Richie Sadlier: 'I thought I'd better find out where my abuser was'

11-May-2020 13:27:18 | The Guardian

The former Millwall forward on the day he discovered what had happened to his abuser and his work now as a psychotherapist

Richie Sadlier pauses as he remembers the moment when, as a 40-year-old man, he told his father he had been sexually abused as a boy. “I told my dad this week last year,” he says. “I wanted to tell him in person. I didn’t want to text him. I didn’t want to say it over the phone. I didn’t want to say it in the company of other people.”

As he reveals in his compelling autobiography, Recovering, which won the 2019 Irish Sports Book of the Year, Sadlier was abused repeatedly at the age of 14 by a middle-aged physiotherapist. He still played professional football for Millwall and once for Ireland before a hip injury ended his career at the age of 24. Sadlier is now a psychotherapist, and the most interesting football pundit in Ireland today.