Adam Kneale sues Bulldogs after Graeme Hobbs’ alleged sex abuse

A man who was repeatedly molested at Whitten Oval says it “always hurt” that the Western Bulldogs never reached out, even though he is related to former club president Peter Gordon.

Adam Kneale is suing the former Footscray Football Club over years of abuse he suffered in the 1980s. Picture: David Crosling

A child abuse survivor repeatedly molested by a pedophile at Whitten Oval has told a court it “always hurt” that the Western Bulldogs never reached out, even though ex-president Peter Gordon was his family member.

Adam Kneale detailed his horror six years of abuse suffered from the age of 11 at the hands of Footscray FC star fundraising volunteer Graeme Hobbs, who regularly met him in the John Gent stand to commit assaults in exchange for match tickets and money for meat pies, in the 1980s.

Mr Kneale, 51, is suing the club for vicarious liability in a Supreme Court trial, where he said on Wednesday that “no one ever from the Western Bulldogs ever contacted me, and it always hurt that never happened”.

“It played on my mind a lot that so much happened there,” he said, noting that his father was cousins with former club president Mr Gordon.

Bulldogs chief executive Ameet Bains leaves the Victorian Supreme Court. Picture: David Crosling

“I realised that something was wrong, that no one actually apologised, no one actually acknowledged what happened.

“I couldn’t believe the club didn’t know that Graeme Hobbs had done what he did.”

Mr Gordon, a high profile lawyer who served as Footscray FC president from 1989 to 1996, is due to give evidence against Mr Kneale for the Bulldogs, with the club denying any knowledge about the abuse.

Mr Kneale said the family was once close, and that “the Gordons and the Kneales always lived a stone’s throw from one another”.

Hobbs featured in a front page local newspaper article, headlined ‘Child Molester Used Footy Club’, in 1994 after he pleaded guilty to crimes against Mr Kneale.

Despite that, Mr Kneale said he still never heard from the club.

Whitten Oval, formerly Western Oval, was “the biggest trigger of all” for Mr Kneale, who still can’t go back to the Bulldogs home ground.

“It still for me represents all that is wrong with me, the place itself, the lack of acknowledgment.”

Ex-Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon is set to give evidence. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

In 1984, Mr Kneale said his school friend asked if he wanted “easy money” and told him to meet a fat man called ‘Chops’, who wore a big blue coat with a fur collar, at the top of the stairs in the John Gent stand.

The 11-year-old found the “friendly guy” in the stand, who told the boy if he “needed some money to buy some pies and a drink … anytime I could go up the stairs to meet him”.

“I just saw that as an opportunity,” Mr Kneale said of the “big fat man” with greasy hair, who was a heavy smoker and “didn’t smell the best”.

Soon after, the club’s fundraising volunteer asked the boy during a game if he wanted to check out the Footscray FC offices.

In the conference room, Hobbs opened the door to a tall cupboard where his victim’s attention was caught by footballs sitting on the top shelf.

But the open cupboard door also blocked the view from the hall, and Hobbs touched him over his clothes.

“Honestly I just froze,” Mr Kneale told the court.

“I worked out quite quickly this is what the money was for … I was trapped in that situation … I thought that must be the worst of it but it wasn’t.”

The little boy was then taken into the club toilets where he was raped – the first occasion of a six year nightmare that involved repeated abuse by Hobbs and a wider pedophile ring.

Mr Kneale said he recalled after that first time walking home from Whitten Oval and thinking, “the money would be worth it because this won’t affect me when I’m older”.

“That was a fatalistic moment that has stayed with me forever,” he said.

The man, now 51, detailed how he then regularly met Hobbs at the top of the John Gent stand’s stairs where he was taken to be abused in the club administration offices, bathrooms and change rooms and handed cash and match day tickets for himself, his friends and his father.

He’d also meet the pedophile in the Footscray FC car park, where they’d catch a taxi to a hotel, or later to other sex offenders’ homes.

Mr Kneale said at the time he felt like it was “my fault” and that he “went along with it willingly, but I didn’t realise I’d been trapped, I’d been groomed to a point I felt obliged to maintain this friendship and there was no way out”.

Once, Mr Kneale recalled travelling with Hobbs on the Footscray FC cheer squad bus to Sydney where he “thought I’d actually be safe on this trip because I was surrounded by people”.

But Hobbs laid a jacket over his lap and abused Mr Kneale on the bus, both on the way to Sydney and the way home.

He said he later learned – upon being taken to other pedophile’s homes after meeting Hobbs in the Footscray FC car park – that the sex offenders were abusing other children.

“I was trapped, I found myself in a world of mess that I could not escape,” he said in answer to questions from his barrister Tim Hammond SC.

“There’s no way I had the maturity to understand what was going on at the time, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide, there was no turning back at this point, I knew this was my new normal and I was too immature to understand.

“I had no idea of the consequences that I would face when I got older, I just didn’t know what to do.”

The pedophile even came to Mr Kneale’s house and met his mother.

“She just thought I had some little paid job at the ground and didn’t think anything of it,” he said.

After six years of abuse, from the ages of 11 to 17, Mr Kneale reported Hobbs to police in 1993 when he was aged 21.

His first child, a little girl, had been born just two months earlier and he said that was the moment “everything changed”.

“The moment she was born I realised what I had to do,” he said.

Mr Kneale said he was aware Hobbs had been committing offences against other children “not long out of nappies, these were babies, two years old – I couldn’t’ be a role model for my daughter if I hadn’t done something about this.”

He gave a 12-hour interview to Altona Police, then drove with officers around the western and northern suburbs of Melbourne, pointing out the homes of Hobbs and his pedophile friends.

Mr Kneale is suing Western Bulldogs, formerly Footscray FC, for damages arguing the club was vicariously liable for their star volunteer who raised much needed money for the cash-strapped team.

The Bulldogs, through its barrister Jack Rush KC, has denied the club knew about the abuse and argued it was not liable for the criminal actions of their volunteer, who was jailed and later died in 2009.

Mr Kneale will be cross examined by Mr Rush on Thursday in the civil trial before Justice Melinda Richards.