Revealed: David Sullivan’s Sunday Sport sold sexualised images of 15-year-old girls

In 1987, the tabloid press in Britain was at the peak of its powers. The Sun newspaper, with its brash celebrity scoops and strident support for Margaret Thatcher – who won her third general election that year – was selling almost 4m copies a day.

Competition for stories and readers was relentless, resulting in ever more salacious and lurid editorial devices to win a slice of the readership from rivals on the newsstand. The Sun stood atop the tabloid market, its topless Page 3- girls credited with a share of its popularity. It was against this backdrop that the Sunday Sport, a red-top publication occupying the seediest corner of Fleet Street, launched a feature that even by its own standards appeared to plumb the depths of journalistic ethics.

On 6 September 1987, the newspaper began counting down to the 16th birthday of schoolgirl Natalie Banus – when she could legally be pictured topless.

Owned by the pornography baron David Sullivan, who announced his resignation as a joint-chair and director of West Ham this weekend, the Sunday Sport had launched in the previous year in a blaze of controversy.

Its coverage of Banus coincided with a short-lived and ill-fated merger with its ailing rival, the Daily Star – the Sunday Sport was briefly rebranded as the Star Sunday Sport – and together they devoted countless column inches to the teenager they described as “the sexiest 15-year-old in Britain”, measuring “a fantastic 40-22-34”.

When Banus, from Hendon, north London, first appeared in the Sunday Sport, the newspaper pushed the law to its limits by picturing her semi-naked, her chest obscured only by her arms. The law at the time forbid the publication of indecent images of under 16s. The Sunday Sport insisted it was compliant with the rules as Banus was “not quite topless”.

It described 15 as being “the age of the nymphet” and proclaimed Banus “the sexiest Lolita of them all”. Fully topless pictures of Banus, from Hendon, north London, were duly published in the Daily Star when she turned 16 a month later. The Sunday Sport also encouraged its readers to call a premium-rate chat line to have a chance of hearing her voice.

Almost 40 years on from her tabloid debut, Banus reflected on her glamour modelling career in a memoir, Dark Star, published earlier this year. “The Sunday Sport wished me a good [birthday] and told readers that I was legal, meaning that I could both show my boobs and that anyone who had sex with me no longer had to fear they might be arrested,” she said.

Banus, who had hoped to be a ballet dancer before being scouted by a glamour photographer, said she wept when she read the pieces published in anticipation of her birthday. One Daily Star piece included an account of an alleged incident in a changing room where she said she feared a teenage boy would sexually assault her. After she turned 16 on 11 October, she recalled that the Daily Star ran topless pictures of her “all week … always paired with some nonsense story about me being so proud of my tits, getting groped or fantasising about sex”.

This led to more work with Sullivan’s magazines and newspapers, with some of her explicit shoots taking place in his former home in Essex, she said. In her memoir, Banus said that Sullivan told her she was “a cut above so many models” and “dynamite” when it came to selling papers.

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Sullivan’s career in the adult entertainment industry has been thrown into sharp focus this weekend, after he announced he was standing down as a director and co-chair of West Ham to apply his “full energy and attention” to fighting what he described as “false allegations” concerning his personal conduct. The claims have apparently been gathered as part of a joint investigation by BBC Panorama and the Times and are due to be published on Monday.

Sullivan did not elaborate on the accusations he is facing, but said: “After a lifetime spent building businesses in the adult industry, in which I have met thousands of women, it is sadly inevitable that a small number of improper conduct claims are being made against me.” He did not respond to follow up queries from the Guardian.

Despite her condemnation of the newspapers she featured in, Banus has always stopped short of criticising Sullivan personally and has never made any allegations about his behaviour towards her. In her book, she said: “While opinions on him may vary, I say with honesty that he has shown me courtesy and kindness in our dealings.” After the news of Sullivan’s departure from West Ham broke, Banus reiterated that he had “always treated [her] with respect and courtesy.”

While the relationship between the Star and the Sport lasted just eight weeks – it was reported that advertisers and journalists began to vote with their feet, largely in protest at the seedy influence of Sullivan – he was undeterred. The Sunday Sport and its sister paper, the Daily Sport, continued for more than 15 years to celebrate the 16th birthdays of teenage girls by picturing them topless.

The images were often published alongside the newspapers’ famously outlandish stories. (They claimed a London bus had been found at the south pole, and that aliens had turned a man into a fish finger.) Some teenage models became staples of their pages for years to come, but others retreated from the limelight, bruised by the sudden exposure to the sleaziest end of Britain’s newspaper market. Some young women were encouraged to share details of their supposed sexual experiences, which several later alleged were exaggerated or simply made up.

On 3 July 1994, the Sunday Sport pictured a bikini-clad Linsey Dawn McKenzie, from Wallington, south London, beneath the headline: “Please print my boobs when I’m 16.” It told its readers that “stunning schoolgirl” McKenzie, who went on to be one of the country’s most high-profile glamour models, was 15 years, 10 months, three weeks and four days old – meaning there were just under six weeks to go until her milestone birthday. It said that for “legal reasons” it wouldn’t show her fully topless until she was 16.

McKenzie, who recently retired from glamour modelling after more than three decades, featured in the newspaper every week until she turned 16. As the weeks ticked past, it encouraged its readers to draw pictures of how they imagined McKenzie would look topless and printed its favourites. It dished out coupons so its clientele could pre-order copies of its 14 August edition, where it was promised McKenzie would reveal all.

“Here she is at last, folks,” the newspaper said, when the day finally arrived. “Lovely Linsey Dawn McKenzie – sweet sixteen and stripped bare for YOU.”

On 17 May 1998, it was Zoe Parker’s turn. Parker, who had been scouted just weeks earlier when her stepfather, Bob, took her to a pornography fair, appeared topless in the Sunday Sport next to the headline: “I’m sweet 16 and I can’t get enough.” The accompanying article was replete with details about her supposedly outrageous sex life. The ensuing furore saw Parker, living in Stamford, Lincolnshire, expelled from school.

The next year, Parker told the Sunday People that she had been coerced into glamour modelling by Bob and that it had driven her to the brink of suicide. “I was lonely, frightened and couldn’t carry on,” she said. “I couldn’t take any more and I thought the only way was to kill myself.”

Parker later claimed that some of the things she had said in the media about her sexual experiences were “rubbish” but alleged she was encouraged to invent stories by her stepfather who thought it “great publicity”. For his part, Bob said he had “only tried to encourage my daughter to do what she wanted to do”.