‘She was asking for it’: confronting David Sullivan

Dear readers — Dispatch subscriber and former Birmingham Mail editor, Steve Dyson, was prompted to get in touch after a recent investigation into billionaire football boss David Sullivan by The Times and BBC’s Panorama.

Explosive allegations of historical sexual assault were levelled against Sullivan by seven former models, leading to his resignation as chair of West Ham. Sullivan denies any wrongdoing. But the story jogged Steve’s memory about confronting the then-Blues boss about similar claims back in 2008. Read on to find out how it went.

But before that, your Brum in Brief.

Brum in Brief

🚄 Andy Burnham has said he will bring back the Birmingham-Manchester leg of HS2 if he becomes prime minister. The Manchester mayor is currently on the campaign trail in Makerfield where he is hoping to win the byelection and make a triumphant return to parliament, with an eye eventually on the top the job of prime minister. In an in-depth interview with the Independent, he made the case for reviving the line to connect Birmingham and Manchester, which was scrapped by the Conservatives in 2023. Burnham said it could be part-funded by residents and businesses whose land value will increase due to the infrastructure. (The Independent).

⚖️ A Tipton man who is on trial for murdering his girlfriend by crushing her with his truck has told a jury he hit her by accident. Forty-one-year-old Mohammed Azim is accused of killing 19-year-old new mother Lily Whitehouse “during an argument,” by pinning her to a lamppost with the vehicle in Oldbury last November. The trial is ongoing. (ITV).

🧙‍♂️ Staffordshire will host the first-ever UK hobbit festival this September, in a five-day long shindig at Weston Park. Around 2,000 people are expected to attend the Brandywine Festival held in the West Midlands due to Tolkien's links to the area. Hairy toes mandatory. (BBC).

A couple of weeks ago, as historical sexual assault allegations emerged against the former Birmingham City FC owner David Sullivan, a very interesting email arrived in The Dispatch’s inbox. 

In case the news passed you by: seven former models have spoken out about their encounters with Sullivan, as part of a joint investigation by The Times and BBC’s Panorama. All were in their late teens or twenties when they allege they were assaulted by the billionaire football boss. They claim he offered career opportunities in exchange for sex. One woman said she felt forced to sleep with him even though she didn’t want to. 

Seventy-seven-year-old Sullivan made millions in sex shops in the 1970s when he was known as the ‘king of pornography’. In 1986, he launched the Sunday Sport newspaper and regularly published photos of glamour models, including a ‘Countdown to 16’ segment featuring topless photos of girls after they turned 16-years-old. 

In 1993, he bought a stake in Birmingham City Football Club and hired a young advertising executive from the paper, then 23-year-old Karren Brady, to be its managing director for the next 16 years. In 2010, she followed him to West Ham where she was vice chair until her abrupt departure in April of this year. Until then, Brady — now a Baroness — had continuously worked for him for almost four decades.

Sullivan has never been charged as a result of these accusations. In his recent statement on resigning from West Ham, he claimed the media had “sensationalised” the claims and that he would be seeking legal advice. He said: “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.”

Baroness Brady has come under scrutiny for continuing to work with Sullivan despite knowing he was banned by the Football Association from contacting the West Ham women’s and youth teams due to safeguarding concerns three years ago. Her lawyers have said that she relied “on the principle of presumption of innocence in continuing to work at the club”. They added that she had “no knowledge” of the allegations exposed by The Times and the BBC.

The recent email we received was from Dispatch subscriber Steve Dyson, who was the editor of the Birmingham Mail between 2005 and 2009. He came into contact with Sullivan on several occasions, including the time a young actress accused the former porn king of sexually assaulting her at his Essex mansion. 

In 2008, he managed to get Sullivan on the phone for a surprisingly candid discussion about the alleged sex attack. A story about the allegations — which were later dropped — appeared on the Mail’s front page on Wednesday 2 July 2008. 

In the account below, Dyson, who now works as a media consultant, reveals details from behind the scenes of the story, as well as two other illuminating encounters he had with Sullivan over the years.

‘She was asking for it’: confronting David Sullivan

By Steve Dyson

The recent allegations about sexually exploitative behaviour by former football club and pornography magnate David Sullivan have prompted my own memories of a separate but similar story in 2008.

Sullivan, it should be said, has denied any of the alleged wrongdoings claimed by multiple women in the joint investigation by BBC’s Panorama and The Times. Indeed, he has described all the allegations that dated from the 1980s and 1990s as “false”.

My experience of Sullivan’s rebuttals from 18 years ago came when I was editor of the Birmingham Mail, a ‘live’ newspaper at the time, which meant that each day’s first print edition went to press at 9am. Around 8am on Wednesday 2 July 2008, we received a tip-off that Sullivan had been arrested. Apparently a ‘young actress’ had alleged that she had been the victim of a sexual assault by Sullivan at his Epping home on the Monday night. At the time, Sullivan was co-owner of Birmingham City FC, so this was a huge potential story for us if true.

Essex Police confirmed that “a 59-year-old man from the Epping area” had been arrested following “an allegation of sexual assault”. But they didn’t name Sullivan, so the quote was not quite enough to run the story. Ideally, we needed to put the claims to the man himself.

However, the numbers we had for Sullivan and the club’s press office were ringing out. I decided to call Karren Brady, then managing director at the club. Brady was a columnist at the Mail in the days before her national column in The Sun, hence we had her contact details. She was also someone I’d dealt with closely on various stories over several years. Brady was not happy to hear about the potential story we had, but she realised it couldn’t be ignored and put me in touch with Sullivan.

Sullivan’s initial response was surprisingly candid. Yes, he had been arrested, but not only was he innocent, the fuss was all particularly annoying. My clear memory of his initial, off-the-cuff response was “she [the alleged victim] was asking for it”, or “she was up for it”, or words to that effect.

What exactly did he mean? I felt the words “she was asking for it” were too uncouth to use. I have no note of my exact exchange, but I remember Sullivan essentially saying “put it into the words you want”, insisting the arrest would “all come to nothing”.