home­made knife.

At first, John­son worked as a jan­i­tor in prison, but then he was pro­mot­ed to hair­dress­er. Adam’s work­ing day last­ed six hours with a break for lunch, and his salary was approx­i­mate­ly £20 a day.

John­son was released from prison three years lat­er, hav­ing served only half of his sen­tence. He admit­ted his guilt and repent­ed before every­one:

“I am very sor­ry. My behav­ior affect­ed those who were direct­ly or indi­rect­ly involved in this mat­ter. This should nev­er have hap­pened. “I now want to focus on the future and demon­strate through my actions that I am deter­mined to repay them for their sup­port.”

John­son dreamed of con­tin­u­ing his foot­ball career, but not a sin­gle club dared to sign the con­tro­ver­sial play­er. Adam even want­ed to send let­ters to clubs, but to no avail.

John­son real­ized he would not return to the field and decid­ed to become an agent. But so far it’s been unsuc­cess­ful — it’s hard to work in foot­ball with such a rep­u­ta­tion. Adam does not give inter­views: jour­nal­ists tried to find out where he works, but they found noth­ing. We set­tled on the opin­ion that John­son is unem­ployed.