"The trauma of what happened to me hasn’t gone away," A. Carroll says in his autobiography. The former England striker also says the assault happened in 2021, involved a celebrity mate of his former partner, and left him carrying it for years. He says he called the police, later sobbed in his children’s nanny’s arms and testified in court.
Carroll's account of the assault
Carroll says the perpetrator was given a three-year prison sentence, placed on the National Sex Offender Register and banned from entering the village where he lived. He also says, "What happened to me affected every facet of my life. I’d think about it every day, making it difficult to focus on anything else, including football."
That line is the one that lingers, because this is not being presented as a detached chapter from his career. Carroll is describing something that, by his account, reached into daily life as well as the game.
Why he almost left it out
The book, Owning It: In My Own Words, almost did not include the assault at all. Carroll says he put it in only at the very last minute, and that only a few people knew about it before publication.
He adds, "I was sexually assaulted, there I said it. Scary to even think about and only a few people knew about it before now." He also says, "Me and Lou spent a lot of time discussing whether to mention it in this book or not."
Wayne Rooney is part of the same wider picture in the autobiography, but the assault disclosure is the story that stands out. Carroll’s England career was brief, with 9 caps, yet this is the part of his life that now feels most exposed.
The book also touches on the boozy nights, strip clubs and casinos that have long coloured his public image. But Carroll's most serious admission is the one about the assault, and he says the trauma still has not gone away.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 3 outlets. How we work →
