A FORMER Leyton Orient youth player has exclusively told the Echo how he was assaulted by a coach at the centre of football’s child sex abuse scandal.

Peter Hodges has come forward to tell of occasions he spent “uncomfortable” evenings alone with ex-Orient youth coach Eddie Heath at his flat in Norman Road, Leytonstone.

Mr Hodges, now 69, and living in Leigh, was taken on by the Os as a teenager in the early 1960s, when he first met Heath at Brisbane Road and was invited to the coach’s home.

He recalled: “Eddie Heath was quite friendly with everyone, it was first name terms, laughing and joking in the changing rooms.

“He asked me to go around his place, I was about 15 at the time and I did not know any different.

“It was quite genial, he gave me a drink of pop and a magazine while he pottered around in the background.”

However, Mr Hodges, who grew up in Leytonstone, said Heath’s behaviour became increasingly strange as time went on.

He added: “I had left school by then and he told me to pack up my job and he would get me on the ground staff, which was the first step to becoming a player back then.

“I left my job but the manager at the time, Johnny Carey, came to my parents’ house and said Eddie had jumped the gun and I couldn’t get on the ground staff until I had done a bit more training.”

Mr Hodges says he later stopped visiting Heath at his flat after an incident in which the coach trapped him on a sofa.

“The last time I went to see him at his flat he got a little bit too close for comfort.” He said: “He pressed me against the arm of the sofa.

“I could not move, he was a big man, I could not tell whether he had touched my genitals or not but it was horrible, he was certainly assaulting me physically.

“I became very uncomfortable and I just thought it was not right and I would not go around there anymore.

“After that, all of a sudden, I could not get a kick of a football, I could not get a game.”

Former Chelsea striker Gary Johnson alleged last week he was sexually assaulted by Heath while he worked as a scout for the west London side in the 1970s.

Jimmy Scott, an Orient captain when Heath worked at Brisbane Road, has also stepped forward to claim the coach was a known child abuser during his time at the club.

Heath died in the mid-1980s long before claims about his conduct first surfaced.

Leyton Orient has refused to comment on allegations surrounding Heath at this time, due to ongoing police investigations into historic child sex abuse at clubs across London.

Mr Hodges, who later played in Tottenham’s youth set-up but never signed a professional contract, says he wants the public to understand the scale of the abuse carried out by Heath.

He added: “We were all young lads and all we wanted to do was play professional football. It is by the grace of god I did not go around to his flat again.

“I just knew he wasn’t right I knew he had gone to Chelsea and when this all started it made me feel sick. I said to my wife: ‘I bet it was Eddie Heath’."

“I just want it out there that this was happening even in the early 60s, it was going on long before the 1970s.”

Mr Hodges has reported his story to the hotline set up to allow footballers to report abuse in the wake of the national scandal.

The Met is encouraging anyone who has been a victim of sex abuse in football to contact their local police on: 101 or the NSPCC on: 0800 023 2642.