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- [00:00]
Manveen Rana
Because you didn't just say, how can
- [00:01]
Shanti Das
I provide these investments?
- [00:02]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
You'd be, how do I holistically provide everything?
- [00:05]
Shanti Das
How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all this, and do it at a price point? No one else is doing it.
- [00:09]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
Learn more about how we approach wealth management@creativeplanning.com integrated.
- [00:16]
Manveen Rana
This episode of the Story is sponsored by PwC.
- [00:20]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
Technology doesn't wait, and neither should you. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up people. PwC takes you further with tech. From optimizing the systems that put your data to work to scaling AI from
- [00:33]
Charlotte Wace
proof of concept to competitive edge, PwC
- [00:36]
Manveen Rana
helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules.
- [00:42]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
Discover more at pwc.co.uk.
- [00:47]
Manveen Rana
from the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manveen Rana. Let me take you back to 1999. A young Tony Blair is in number 10. Brit pop and Brit art are vying to rule the cultural life of Cool Britannia. 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 will be one of the most important moments of her career. A meeting with a media mogul.
- [01:28]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
Oh, my God. I'm going to see David Sullivan, but only because he's a big, powerful man. Be the same if I was meeting the King. Just that. Oh, my God.
- [01:38]
Manveen Rana
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 glamour magazines, owning half of the adult magazine market and the tabloids, the Daily Sport and the Sunday Sport. Florence, whose words are being read by a producer to protect her identity, knew that an appointment with David Sullivan could be her big break. She was just 20 years old when she arrived at Sullivan's mansion in Essex for the meeting.
- [02:15]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
We drove round, pulled up outside the house. I remember there being steps up to the house, a massive, great big door. I've never seen a house like it.
- [02:24]
Manveen Rana
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.
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PwC Advertiser / Narrator
He didn't get up when I walked in. I did notice he was wearing the scruffiest tracksuit I and I was really surprised because I'd made such an effort. I'd worn all my little heels and my business suit and it was such a beautiful house.
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Manveen Rana
Florence sat down and handed Sullivan her portfolio.
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PwC Advertiser / Narrator
I was so pleased with my portfolio. I felt so grown up and so proud of my portfolio. And I remember him just going like, just flipping through it. I remember thinking, why isn't he looking at them?
- [03:11]
Manveen Rana
And then the meeting took a very dark turn. And we should warn you, this episode does include some graphic language.
- [03:21]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
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.
- [03:36]
Manveen Rana
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 accused David Sullivan, the billionaire owner of West Ham Football Club, of sexually exploitative and predatory behavior in claims dating back to the 1980s. In his statement on Saturday, Sullivan announced his immediate resignation as joint chair and director of West Ham since 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 defamatory allegations. He remains the club's majority shareholder. After two years of dogged investigation by a 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 behavior.
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Charlotte Wace
So there have been rumors about David Sullivan's behavior for a number of years. I mean, ultimately we don't report on rumors. So it wasn't until 2024, when the investigations team was approached by a source with some quite serious claims about his conduct, that we decided to start investigating properly.
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Manveen Rana
Charlotte Wace is investigations correspondent for the Times and one of the team of journalists who've been working on this story.
- [05:42]
Charlotte Wace
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 former models of The Blue, really, just to hear about their experiences.
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Shanti Das
Yeah.
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Charlotte Wace
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.
- [06:41]
Shanti Das
It's obviously a really, really difficult thing to speak about. The whole investigation, for various reasons, has been really hard.
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Manveen Rana
Shanti Das is a senior investigations reporter for the Times who's also been working on this story.
- [06:53]
Shanti Das
But getting in touch with people out of the blue, you know, sometimes we would try to reach them by 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 Shanti Das. I'm a reporter on the investigations team at the Times. 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.
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Manveen Rana
How hard has it been like calling women about really difficult parts of their lives?
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Shanti Das
It's really, really difficult before you make that call or before you knock and you just don't know what people are going to say. In some cases, people would be genuinely really kind of happy to have been contacted that this is something that they wanted to speak about or that they kind of almost weren't surprised that someone had contacted them about David Sullivan. In other cases, obviously, you know, it's a really sensitive area. It's something people often haven't spoken about to family or friends, let alone to a journalist.
- [08:11]
Manveen Rana
And just tell us broadly about this investigation. It's clearly taken some time to pull together.
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Charlotte Wace
So, in a nutshell, David Sullivan has been accused of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour in claims from seven women dating back to the 1980s.
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Shanti Das
We've spoken to these seven women as part of a wider investigation which has involved speaking to dozens of people working in the modelling industry over several decades and people who have given us accounts of their experiences with David Sullivan.
- [08:41]
Manveen Rana
And for people who don't know much about David Sullivan, you know, he's become A big figure in the world of football. He became the co owner and 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?
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Charlotte Wace
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 1960s. And it was after graduating that he and a friend rented a studio and had some photographs taken of topless models. These were then sold through class ads in magazines. So they increased their product base and it was by the age of 25 that he made his first million, basically selling soft porn. By the late 1970s 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.
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Manveen Rana
So he 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. At what point does he become a more mainstream media mover and shaker?
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Shanti Das
Yeah, so throughout his kind of beginnings in the adult entertainment industry, he was getting a lot of criticism, he was attracting a lot of stick for his business. In 1982 he was jailed and spent 71 days in prison after being convicted of living off the earnings of prostitution from massage parlors. And, and a headline at the time said, king Porn has been caged at last. But he's always maintained his innocence. When he 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 1986 with a business partner. The Daily Sport came a few years later in 1991. 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 papers were also notorious for quite silly stories. So alongside these shocking crime pieces, there 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.
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Manveen Rana
That's a fish finger.
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Shanti Das
Yeah. But I think the thing that the papers became most known for was being crammed with photos of topless women.
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Charlotte Wace
So there were things, things like the sort of countdowns to 16. So that was where you would have a 15 year old who would be photographed, but they would run sort of a countdown until she was 16 and she could be photographed topless.
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Manveen Rana
Oh my God.
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Charlotte Wace
So the law, the law today is now 18, but back then, the 90s, it was legal for. For girls to appear topless at the age of 16.
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Manveen Rana
I mean, it sounds very inappropriate now. At the time, though, it was surprisingly popular.
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Shanti Das
You know, you remember, this is a
- [11:50]
Manveen Rana
very different media landscape back in the 80s and early 90s. Give us a sense of how popular the papers were and how influential he became. What was his reputation like at this time?
- [12:01]
Shanti Das
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 1980s it was selling 500,000 copies a week. The papers also became quite well known as a way to get into the glamour modelling industry. So they'd run competitions where aspiring models around the country, amateurs would send in photos and enter kind of competitions that promised to propel them to being a page three star. So 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 in topless modelling 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.
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Manveen Rana
And was he getting a reputation for abusing that position?
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Shanti Das
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 almost a thousand women in one year. Other articles sort of described his relationship with models for his publications. And he sort of talked about what's the point in owning a sweet shop if you can't have a few sweets? As well as those articles about his reputation for liking sex, there were also articles that alleged inappropriate behaviour quite early on. So in 1981, there was an article in the News of the World, which was an undercover piece, and it reported allegations of exploitative behaviour by Sulliv for the first time. So the article was by a journalist called Tina Dalgleish, 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. So 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 £150 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. But when she arrived at the address, it was actually Sullivan's then home in Chigwell, Essex. Douglas 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 15 minutes he'd reportedly asked her, so are you coming upstairs with me for 10 minutes to see? Dalgleish wrote that Sullivan asked her to undress 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 if you're seeking a job. So claims like that were quite well known. Yeah, even as early as the 1980s.
- [15:05]
Manveen Rana
We began by hearing about a woman we're calling Florence. So just to put this in context, you know, when she's looking for a job, effectively, she met with David Sullivan at 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?
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Shanti Das
As an up and coming Page three model, she thought that David Sullivan potentially held the keys to her future career.
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PwC Advertiser / Narrator
I was very, very scared because I was meeting an all powerful person.
- [15:37]
Shanti Das
Although it was quite widely known among some in the industry that he had this reputation around that time, you know, these claims of inappropriate behavior. 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 rumours.
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Manveen Rana
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?
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Shanti Das
So Florence was 20 when she met David Sullivan. It was early 1999 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 Livesey. 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 that at the time that she was about to experience what she now calls the worst day of her life. She says if sex had been brought up, she wouldn't have gone. She told us that she met Tony Livesey and 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 to go and see him.
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Manveen Rana
Did it strike her as odd that she was supposed to be meeting him at his home, not in an office?
- [17:06]
Shanti Das
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 big 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 world as well as in modelling.
- [17:25]
Manveen Rana
So it's not unusual.
- [17:26]
Shanti Das
Yeah, so it's not unusual. I mean, at the time, she said she was really quite new to the industry and she just understood that this was something 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, Livesey 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.
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Manveen Rana
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.
- [18:08]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
I remember thinking, why isn't he looking at them? Why isn't he looking at my portfolio? He's not taking this seriously.
- [18:15]
Manveen Rana
What happened next?
- [18:17]
Shanti Das
She says that after looking through the pictures, he leant over and told her to go into a bathroom to freshen up.
- [18:23]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
He told me to go and freshen up. And I am so, so naive. I still get a bit embarrassed when I think back. I went in and I was like, all right, freshen up. I'll have a wee, wash my hands. And had a little sample of perfume, like, check my lipstick. I walked out and I just remember him looking at me and he went, no, I meant stripped down to your underwear.
- [18:45]
Shanti Das
And she later said to us that she felt 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.
- [19:00]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
Scurried back in, took my clothes off,
- [19:02]
Shanti Das
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.
- [19:12]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
When he asked me to take my bra off, I took my bra off.
- [19:15]
Shanti Das
She described that she sort of thought this was normal. She was auditioning to be a Page three model. And she sort of just went along with it because she thought that's what she should do. But she says that things then took a bit of a turn.
- [19:32]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
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, 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 centerfold. You'll be one of my sport girls. And I was not expecting that. That was a curveball.
- [19:56]
Manveen Rana
I mean, it's horrifying to think that was the response she met with. How did she react?
- [20:03]
Shanti Das
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.
- [20:13]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
To which he replied, that's okay. We won't be disturbed, and it'll only take a minute, and he never has to know.
- [20:20]
Shanti Das
She also told Sullivan that she was on her period, but she says that he kind of ignored that, too.
- [20:26]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
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.
- [20:35]
Shanti Das
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 seemed to matter, and that Sullivan persisted anyway.
- [20:43]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
I don't know how the next bit happened. I don't know how he maneuvered me.
- [20:49]
Shanti Das
Florence remembers that Sullivan then pressed his body against hers. And the way she remembers it is that he then maneuvered 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 be. 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.
- [21:24]
Manveen Rana
Would he have known that she didn't want to have sex with him?
- [21:28]
Shanti Das
So she's not sure how loudly she said it, but she says that after reflecting on this, she's almost 100% sure she told him she didn't want to. She can't be sure that he heard her.
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PwC Advertiser / Narrator
So I've been fighting this for many, many years. And so I don't know if that voice of doubt is just that in my heart I'm 99.99999% sure that I said I didn't say no. I said, I don't want to, I don't want to, but I don't know how loud I said that. I don't know whether it was a whisper, it wasn't a scream.
- [22:08]
Shanti Das
She said that she tried to make clear that she didn't want to have sex with him in other ways, obviously saying that her boyfriend was waiting in the house and telling Sullivan that she was on her period and her boyfriend
- [22:19]
Manveen Rana
was waiting in the house the whole time. Did she tell him what had happened?
- [22:25]
Shanti Das
So Florence told us that their relationship was abusive and she feared that if he found out he would turn violent. She said that had 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.
- [23:08]
Manveen Rana
Coming up, we hear directly from one of David Sullivan's accusers.
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Sasha Wall
At this point, my fear did kick in and my immediate thought was if he tries anything, I'm going to scream this else down.
- [23:23]
Manveen Rana
She took her allegations to the police. That's in just a moment.
- [23:36]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
This episode of the story is sponsored by PwC.
- [23:39]
Manveen Rana
AI is everywhere. Return on investment, not so much. So how do you move past the hype and make AI actually deliver? PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs.
- [23:57]
Charlotte Wace
PwC turns innovation into implementation so you
- [24:01]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
can accelerate from experiment to scale.
- [24:04]
Manveen Rana
Discover more@pwc.co.uk.
- [24:11]
Shanti Das
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- [24:30]
Manveen Rana
to further inform your view.
- [24:32]
Shanti Das
Listen to the Flipside on Your favorite platform. You didn't just say, how can I provide these investments?
- [24:38]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
You think, how do I holistically provide everything?
- [24:40]
Shanti Das
How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all this, and do it at a price point no one else is doing it.
- [24:45]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
Learn more about how we approach wealth management@creativeplanning.com integrated.
- [25:00]
Manveen Rana
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, Charlotte. Tell us about another woman you've spoken to on the record. Tell us about Sasha.
- [25:18]
Charlotte Wace
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.
- [25:34]
Sasha Wall
This particular photographer looked at both of us and he said to me, you should be a page remodel.
- [25:40]
Charlotte Wace
And a photographer made an introduction with the sport. So it was a Sunday afternoon. She was 24. She was working a lunch shift at her mum's pub when the landline rang.
- [25:51]
Sasha Wall
It's a very vivid memory of my mum saying, there's a phone call for you. David Sullivan's on the phone.
- [26:00]
Charlotte Wace
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.
- [26:07]
Sasha Wall
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 gonna get some pictures done and we'll go from there. Would you like to do that from there?
- [26:22]
Charlotte Wace
She was signed to a leading British modeling 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 1998. She. She says to be going to an office, but actually when she arrived there, it was Sullivan's very palatial home in Essex instead.
- [26:47]
Sasha Wall
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, oh, my God, what is this house? It is quite a shock when you walk around the corner and you're not expecting a proper mansion like that.
- [27:07]
Charlotte Wace
So she rings the door, answered by a member of staff, goes in and she. She was surprised when she first met Sullivan. She said her first thoughts were that he was very small.
- [27:17]
Sasha Wall
My second reaction was, he looks grubby. I'd come in my pinstripe 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 a grubby T shirt, some shorts and flip flops.
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Manveen Rana
She's there for a big meeting.
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Charlotte Wace
Yeah. She says herself she was expecting a meeting. So she went in and he was looking through her portfolio. And she says she can remember.
- [27:47]
Manveen Rana
She can.
- [27:47]
Charlotte Wace
She remember him starting to say, hmm, very nice. And she said the way he was acting started to feel quite uncomfortable.
- [27:54]
Sasha Wall
Then he looked up to me and said, right, I need to see you. Which I wasn't expecting at all. I was like, right. And he said, follow me. So I followed him out of 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. That was my thought. But on the other hand, I was like, I've got to be a topless model. I can't not want to show what I'm going to show to the world, you know?
- [28:38]
Charlotte Wace
So she says that once upstairs, Sullivan sat down and directed her to get undressed in an ensuite. She went into the bathroom, she undressed her underwear.
- [28:49]
Sasha Wall
And so I stood there kind of doing the. What I thought was the page repose.
- [28:54]
Charlotte Wace
And Sullivan, she says, then told her to remove her bra.
- [28:58]
Sasha Wall
Kind of like Big Gulp takes my bra off. And so I'm still standing as far away from him as I can be. And it's at this point he went, right, come and sit next to me. And I knew then that this wasn't right. Immediately said that. I was like, man, this guy is ultimate slave, ultimately.
- [29:20]
Charlotte Wace
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.
- [29:27]
Sasha Wall
She says he started to talk to me and said, do you know. And said a certain model's name? And I was like, yeah. He said, well, she's one of my special friends. Would you like to be one of my special friends?
- [29:46]
Charlotte Wace
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.
- [29:52]
Sasha Wall
I don't need to do that. And then he just leant over even more and went, what? Not even a blow job? And 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 for this.
- [30:11]
Charlotte Wace
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 said she's tried to leave. And when she tried to open the door, she realized it had been locked.
- [30:28]
Sasha Wall
That was when I was really scared. I was like, just fucking open the door. Open the door now. And he's like, all right, all right, keep your knickers on. Keep your knickers on.
- [30:37]
Charlotte Wace
Then he did unlock the door.
- [30:38]
Sasha Wall
When I legged it, I literally legged it straight out of the door, straight out the driveway, and out to the end of the road.
- [30:46]
Charlotte Wace
She says she remembers actually Sullivan shouting at her as she left. You're going about it the hard way. You'll be going about it the hard way.
- [30:52]
Sasha Wall
And I was like, oh, my God, I cannot believe that just happened. I was in complete shock.
- [31:00]
Manveen Rana
Did she tell anyone what had happened to her?
- [31:03]
Charlotte Wace
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 20 years later that Sasha actually shared her story publicly. And, you know, was effectively the first person to publicly share an account like this.
- [31:21]
Manveen Rana
Properly. Blow the whistle. Yeah.
- [31:23]
Charlotte Wace
Yeah. So it was 2023 that Sasha decided to publish an online post about her experiences as a glamour model. And she described what had happened to her at Newspaper Boss 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. And this included someone, she says, who also claimed they had a negative experience with him. And it was that response that prompted Sasha to make a report with the police later in 2023, I should add, Sasha did actually share Sullivan's name and write about him naming him, but that wasn't until the following year, in 2024. But in 2023, she made a report.
- [32:11]
Manveen Rana
She went to the police. How did that go? I mean, what was the response like?
- [32:16]
Charlotte Wace
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.
- [32:29]
Manveen Rana
And have other women gone to the police? I mean, do you have any sense of how many claims they've officially heard of?
- [32:37]
Shanti Das
So 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, like, what 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, like, criticised 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. But we understand that at least eight women, including Sasha, 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 2008 when Essex Police questioned him after he was accused of non consensual sexual touching by a 25 year old woman. No further action was taken in that case and he denied any wrongdoing. 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.
- [34:10]
Manveen Rana
I mean, that's just so startling that women have been making allegations spanning decades, including the ones to the police. So where does it leave things now?
- [34:22]
Shanti Das
So we can't make a judgment on those specific cases and why they weren't progressed. We know that recently Essex Police 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 non consensual. In a statement, Essex Police told us that they'd opened an investigation in 2023 after being passed an allegation by the Met Police. They said that as part of that investigation, they'd reviewed allegations of non recent sexual offences made in 2008 and 2021. 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.
- [35:31]
Manveen Rana
When you went to David Sullivan with these allegations, what did he say?
- [35:37]
Shanti Das
So Sullivan denies all of the allegations against him. A couple of days before our investigation was due to go out, he announced his Immediate resignation as joint chair and director of West Ham.
- [35:56]
Manveen Rana
Now that these allegations are out there after all these decades, what happens next?
- [36:02]
Charlotte Wace
Yeah, we don't know what the response will be or what happens next. And this doesn't just relate to David Sullivan now. There are also now questions for the wider glamour modelling industry, for instance, and
- [36:14]
Shanti Das
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 modelling world. And in several cases, these women say that they weren't warned or they weren't aware of Sullivan's reputation, among some, for this predatory behavior. So, you know, in the course of our investigation, we spoke to sources who said that it was common knowledge, you know, 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.
- [36:51]
Charlotte Wace
And there are questions for the Football association and for West Ham about what they were aware of. The fa, the Football 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.
- [37:38]
Manveen Rana
And, Shanti, you'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?
- [37:50]
Shanti Das
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. And that's what Sasha said when we spoke to her.
- [38:03]
Sasha Wall
I'm sharing my story with anybody that was wants to hear it for the learning of everybody, to understand that girls should be allowed to model their figure if they want to, but it shouldn't be about pushing them into sex.
- [38:22]
Shanti Das
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 and, you know, the disclosures to police over the years that we know about. We know that the Football association is also aware of complaints involving David Sullivan and we understand that West Ham 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. So he's 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. And most importantly, he hasn't faced any kind of public scrutiny over what these women say happened and what our investigation suggests is a pattern of predatory behavior dating back more than four decades.
- [39:45]
Manveen Rana
That was Sasha Wall, and many thanks to her for sharing her story with with us. You also heard from the Times Investigations reporter Shanti Das and Investigations correspondent Charlotte Wace. And the producer Kate Lamball voiced up the interview from the woman we're calling Florence. The producer for today's episode was Michaela Armisen, the executive producer was Taryn Siegel, and sound design and theme composition were by Malicetto. If you want to get in touch with us, do drop us a line to the story@thetimes.com thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
- [40:41]
PwC Advertiser / Narrator
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- [40:52]
Manveen Rana
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Charlotte Wace
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Shanti Das
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Shanti Das
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