NFL legend Joe Namath accused of allowing rampant child sex abuse to occur at football camp

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New York Jets legend Joe Namath was accused of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse that was happening 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 about the horrifying ordeal. He told the New York Post in a story published Sunday night that Brooklyn Poly Prep Country Club football coach John Foglietta was allowed to repeatedly attack Smith at the camp starting in 1972, when he was just 12 years old.

Foglietta was later revealed to be a serial sexual abuser at the school where he worked and sparked a massive 2012 settlement with several sex abuse victims. He died in 1998.

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Joe Namath attends a game between the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 8, 2019 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

Smith accused Namath and others as being "enablers and pedophile protectors."

"Back in those days, Joe Namath was my idol," he told the New York Post. "And he went from my hero to a zero in my life."

Smith said that as he faced abuse, he received opportunities to eat meals with Namath and John Dockery, who was also named in Smith’s lawsuit. He said Foglietta used the special treatment to justify his sexual abuse.

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"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 told the newspaper. "That was part of his grooming to abuse me."

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