‘I couldn’t stay silent’: Why Sacha Wall publicly accused David Sullivan of being a sexual predator

Sacha Wall is a forceful presence, speaking softly but pulling no punches.

The first woman to waive her anonymity in making claims of sexual misconduct against the former West Ham joint-chair, David Sullivan, Wall has a lot on her mind when she meets The Athletic over lunch in Exeter.

She speaks unflinchingly of her experiences as a glamour model for Sullivan’s Sport newspaper, how she felt listening to the claims of the other women featured in Panorama’s Predator: The Billionaire Football Boss this month, and the scars inflicted by an industry that has moved away from newspaper spreads of topless models and found a new life on apps such as TikTok and OnlyFans.

“It’s broken the silence,” she says. “That has been a huge release. It’s freed me to move on with my life.”

Wall’s life has certainly changed since the airing of Panorama, broadcast in conjunction with an investigation by The Times newspaper, which alleged that Sullivan had been guilty of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour against women over several decades. Sullivan says he “categorically denies” all the claims, which he says are “factually incorrect and entirely false”, and has threatened legal action against those who report them.

Wall was one of the women who accused Sullivan in the programme, and the only one to waive her anonymity. She encountered Sullivan — the so-called ‘King of Porn’ — when she had been seeking work at his Daily and Sunday Sport newspapers, which were known for their images of topless glamour models. She alleges that she was invited to meet Sullivan in 1998, in his capacity as owner of the Sport titles, for what she thought was a business meeting about modelling for the newspaper, while she considered leaving her job as an insurance broker.

Then 24, she had not heard of him before. The address she was given turned out to be Sullivan’s private home, where she says he asked her to accompany him upstairs and undress to her underwear. Wall alleges Sullivan, now 77, said he could feature her in the Sport were she to become one of his “special friends”. When she told him that she would not sleep with him, she claims he replied: “What? Not even a blow job?” She tried to leave, only to find that he had locked the door. She demanded he open it and says he then shouted at her, saying, “You’re going about it the hard way,” before unlocking the door.

Wall, who went on to model occasionally for the Sport, made a report to Essex Police in 2023, over which the force ultimately decided to take no further action. Sullivan had also been arrested by the same force in 2008 on suspicion of sexual assault of a 25-year-old woman but no charges were brought. Sullivan categorically denied that allegation, which centred on consensual sexual touching, saying the claim was totally without foundation.

The Times and BBC also reported that Sullivan had admitted to paying for sex in the 1990s with a girl who he claims he believed was aged 16 or 17. That was legal at the time: the law was changed in 2003 to raise the age of consent to engage in sex work to 18.

A lot has happened since the Panorama programme was aired. Sullivan had already resigned from his role as West Ham’s joint-chair before the allegations against him were made public, and is now set to lose his status as the club’s largest shareholder, with Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky poised to take his stake to 43 per cent.

It has also emerged that Sullivan has been suspended from having contact with West Ham’s women’s and youth teams since 2023, as part of a Football Association safeguarding investigation relating to a single incident in 1981. Sullivan said the 1981 incident “did not happen” and called the suspension “a meaningless restriction” that he accepted for “a quiet life”.

Wall has spent the days since the documentary trying to understand the bigger picture it revealed around Sullivan’s alleged conduct and the mechanisms that prevented the claims from coming to light decades ago.

“Now I understand more of what’s gone on, how other girls didn’t get out, the larger picture and how this was actually rolling, I couldn’t stay silent,” Wall says. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

She “wants to be the face and the voice for the story” on behalf of those who feel they cannot speak publicly. “Different people have really suffered,” she says. “There’s a lot of mental health involved. We have literally just scratched the surface.”

Essex Police confirmed to The Athletic on June 11 that they have opened more enquiries into Sullivan in the wake of the Panorama-Times investigation.

It is actually three years since Wall was first interviewed by the BBC, which had to negotiate a painstaking legal process as it pieced together the claims from seven women, all of whom were in their late teens or early twenties at the time of the alleged incidents. She was the only one prepared to be identified and speak on camera.

Panorama and the Times had been investigating Sullivan for “about a year”, Wall says, when they approached her in response to a blog she had written, in which she recounted her experience and referred to Sullivan — already the subject of widespread social media speculation — as “a major media publication owner”.

“It was only afterwards that West Ham fans got in touch, because they recognised the pattern,” she says. “Then I really started to think about it again: the incident, the grooming and the pattern and how this was actually rolling.”

Wall has not heard from anyone at West Ham, the Football Association or the Sunday Sport since the documentary aired on June 8.

Both West Ham and the FA told The Athletic that as the allegations made against Sullivan were not related to the club or football, they did not fall within their remit. Both insisted they have robust safeguarding measures in place. The Athletic has contacted the Sunday Sport for comment.

Wall is particularly critical of former West Ham deputy-chair Baroness Karren Brady, who stepped down in April after 16 years at the club.

Brady is facing questions over the timing of that decision — which came while the club were embroiled in a fight against relegation from the Premier League they ultimately lost — and what she knew of Sullivan’s behaviour during a working relationship spanning almost four decades, first with his Sport titles and then at his first football club, Birmingham City, where a then-23-year-old Brady was managing director.

The Athletic revealed this month that Brady — who has positioned herself as a champion of women’s rights throughout her business career — had told concerned fan groups that there was “no investigation involving West Ham United” despite knowing Sullivan had been suspended from having contact with the women’s and youth teams.

When asked if the timing of her departure was impacted by the imminent revelation of the Panorama-Times claims against Sullivan, Brady’s legal representatives did not comment other than to say that “the allegations which have been made against Mr Sullivan in a personal capacity do not relate to our client”.

Sullivan had made little attempt at hiding his predilection for sex throughout his career. The Times reported that when asked by a newspaper in 1996 about his relationships with his models, he replied: “I’ve always said what’s the point in owning a sweet shop if you can’t eat a few sweets.” Linzi Drew, a model and porn star from the 1980s, also told a 2015 documentary about Mary Millington, an adult entertainer and Sullivan’s former partner, that he had the nickname: “‘No-job Blowjobs’ — if you didn’t give him a blowjob, you didn’t get a job. I never gave him a blowjob and I didn’t get a job.”

In addition, Sullivan had a criminal conviction from 1982 for living off the immoral earnings of prostitutes. He served 71 days in prison before being freed on appeal.

Wall is sceptical that Brady could have been unaware of Sullivan’s reputation. “When you’re in the work, when you are in the job, everybody knows what his reputation was,” she says. “I had no idea who he was before I went to see him, but once I’d been working in page three modelling for six months, I’d had my experience and you’d hear other things. You get to know. It’s like if there’s a dodgy boss and you join a company, you’ll get to know, quite quickly, once you start at the company. Somebody at lunch hour’s going to tell you. It’s exactly that same kind of scenario.”

It is not the first time Brady has received scrutiny for her business relationships with men accused of wrongdoing. In 2019, she resigned from the board of businessman Sir Philip Green’s retail empire after claims that he had sexually harassed and racially abused staff (Green denied any unlawful behaviour).

When asked in an interview by Sky News about whether she could square her feminist principles with the claims made against Green, she replied: “I didn’t square them because I resigned, so that says all it needs to say.”

Wall questions whether Brady should remain in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of the UK Parliament that helps to make laws, hold government to account and consider public policy. On the House of Lords website, Brady’s policy interests are listed as ‘Business, industry and consumers’, ‘Sport’ and ‘Equality, diversity and inclusion’.

The Athletic contacted Brady’s legal representatives for comment but did not receive a response. In correspondence with the BBC published on June 12, Brady’s lawyers acknowledged that she was made aware that the FA had raised concerns about Sullivan in July 2023 but had not been involved in the decision to suspend him. They told the BBC that Brady had remained at West Ham because Sullivan had always insisted he was not guilty of any wrongdoing, and “on the principle of presumption of innocence in continuing to work at the club”.

On claims that Brady’s stance jars with her self-professed figurehead for women’s rights, her lawyers insisted that there “is no inconsistency or hypocrisy between our client advocating for the protection of women and respecting the confidential safeguarding investigation and process that was being managed by the appropriate safeguarding professionals and statutory authorities”.

Wall, however, is not satisfied.

“I’m not saying that she handed them (the women) all over. What I’m saying is: she must have known (about his reputation) and, if she did, was she stopping him? Was she addressing it? Was she saying: ‘You can’t carry on doing all that to all these girls?’. That’s empowerment. Standing up to the boss is empowerment.”

She is also particularly keen that none of this is dismissed by classifying it as part of Sullivan’s ‘private life’, which would obscure the dynamics at play. “This isn’t about his private life; this is his business life,” she explains. “None of us were turning up for his private life. It wasn’t a party. It wasn’t a date. It wasn’t any of those things. This was a casting for modelling work.”

Wall would like to invite Brady to meet her and other women who claim to have been exploited by Sullivan to hear their stories.

“Every victim wants to be believed and wants to be heard,” she adds. “The worst thing for any victim is to be gaslighted and told that it didn’t happen.”

Wall says she would like to be the spokesperson for the women alleging they were exploited by Sullivan, and by others, and says several have contacted her in the wake of Panorama being aired.

“It is the hardest thing to think you’re not worth anything,” she says. “That pain is the hard thing for these girls to deal with. If we can actually empathise and give compassion to these people, it’s unquantifiable as to how much it helps them.”

She considers Gisele Pelicot, the French abuse survivor who waived her right to anonymity after she was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men, and her mantra that “shame must change sides” and move back to the abuser.

“For all the guys that want to slut-shame, I really couldn’t give a toss,” Wall says. “If I can make girls feel better about themselves and be able to live a nicer and happier life, I’ve done a good job.

“If you’re in a position to (share your story), then you have to. It’s incredibly cathartic, and has all kinds of outcomes that you won’t even know until you start to talk your truth and be able to release that.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

West Ham United, Premier League, Soccer, Championship, Women’s Soccer

2026 The Athletic Media Company