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A referee coach has denied “manhandling” Women’s Super League referee Lisa Benn after she told an employment tribunal that he “forcefully pushed” her during a match.<\/b><\/p>\n
Benn, 34, claims she was pushed and threatened<\/a> by Steve Child during a tournament organised by Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) to train staff on video assistant referees (VAR) in March 2023.<\/p>\n English football’s refereeing body investigated the complaint but found Child’s behaviour did not meet the threshold for disciplinary action.<\/p>\n In his tribunal witness statement, quoted to the panel on Wednesday, Child said “100% I did not grab” her, it was a “guiding arm if anything” but “I don’t recall putting any physical contact on her”.<\/p>\n “I lightly put an arm across her back in a sense of ‘let’s go’,” the former Premier League assistant referee added.<\/p>\n Child refuted Benn’s accusation that his treatment of her was “because she is a woman”.<\/p>\n Kick-off had been delayed by an earlier injury and a south London employment tribunal heard Child was trying to speed up the start of play.<\/p>\n He denied grabbing Benn a second time and saying “your card has been marked” after a mass brawl broke out at the end of the fractious youth game.<\/p>\n Carla Fischer, for Benn, said: “A six-foot man who is stressed, who has been told by the claimant to chill, physically moving a five-foot woman on to a pitch.”<\/p>\n She added: “There is absolutely no way this contact could be anything other than grabbing and manhandling, is there?”<\/p>\n Child replied: “That’s not correct.”<\/p>\n He also denied intimidating Benn in the hotel reception at a training camp they both attended on 19 August, 2023, saying: “I think that might be a confusion on Lisa’s part.”<\/p>\n