BRIAN DEER
on JUSTIN FASHANU Page
1
The
Mail on Sunday (London) July 12 1998
Football
star. Black hero. Gay icon. Justin Fashanu carried a
lot of labels, and not just on his designer clothes.
But after the impending inquest into his suicide, the
label most likely to stick may be rapist.
BRIAN
DEER INVESTIGATES
Justin
Fashanu lit a marijuana joint and grinned an
enormous, lopsided grin at a roomful of teenage kids.
He felt pumped-up. He was in control. He could see it
in the faces around him. No crowded football terraces
roared him on, but the former soccer striker was
back. Forgotten, if only briefly, was a lifetime of
troubles, failures and forced retreats. Amid a smell
of smoke and beer in a rented Maryland apartment, the
grass hit. He felt a rush.
The
time was 9.30pm on Tuesday March 24, and across
Howard County, between Baltimore and Washington,
silence and cold closed in. By nature, the area was
all forests and fields, but freeways, shopping malls
and luxury housing developments stamped footprints
across the landscape. In the parking lot in front of
Fashanu's cream clapboard building at 8465 Oakton
Lane, Ashton Woods, ranks of Dodges, Buicks and
Toyotas creaked after hour-long commuter drives. In
the back were trees - dogwoods, oaks and maples -
where bats wheeled and small mammals dug.
In
the living room of apartment 2C, however, things were
hotting up. Mike was there, with Steve, Tiffany and
Carol. And DJ, and another boy. They were aged
between 16 and 18, all minors, and they had beer: an
illegal thrill. They sprawled on the floor and on a
rented couch. They flicked cigarettes into the
dogwoods from a plank deck at the back of the
building. They eyed a ball game on a 40-inch
television set. They praised Nirvana and rolled
three-inch joints.
Most
of the kids had been here before: word had spread
about free-beer parties. Fashanu had rented the
apartment for just two months, but had quickly put
out feelers to local youth. He was a man with a
natural, charismatic charm. He found it easy to win
people's confidence. When he bumped into kids, he
would invite them to come over. And he would tell
them to bring their friends.
He
had made himself comfortable in what must have seemed
to him like a previous place and time. He had grown
up on the edge of a village in Norfolk, England,
which though flatter and less humid than Howard
County, Maryland, otherwise had much in common. And
his teenage years had been his days of hope, when his
life seemed to promise so much. Acting out his youth
again, he must have felt complete. 2C was open house.
He
was powerfully built: 190lbs, 6 foot 2 inches, and
reasonably fit for his age. He had once been a star,
albeit only fleetingly, in Britain's national game.
Back in 1981 he was bought from Norwich City FC by
Nottingham Forest FC as the first black player in UK
soccer history to rate a transfer fee of £1m. In
1990, he got the spotlight again for another first:
for money, he declared himself in a series of tabloid
newspaper features as the first out gay player in the
sport.
But
that night of the party, those glories were behind
him. His career had collapsed in injury and
controversy. More recently, he had been scratching
around for work in Canada, New Zealand and even
America. Howard County was as low as he had got. He
needed these kids to give him a lift.
His
guests were happily in the dark on all this. They
knew nothing of his rise or fall. He was a witty kind
of guy. His English accent was mellow. And he rented
this neat place to hang. But as for his past across
the pond playing soccer, they didn't get too stoked
about that. They were into basketball, baseball,
athletics. "Soccer sucks," they agreed.
"Yeah.
Soccer sucks."
Fashanu,
who had done little but kick a ball since he was
four, tried to bridge this frustrating gulf. You
don't have to like it, he advised them, but it was
going to be big. A gold mine for players. Easy cash.
He
told the kids that he was aged 28 and had come to
their neighbourhood to help promote the game as part
of a new team, Maryland Mania. He was an owner, he
implied, and was looking for young people to help
with back-office work. Delivering pamphlets.
Designing publicity. All kinds of other cool stuff.
The pay would be awesome: two hundred bucks a day. He
told them: "We ought to talk."
Mostly
he lied. He was 37 years old and had no slice in any
commercial property. The Mania was for real. It plans
to compete next year in the second-rank American
A-League. But Fashanu was retired with an injured
knee and was only being considered as coach.
The team was owned by others, including a guy called
Ali, who had known Justin Fashanu for years. Ali's
local trading company sold Gourmet Swiss chocolates
and the Purple Parrot suncare range. He had suggested
there might be a position with the team's
management, but nothing more. No contracts were
signed.
That
March evening, Fashanu got off on the group's energy,
but there was one special kid (who Tiffany had
brought) who particularly attracted his interest. DJ
(short for D- Junior) was 17 years and three months
old, fair haired, blue eyed, with a wide smile and
pink cheeks. He was 5ft 9 and 145lbs, with a
gym-trained, weight lifter's physique. His forearm
circumference bulged to 16 inches. He bench-pressed
200lbs. His T-shirt hung loose and his trousers
sagged. He was the best-looking boy in the room.
Though
Fashanu's sexuality had hit the headlines in Britain,
he kept it to himself, at first. But then, around
9.30, DJ asked to use the phone. He wanted to call
his mother and his girlfriend. Fashanu showed him the
phone in the bedroom, closed the door, then lay on
the bed as the boy made the call and, during it, made
a grab for his groin.
The
kid was talking to his girlfriend, Laura, and hadn't
been disturbed by Fashanu's presence. But when he
felt the hand in an unexpected place, he leapt up and
abandoned the call.
"I
prefer woman," he said, without anger. "I'm
not gay."
"I'm
sorry," Fashanu replied quickly, flustered by
the rejection. "I'm sorry. It won't happen
again."
DJ
believed him. He had a generous nature, and tended to
take people as they seemed. His parents had only
moved to Howard County 14 months previously, and
before then he had lived in a town of 200 people in
southern Pennsylvania. It was Amish country,
conservative, neighbourly, where crime was low and
trust was high. And if furtiveness clouded the
middle-aged man's sexuality, the kid was better
adjusted. Despite his remoteness from big-city life,
he was young, watched MTV didn't fear homosexuality.
He thought being gay was cool.
The
kid then called his mother, Julie, and another kind
of age-gap yawned. He didn't own a car and she wanted
him home. She said he should come right now. Julie,
44, used to be a nurse, but in January of last year
had been disabled in a traffic accident. Her husband,
a 54-year-old sales executive and former policeman,
was away on a business trip. But the stoned and
slightly drunk 17-year-old felt compelled to snatch
the last word. He was having fun. He never had fun.
Why shouldn't he stay out. It wasn't late?
"DJ,"
his mother snapped, "have you been
drinking?"
"Can't
talk now."
"You
must come home."
"I'm
partying."
"When
your father hears, he'll ground you."
"So?"
Angrily,
his mother hung up the phone. DJ returned to the
living room.
The
party dissolved at 11pm, and the kids mostly went
their own ways. But DJ was still trying to assert his
autonomy, and agreed with a suggestion from his
charismatic host that they should go get more cans of
beer. They drove in Fashanu's rented black Mercedes
to the Allview Liquor Store, half a mile west, across
I-29, on the Old Annapolis Road.
The
kid liked Fashanu, was drawn by his smiles and took
his accent as suggestive of class. DJ was the
youngest in a family with four sons and felt natural
in the little brother role. He was also an athlete
and hoped to learn stuff from this guy, who he
thought was 28. DJ was an amateur wrestler, played
American football, 10-pin bowling, and his top sport,
baseball, was such a passion he dreamed of a pro
career.
He
wasn't the most academically-minded of persons,
having dropped out of high school for a job
delivering dishwashers and cookers. He was also
lonely, or at least isolated, in the loose, suburban
life that his family had adopted in Howard County,
Maryland. He knew none of his neighbours, and without
a car he found it hard to get out and make friends.
Now he had a friend in this smooth-talking
Englishman. He figured that maybe things were looking
up.
All
but one of the other kids had now left the apartment,
and when Fashanu and the 17-year-old returned to
Oakton Lane, the party was down to three. Then, soon
after midnight, DJ felt tired, as if the evening had
suddenly caught up. He felt a strange hazy feeling,
not easy to explain. It was not a feeling that he was
at all used to. He had only drunk three 22oz beers,
and the marijuana didn't pack that kind of punch.
"I'm
too drunk to go home," he told Fashanu.
"Can I crash here on the couch?"
"Certainly,"
Fashanu agreed. The perfect host. "Of course.
You crash. No problem."
DJ
fell asleep. The other kid left. Time moved on to
2am.
Soon
after, Fashanu seized his chance. He would not take
rejection a second time.
At
some dimly-lit level DJ knew what was happening. But
his struggle to stop it failed.
Fashanu's
power was briefly regained. The ex-star raped the
boy.
*****
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