THE jury filed back into the courtroom and Shane King looked straight ahead.

No eye contact, no trying to guess the verdict. All he relied on was the repetition of silent prayer. If found guilty on any one of the charges he faced of Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault or Sexual Grooming, King faced the prospect of many years in jail.

The foreman of the jury delivered the findings of 'not guilty' on the three charges.

The former Fermanagh and Down football star swayed slightly. The judge then confirmed the verdict and King was told that he was able to leave Downpatrick Court as a free man. Those few words delivered a fortnight ago gave King back his right to be treated as an equal part of his family and his community.

But he acknowledges that it was only the start of the end.

The personal nightmare that stretches back nearly three years still has to be confronted and eventually conquered. Now as part of that challenge he has spoken for the first time in public about his ordeal to the Sunday Tribune. There are questions that he still wants answered.

When the Downpatrick Crown Court jury was sent to carry out its deliberations, King was locked in a whitewashed cell. He had to wait in that place for three hours.

He read the names and initials and dates that were scrawled and scratched on the walls. Symbols of sadness. As a top county football player, King had signed his autograph countless times.

On scraps of paper, on programmes, on footballs and on shirts, all had been subject over the years to his distinctive signature. The irony of the situation wasn't lost on King. But even in the depth of his despair he says that he didn't feel alone. In his wallet there was a memoriam card for Johnny Neeson. He was the man who had coached him at all levels as he came through the club and county ranks in Fermanagh.

"When Johnny died I lost a great friend. But I always made a point before every game, and every important time in my life, of visiting his grave in Lisnaskea. Just to be able to think about Johnny has always given me huge comfort. I don't want people who hear this to think that I am a Holy Joe, or anything like that. I have always had a Christian faith. Sometimes, however, when things have been going well I took those times for granted. In that cell I talked to Johnny, like so many other times I had talked to him. I asked him to believe me and to help me. Holding that little card I knew that there was hope."

There were times over the past few years that King has had to cope with only hope and the support of his family and friends. They have been the ones that have provided the safety net when at times he felt his sanity was in question. The 31-year-old father of three says he does not want to indulge in any sense of triumphalism over being cleared of all charges laid against him. Too many people have been hurt, too many lives have been subjected to terrible scrutiny.

A girl who was 15 years old at the time of the original allegation had compiled a lurid diary. In it she claimed that various incidents involving her and one of the top GAA footballers in the country had taken place. At the time the diary was started during July of 2004, the girl was one of a number of pupils being coached regularly by King. In his role as a Youth Development Officer with Down coupled with being a county player and a media figure, it made him an attractive role model.

A championship winner both in his native Fermanagh with Lisnaskea, where he also won two All Ireland B titles, he also won championships in his adopted county with Bryansford. The talent that had allowed King to be part of a winning Ulster Railway Cup team while still a 19-year-old was being transferred effectively into the coaching arena. But there was a clear sense conveyed during the court hearings that the allegations against King were predicated on a predatory infatuation. The GAA player has admitted that he made mistakes. His counselling of the girl after she had claimed she was going through severe emotional stress "was in hindsight totally inappropriate".

"I was na�ve and stupid.

But the things that I did were based on trying to help. At the time I sincerely felt that if a child of mine, God forbid, had those problems and needed to confide in somebody, that help in terms of listening would have been available."

The most charitable description of the image portrayed in the courtroom by the now 18-year-old student was, at best, one of a precocious but deeply troubled individual with a fixation for older men.

The combination of King's high profile as a public figure, both in terms of his sports career and his television and radio commentary work for the BBC was a huge factor. It appeared to have had a magnetic pull on the then schoolgirl. His work as a development coach with Down was coupled with that of a part-time physical education supply teacher. It provided King with the opportunity to use his football training skills on a much wider front.

It also gave what has now proved to be a teenage girl with serious emotional problems, the opportunity to work towards trying to fulfil her fantasies. The forensic demolition, however, of the teenager's evidence by King's legal team, coupled with evidence produced in court of what were described as her fantasist tendencies, was telling.

Even more crucial was the admission that the girl had previously propositioned another married man. When confronted she initially denied making sexual overtures. The man described the five days of hell he had to endure before the girl admitted her mistake. He told the court that his children had to endure the stigma, completely unjustified, of hearing their father described as a pervert by the girl. The totally unfounded claims were bad enough. The fact that they were made in front of his children's classmates only compounded his agony. He was asked, given his experience, if he could comprehend the pressures and the pain that King had to endure, not over five days, but over a number of years. The witness couldn't even start, he said, to understand. It was to be hugely significant evidence in helping to exonerate King.

The Crown Court trial lasted three weeks. The conservative estimate of the costs involved is around threequarters of a million pounds.

Those elements within the PSNI and the Crown Prosecution Service that pushed with such vigour for the case to go ahead against King may have believed they had valid reasons. There are others, particularly in the light of the verdict and the strength of evidence produced on behalf of the GAA player, that would challenge that validity.

Many of those that were in the courtroom from the beginning of the trial found it difficult to grasp the reasoning behind the prosecution. Times and dates and venues when sexual encounters were supposed to have happened between King and his alleged victim simply didn't stack up. Exhaustive DNA tests on his car provided no evidence to substantiate the girl's claims. As far as King is concerned there is also disillusionment with certain individuals within the GAA over a general lack of support for his plight.

"Once I was arrested and charged the GAA had to implement its own child protection policies. In the eyes of some personnel I was treated like a leper. Some had found me guilty even before I had been tried. I was facing the prospect of my life being dismantled. If I had not been able to prove my innocence all I had to look forward to was jail. Two days before the trial was to start my mother, Anne, was confirmed as suffering from breast cancer.

Yet every single day she and my father were in the courtroom along with my wife, Elizabeth.

"They had to listen as the prosecuting barrister portrayed me as a manipulative sex offender. There was support in the courtroom from fellow players. I had received messages of help from individual GAA members. The Down County chairman, Kevin Bell was one who showed me real kindness.

But at an organisational level the GAA simply appeared to wash their hands of me. I was regarded as someone that had to be shelved.

"The former Ulster Secretary, Michael Feeney, who is a convicted child sex abuser, was at the Ulster Championship semi-final between Derry and Monaghan. Yet once I was arrested and formally charged on August 16, 2006 I was banned from being inside any football ground under the jurisdiction of the GAA. I wasn't allowed to play any part at all in the life of the association.

"That rejection, the implied guilt left me feeling very alone. There was no help or advice provided for me or for my family. We were virtual outcasts."

During all the trauma of the build-up to the trial the impact on King's family was his main concern. The Social Services had placed his three children, Patrick, Ruari and newly-born Rianna on the At Risk Register. It meant that at no time was their father allowed to be alone with them. If one of his sons even wanted to go to the toilet the child had to be taken by another member of the family circle.

Even worse was the treatment he had to endure after his daughter Rianna was born. Social Services staff refused to allow him to hold his newly born child without their permission. At all times he had to be in the presence of professional care workers.

"It was like being a child at Christmas and having somebody open your presents. Elizabeth and I were cheated out of being able to share a very special moment with our darling daughter."

Any breach of the official exclusion zone would have resulted in having his children taken into care. "Those arrangements had to be agreed. Anything was better than having the children placed with foster parents."

It was that unrelenting pressure that led to King having what he now recognises as a mental breakdown.

"The PSNI arrested me while I was teaching in Newry. I was taken away in front of the students at lunchtime. The kids that I had been working with watched as I was put inside a police car and driven away.

The day after I was arrested I was prepared to do anything, say anything to escape.

All I wanted was for things to get back to normal. If I pleaded guilty to the charges, a deal with the DPP's Office was on the cards.

"I got in the car and drove to the police station in Newcastle. I was prepared to admit anything. Just to get some peace was all that I wanted for my family. The PSNI sergeant on duty calmed me down after I became hysterical. He suggested that I go back home and talk to my solicitor. After that I came to the conclusion that no matter what happened I was willing to rot in jail rather than admit to something I didn't do."

The not-guilty verdicts vindicated King's decision not to allow convenience to overcome personal conscience.

"There are so many things that I want to do. Get back to being part of a family. Being able to be with my children without being frightened that at any time I could be challenged by the Social Services.

Being able to play football again."

A return to any environment where he would have to work with children and young people is, however, a risk that he is not able to take.

"John Brannigan, the Bryansford chairman, has provided me with a job in his building company. I want to repay him for the support he has shown me."

Life, Shane King says, has to continue. Next November there will be another addition to the family. The name has already been chosen. If it is a boy he will be christened Johnny. Old friends, real GAA supporters like Johnny Neeson, will never be forgotten.