A prolific sexual predator organised lavish official events with guests including a future cardinal and a bishop to celebrate the careers of Celtic FC players, The Times can disclose. Jim Torbett, founder of Celtic Boys Club, was found guilty of abusing boys between 1986 and 1994 and jailed for...
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A prolific sexual predator organised lavish official events with guests including a future cardinal and a bishop to celebrate the careers of Celtic FC players, The Times can disclose.
Jim Torbett, founder of Celtic Boys Club, was found guilty of abusing boys between 1986 and 1994 and jailed for six years in 2018. He was given a two-year sentence a decade earlier for molesting players at the feeder club between 1967 and 1974.
It has now emerged that Torbett, 72, organised testimonial events for Tommy Burns, the former Celtic player, coach and manager, and Sean Fallon, a long-serving assistant manager and player, further undermining claims that Torbett had no connection with the Parkhead club.
Guests who accepted his invitation to honour Fallon — Jock Stein’s right-hand man and confidant — included an archbishop, a bishop, the Lisbon Lions European Cup-winners, and Celtic FC’s directors, players and management team. Being given responsibility for such prestigious events suggests he was highly regarded by senior figures within Parkhead at the time.
While expressing sympathy for his victims Celtic have sought to distance themselves from Torbett’s crimes, insisting that the boys’ club was an “entirely separate organisation”.
However, The Times has also revealed that Torbett was hired by Celtic to run their club shops, in addition to his coaching duties, in the early 1990s.
A report on Fallon’s testimonial dinner, held in November 1993, in the club’s official magazine, thanks “Jim Torbett and his associates for organising such a wonderful occasion”. The Celtic View confirmed the guests of honour included “the Celtic directors, Archbishop Thomas Winning of Glasgow and Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell”.
In 2018 the Scottish child abuse inquiry heard evidence that Winning, who in 1994 became the second Scottish cardinal since the reformation, offered money to a woman in exchange for her silence over sexual abuse that took place in a Catholic-run residential home for children in the Sixties.
After being elevated to cardinal he caused outrage by asserting that the church had no obligation to report alleged paedophile priests to the police.
In 2013 Devine, who died last year, told a man seeking an apology for being raped by a priest as a child: “Can you not let him off with it? He’s an old man.”
A programme for the Burns testimonial match with Liverpool, which took place at Parkhead in 1987, confirms that Torbett was vice-chairman of the organising committee.
Burns played for the boys’ club from 1970-73 and frequently attended club functions and prizegivings when he went on to play for the senior club and served as manager. He died of skin cancer, aged 51, in 2008.
Torbett was kicked out of the boys’ club by
Stein, then the Celtic manager, in 1974 after hearing claims of abuse — but the police were not informed. Stein, who died while Scotland manager in 1985, had given Torbett permission to start the boys’ club.
In March 1984 The Glasgow Evening Times reported that Stein would be making a “personal appearance” at a branch of Torbett’s Trophy Centre on Kilmarnock Road in Glasgow.
After his sacking Torbett was allowed to return four years later and went on to molest more boys, remaining there until 1996 when claims of abuse appeared in the press.
Passing sentence in 2018 Lord Beckett said: “You used the club as a front and a recruiting ground for boys who you could sexually abuse.”
In February Celtic said it was “very sorry” the abuse had happened but insisted the boys’ club was a separate organisation.
After Torbett’s 2018 conviction the club issued a statement which said that allegations of abuse at the boys’ club “first emerged in the 1990s”. It subsequently emerged that Celtic launched an internal investigation in 1986 which “cleared” Torbett and his colleagues and stated their intention was for the claims to be “buried once and for all”.
Celtic did not respond to a request for comment.
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