Earlier this week, 18-year-old female footballer Cerys Vaughan spoke out publicly for the first time about her months-long ordeal — and her eventual victory — after being banned for asking a trans opponent: “Are you a man?” The Free Speech Union supported Cerys and her family throughout the process, funding her legal representation and helping to get the FA’s unjust decision overturned on appeal. Read extracts from her exclusive interview with The Telegraph below.
She has been banned from playing football for asking a transgender opponent: “Are you a man?” She has been discussed and debated on television, online and in parliament. She has become a symbol in the fight against those born male playing in women’s sport. And almost nobody knows who she is.
Until now.
Her name is Cerys Vaughan and she is sitting nervously on a bench in her local park. She is about to break her public silence about her Kafkaesque trial and the extraordinary events that have followed. She has long been afraid to do so – even anonymously – amid the threat of a backlash or of her ban being extended. But she is now ready to tell her story to Telegraph Sport, which has exclusively chronicled her months-long ordeal without her being identified.
She has agreed to speak out following a hat-trick of landmark developments linked to her case. The first of them, it can be revealed, was a successful appeal against the six-match ban imposed on her back in October. The second was last month’s Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces – delivered minutes after she was told the case against her had collapsed. But it is the third seismic development which has convinced her it is finally safe for her to come forward: last week’s announcement by the Football Association banning transgender women from the female game in England.
She is nevertheless still anxious when she agrees to meet – the day after that announcement – at a warm and sunny Leyland Park in Hindley, near Wigan. With three full-sized football pitches, it is a place she recalls enjoying many a childhood kickabout with her siblings. She is no longer a child, having turned 18 in January. But, standing at 5ft 5in and wearing a beige hoodie and football shorts from one of the women’s game’s biggest teams, Lyon, she could easily be mistaken for someone much younger. Sitting alongside her are parents Ian and Lynda, who admit to being almost as nervous as their daughter.
All this would be daunting enough for any teenager, let alone one currently on the assessment pathway for autism. But whenever she speaks, she does so calmly and clearly, her suspected condition barely noticeable save for perhaps a certain directness in her manner.
Her account of what took place on a “boiling” July day has been chronicled in detail by Telegraph Sport – including that it centred on a pre-season friendly between her club and a side it can now be revealed was fielded by Manchester Laces, an openly pro-LGBTQ+ team. Cerys painstakingly goes through it all again: how she asked a transgender opponent with “a beard”: “Are you a man?”; how she raised safety concerns with the referee; how she was confronted about it by a Laces player who then reported her to Kick It Out, triggering an investigation by the Lancashire FA.
That led to her being charged with saying, “Are you a man?”, “That’s a man”, “Don’t come here again”, or similar comments. She was told she faced a ban of up to 12 matches, a sanction she says could have been life-altering for her. She explains she has been studying A-level PE and the course includes a practical element linked to her playing football. She denied the charges but was found guilty by a National Serious Case Panel and banned for six games – four of which were suspended for 12 months.
At each stage in the process, Cerys says she assumed the case would go no further because she thought those involved would know she had not been transphobic. That includes after Telegraph Sport broke the news of her plight back in October. She says: “I remember when the article first came out and I was reading through the comments on the website, and it was nice to see that everyone was on my side.”
Her story had an extraordinary impact, with the likes of former FA chairman Lord Triesman, human rights charity Sex Matters and the Free Speech Union all rallying behind her. There was a protest outside Wembley before England’s Nations League game against Republic of Ireland in November and another before the Lionesses’ friendly against Switzerland at Bramall Lane the following month.
She appealed her punishment with the help of the FSU, which had also been assisting Allison Pearson after police visited the Telegraph columnist’s home over a complaint about a year-old deleted post on social media. Cerys, who served her two-match suspension before being granted permission to appeal, admits she was worried challenging her guilty verdict would result in her being handed “a harsher punishment”.
After a three-month battle, an appeal board of the FA quashed the ruling against her in a damning – and alarming – judgment on the original proceedings. Seen by Telegraph Sport, the written reasons state: she had not received a fair hearing during a three-hour video call that left her in tears; proper consideration had not been given to her age or the evidence against her; and she was wrongly found guilty “by own admission” when she had denied the charges.
After a three-month battle, an appeal board of the FA quashed the ruling against her in a damning – and alarming – judgment on the original proceedings. Seen by Telegraph Sport, the written reasons state: she had not received a fair hearing during a three-hour video call that left her in tears; proper consideration had not been given to her age or the evidence against her; and she was wrongly found guilty “by own admission” when she had denied the charges.
Cerys is equally scathing about the original proceedings, during which she says she was asked how many LGBTQ+ players there were on her own team. She adds: “Why did they bother making us do a three-hour call if they already knew before it began that they were going to find me guilty?”
The appeal board recommended a fresh hearing take place, which was scheduled for mid-April. However, Cerys’s accuser withdrew from the process due to what the FA says were “personal reasons”. Telegraph Sport has been told those included safety concerns. Cerys only found out she would face no further action on April 16, minutes before the Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces.
“I was definitely relieved,” she says. “Because I thought I was going to have to redo the hearing during my A-levels, during my study leave.” Her “stressful” months-long wait for justice meant she ended up missing more than the two games of her ban, a suspension which happened to include Leigh’s league trip to Laces. Having chosen not to play in September’s reverse fixture days before she was charged, she also sat out a Divisional Cup semi-final between the teams in March.
She says: “I was worried that, even if I didn’t do anything, they would recognise me, they’d report me again, and I knew that the FA would be on their side every time, not mine.”
She says she is “definitely” owed an apology from her county FA and she savages its national equivalent for taking so long to impose a ban that will prevent any other girl facing the same ordeal. “I think they’re cowards,” she says. “I think they shouldn’t have waited for a Supreme Court ruling to change their rules if they knew it was wrong the whole time.”
She admits she does not think she would have won her own appeal but for the support she has had, particularly from Telegraph readers, Sex Matters, and the FSU. “I’m very grateful. I’d like to say thank you. I don’t think that it would’ve been a good outcome without all those people involved. I think I would’ve just been another case brushed to the side.”
Those sentiments are echoed by her mother, who first raised the alarm about her daughter’s plight. “I can see why people give up,” Lynda says of taking on the football authorities. “And, if it wasn’t for Fiona [McAnena] at Sex Matters and the Free Speech Union, we would definitely have given up somewhere along the way, because they do try to make it as difficult as possible for you to go up against them. They bury everything in language and rules and things like that, and it’s designed to confuse ordinary people like us, who’ve never dealt with anything like that before. We’re not experts. We’re just angry parents.”
Demanding “an apology from the FA for Cerys”, she adds: “It’s been very, very stressful, but she’s stuck to her guns and stood up for what she knows is right and that’s how we’ve brought her up. So, I’m very, very pleased; very proud of her.”
The interview is available in full here.
