FOI 0159-2026/27- Professional football players sexual offences

Request:

Q1. The number of reports of alleged sexual offences received by your force where the suspect was identified (at the time of report or subsequently) as a male professional football player. 

Date range: 

Please provide data for the following calendar years, broken down by year.  

• 2021 
• 2022 
• 2023 
• 2024  
• 2025 
• 2026 (to latest available date) 

Keyword searches 

If data about suspects' occupations is not recorded in a standardised way, please indicate whether the above figures can be identified through keyword searches of crime reports, where the suspect is referred to using the terms: 

- “suspect is a professional footballer” 

- “suspect is a professional football player” 

- “suspect plays football for” 

- “suspect plays football professionally” 

- "suspect is a full-time footballer"  

- "suspect is a paid footballer" 

- "suspect is a non-amateur footballer” 

Outcomes 

Please break the annual totals down by the following outcomes: 

- no further action  

- arrest 

- charge 

- ongoing investigation 

Response: 

Extent and Result of Searches to Locate Information

To locate the information relevant to your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police.

I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by North Yorkshire Police. 

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the following information to you.

Q1. A search has been carried out of sexual offence crimes between 01 January 2021 and 31 May 2026, where the offender was identified as a male professional footballer. A further search has been carried out filtering on the free text search words provided. Both searches provided no results. 

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.