abcnews.go.com
01.02.2022 / 17:01
Bestselling novelist ends sponsorship of team over signing
football team in Scotland over its signing of a player who was ruled by a judge in 2017 to have raped a woman.Crime writer Val McDermid slammed Raith Rovers’ decision to sign David Goodwillie on Monday as a “disgusting and despicable” move that “shatters any claim to be a community or family club.”Goodwillie, a 32-year-old former Scotland international, and an ex-teammate at Dundee United, David Robertson, were ordered to pay damages of 100,000 pounds ($135,000) to a woman they raped, a judge ruled in a civil case in an Edinburgh court in 2017. No criminal charges were brought against either Goodwillie or Robertson.Goodwillie left English team Plymouth following the ruling and has played for Clyde in Scotland’s lower two divisions since then.McDermid, who has sold more than 17 million books, was a Raith director and her name is on the front of the team’s home shirts.She wrote on Twitter she would be ending her lifelong support of the team.“Goodwillie has never expressed a shred of remorse for the rape he committed,” she wrote.