NFL legend Joe Namath is being accused of turning a blind eye to rampant child sexual abuse at his football camp more than 50 years ago.
Philip Lyle Smith, who filed the lawsuit in 2019 under the name “John Doe,” spoke out publicly for the first time to The New York Post. Smith told The Post that Brooklyn Poly Prep Country Club football coach John Foglietta was allowed to “repeatedly attack” Smith at the camp starting in 1972.
Foglietta died in 1998 after being exposed as as serial sexual abuser. The school paid an unknown amount to settle the matter in 2012.
Smith, speaking with The Post, accused Namath and other directors of the camp as being “enablers and pedophile protectors.”
“Back in those days, Joe Namath was my idol,” Smith said. “And he went from my hero to a zero in my life.”
Smith revealed that the abuse led him to receive opportunities to eat meals with Namath and John Dockery, who is also named in the suit.
“Every night he’d say, ‘See what I did? … You have pictures with so and so … Joe talked to you … How you can do that without me?’” Smith said. “That was part of his grooming to abuse me.”
