Sports writer's compulsion to pat girls

A psychiatrist treating the sports journalist Cliff Temple, who was found dead on a Kent railway line in January, told an inquest yesterday that the writer had confessed to a 'compulsion to pat the bottoms of young women,' writes James Cusick.

Mr Temple, aged 46, a respected athletics coach, had been the subject of allegations accusing him of sexually harassing a woman athlete he was coaching. The allegations were made in a taped telephone conversation by one of the leading figures in British athletics, the promotions executive, Andy Norman.

Mr Norman was dismissed from his job with the British Athletics Federation last month.

The inquest in Folkestone heard that shortly before his death, Mr Temple had stopped taking medication. He had been suffering from a paranoid psychotic illness. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide.