New Witness Speaks In Peyton Manning Case Involving Long Valley Native

Greg Johnson says it was nothing but a silly prank by a teammate, and the circus surrounding Peyton Manning’s alleged sex abuse of then-University of Tennessee athletic trainer Jamie Naughright is false.

In a new, lengthy story written by MMQB, a football-focused magazine spun off from Sports Illustrated,Johnson tells his side of the story, as he was also in the training room when the alleged incident occurred, the report said.

After New York Daily News columnist Shaun King broke his story about the 74-page document outlining a lawsuit that named Manning in a 1996 incident in which the then-University of Tennessee quarterback allegedly pushed his genitals into Naughright’s face, Johnson reached out to Manning and said he wanted to share his side of the story, the report said.

In short, Johnson, a football player at the university at the same time as Manning, told MMQB he saw Manning pull down his pants slightly in the view of Malcolm Saxon for the purposes of “mooning” the fellow athlete, and quickly pulled his pants back up.

See related:

• Peyton Manning: Details Of 20-Year-Old Sex Abuse Allegations Made Public
• Peyton Manning: ‘I Tried Apologizing’ To North Jersey Woman After Sex Abuse Claim
• Peyton Manning Accuser Filed Sex Assault Claim With Crisis Center Hours After Incident

Naughright, with an address in Hackettstown at the time, filed a claim with a sexual abuse hotline later that night – on Feb. 29, 1996. The following year, she settled a lawsuit against the university for $300,000 for multiple allegations of sexual harassment within the athletic department.

In an affidavit signed by Manning in 2003, the quarterback told police that he was playing a joke on his teammate – Saxon – in the training room by “mooning” the friend and didn’t mean to offend Naughright.

Naughright now lives in Florida but had a residence in Hackettstown during the same time as the incident and her family lived in Long Valley for generations. One of Long Valley’s most heavily-traveled roads is named after Naughright’s ancestors, who settled the area in 1793. Her father was a decades-long first aid squad member and firefighter in town.

See the full MMQB story here.