The panel heard Mr Roper’s inappropriate behaviour was alleged to have started in 2017, when he sent text messages that “could have been deemed inappropriate” to a 15-year-old girl.<\/p>\n
Following an investigation, the concerns were recorded as unsubstantiated and the matter was eventually closed with the FA in January 2018.<\/p>\n
After reapplying for a criminal record check and completing a new safeguarding children workshop and learning and reflection form, he started as a trainee teacher.<\/p>\n
Then, in 2022, four children raised concerns about Mr Roper to senior players and a manager at a football club before they were again reported to the FA.<\/p>\n
The panel heard he touched a child’s bottom, called her “babe”, and sent suggestive texts and emojis to her about her wearing a bikini and “short shorts” in front of him.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t complaining\u2026or looking, just a peek,” he said, alongside emojis including a peach \u2013 a text exchange he admitted to but said was “banter” or “as a joke”.<\/p>\n
But the child, whom he also contacted through social media, stated that this made her “feel uncomfortable, self-conscious and that she wanted to give up football”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The panel heard Mr Roper’s inappropriate behaviour was alleged to have started in 2017, when he sent text…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-179796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}