Southampton to publish review of historic abuse at club on Friday

Southampton will publish the independent review of the abuse perpetrated by their former coach Bob Higgins later this week.

The club commissioned children’s charity Barnardo’s to conduct the review in September 2019 and on Tuesday they announced it had been completed and would be published in full on Friday.

Abuse survivors will have advance sight of the review and the club said on Tuesday morning they would receive a copy of it within 24 hours.

Higgins was jailed for 24 years in 2019 for abusing trainees in his care, predominantly at Southampton and Peterborough, between 1971 and 1996.

Following his conviction, the club offered an unreserved apology to all the victims and survivors of Higgins’ abuse.

The Sheldon review of historic abuse within football, which was published earlier this year, criticised Southampton for failing to act on warnings about Higgins’ behaviour.

Sheldon also found they were slow to report an allegation of abuse to the police or to carry out further inquiries at the time to establish if other boys may have been victims.