By Chris Brooke for the Daily Mail
Published: 22:26 GMT, 10 March 2019 | Updated: 06:40 GMT, 11 March 2019
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The former girlfriend of disgraced footballer Adam Johnson has said she does not regard him as a paedophile.
Stacey Flounders, 29, also claimed she thought his six-year jail sentence for sexually touching a 15-year-old girl was ‘extreme.’
Speaking for the first time about her ordeal, she said: ‘What he did was wrong. In the eyes of the law she was a child and he should have known better. Even so, the sentence was a shock. I thought it was extreme.’
Stacey Flounders, 29, does not consider her ex-boyfriend Adam Johnson a paedophile
Former England star Johnson, 31, is due to be released later this month after serving half his sentence.
Miss Flounders said she and Johnson would tell their daughter Ayla, now aged four, the truth about his offending when she is 13.
She added: ‘She’ll have to make her own mind up about her father. To be honest, I don’t see Adam as a paedophile. For me a paedophile is somebody who abuses tiny young children.
‘I think that he was a sex addict – he told me he was a sex addict.
‘But I do worry about Ayla for the future. She is the one who will have to cope with bullying and cruel remarks from other kids – and their parents.’
Johnson’s glittering career ended three years ago when he was sacked by his club – Sunderland – after pleading guilty at the start of his 2016 trial to sexual grooming and kissing
