Coleen Rooney speaks out on her husband Wayne’s cheating and drinking in new documentary

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Coleen Rooney has spoken out on her husband Wayne’s drinking and cheating for the first time in a major new documentary on the footballer. 

Coleen, 35, appears alongside her husband, 36, in the documentary, ‘Rooney’, released on Prime Video on Friday, and is seen speaking honestly about the issues they have faced in their marriage, including Wayne’s notorious brothel visits and escort scandal.

Wayne’s wife of 14 years insists in the film that ‘I wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t forgiven him,’ as she reflects on their 20 year relationship from teenagers to parents of four.

The documentary looks back on Wayne’s life from his council estate upbringing in the Liverpool district of Croxteth through to the soaring heights of his football career and throughout it all, his relationship with Coleen, who first met at the age of 12.

Speaking about their teenage romance, Wayne says in the documentary: ‘I think when I was about 11 or 12 I knew that I wanted to marry her, and I said that to her at the time. I said ‘when we grow up we’re going to get married and you’re going to have our kids’. She was looking at me like ‘yeah good one!” 

Coleen agrees, admitting of her husband: ‘He’s a charmer, growing up that’s how he won me over. The more I said no the more he said ‘I will one day get that date’.’  

‘I always remember he used to hang around by where I lived and every now and again you’d get his mum shouting up and down the street, ‘Wayne!’. 

Wayne’s charm came in the form of poems, one of which had the title ‘Wiggle Wiggle’, and which Coleen has kept to this day, telling the camera ‘they’re very romantic, you can tell he loves me.’

Wayne and Coleen began dating aged 16 and went on to marry in a lavish ceremony in Portofino in 2008. They are now parents to four sons – Kai, 12, Klay, eight, Kit, six, and Cass, three.

Later in the Prime Video film, Coleen is seen looking back at the events of 2004 when reports of Wayne’s brothel visits and his infamous romp with three prostitutes first emerged in the press. 

Reflecting on the difficult time, Coleen concedes: ‘The first time, we were young so there was a lot of arguing.’

Admitting she didn’t approve of the company Wayne was keeping, Coleen insists: ‘I knew groups that Wayne was hanging around with that weren’t good for him. Lovely people but together, with alcohol, not good and I told him that from day one.

‘I didn’t want him to stop being friends with them but I didn’t want him to go out with them because they got in bad situations.

Alcohol is a lot to blame and still is, up to this day with things that has happened recently. It’s not a good thing for Wayne to be unsupervised’.

Wayne is also seen discussing the period, admitting: ‘I put myself in the wrong place and when you’re in the wrong place and there’s alcohol involved you’re gonna make bad decisions and you’re going to have to suffer and deal with the consequences’.

‘That’s what happened, it doesn’t take away any of my love for Coleen, it happened. It was a wrong decision to make, I held my hands up and we worked through it.’

Coleen says she relied on the support of her family and her own instincts to help her through, pointing out: ‘When you’re making those decisions you’ve got to focus on what you want and not other people because you have so many people saying different things to you. ‘Oh why is she getting back with him?”

‘Obviously I listen to the people that matter to me, my mum and dad always give me a positive outlook on things. There’s nothing that we can’t deal with and that’s my way in a situation – let’s sit down and see what we can do and can we make it work? And we have. We’re not the lovey-dovey type anyway, we like to have a laugh and we work well together.’

She adds that there is some element of truth to the idea that they stayed together for their four boys, explaining: ‘That was part of it but also we still love each other. Hopefully he’s learnt and he doesn’t get himself into any of those horrible situations again. But it’s happened and I’ve got to live with it, if I couldn’t cope with living with it I would have ended the relationship.’

She later adds when asked if she had forgiven her husband: ‘Life goes on and I’ve moved on. You’ve moved on. Not the behaviour, no. It’s not acceptable.

‘Forgiveness I’d say is different. It’s not acceptable what he’s done but it’s happened and that was a stage of life that we were in at the time. But we’ve moved on.

‘I forgive him but it wasn’t acceptable. If it comes up we talk about it like we are talking about it now. I haven’t got the anger I did at the time.’

She added: ‘I do think it’s amazing that we are where we are today. We’re lucky that we both had the strength and support of each other and the people around us to keep going. That’s something we’ve had to work hard at.

‘I wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t forgiven him.’ 

While Wayne says: ‘It’s important that teammates, friends, family remember me for who I am rather than what I’ve done. Stuff that has happened in the past, with girls for instance. Stuff I regret. It’s something I feel that has stuck against my name.

‘I think it’s important because it is part of what has happened with my life growing up. People still see that and look at me in a different way. I’m not that type of person.’ 

In a recent soul-baring interview with Oliver Holt, The Mail on Sunday’s Chief Sports Writer, ahead of the documentary’s release, Wayne opened up on his ‘self-binges’ with alcohol and the effects it had on his wife. 

Wayne explained that the pressures of going from a council estate upbringing to fame and fortune from the age of 16, when he made his professional debut for Everton, led to what he calls ‘explosions’.  

‘I used to hold almost everything in and keep it to myself and it would build up. I would say ‘F*** it’ and go out and make silly mistakes with the explosion,’ he said.

‘I learned that when I felt that coming, I needed to sit down and talk to someone. That calmed things down. I spoke to Coleen quite a few times, her mum and dad and my mum and dad,’ adding: ‘I was trying to figure out how to deal with it by myself.’

Speaking about the documentary, Wayne said he wanted people to see every side of him. ‘There have been mistakes in the past, which I have always held my hands up to.’

‘It was tough for me to do it and for Coleen to do it. When tough moments have come up, we have sat down and spoke about them and figured out how we are going to get through it.’

Alluding to the scandals that previously engulfed him, including partying and other women, Wayne admitted of his wife: 

‘The first thing you see is her forgiving some of the stuff I’ve done but then we have always sat down and been open about it and figured out what is best for us as a family and we have taken that into the film.’   

Their relationship has been marred with various cheating scandals – with the footballer making national headlines when he was found to have visited three proustites as a teenager. 

In 2004 after Wayne, then aged 18, moved to Manchester United, it was discovered that the teenager paid £140 for sex with prostitute Charlotte Glover, 21.

It was also claimed that at a brothel in Liverpool he slept with Gina McCarrick, then 37, and grandmother Patricia Tierney, then 48, who wore a rubber catsuit and was known as the ‘Auld Slapper’. 

Devastated Coleen stood by her man but didn’t comment publicly on the claims – though later admitted that when the scandal came out she hadn’t yet slept with Wayne herself. 

The pair worked through their troubles and wed four years later, though their newlywed bliss was short-lived, as it emerged in 2010 that the footballer had slept with two more prostitutes.    

Wayne was found to be having secret hotel sessions with £1000-a-night prostitute Jenny Thompson and fellow call girl Helen Wood while Coleen was pregnant with their first son, Kai.

Their last meeting was in October 2009, a month before Coleen gave birth. 

In 2017, Wayne was alleged to have enjoyed a ‘kiss and cuddle’ with another woman before being arrested for drink driving while Coleen was pregnant with their fourth child. 

The footballer was charged with drink-driving after being caught behind the wheel of a VW Beetle belonging to a woman he picked up after a 10-hour drinking session while his pregnant wife and three sons were on holiday.  

Lettings agent worker Laura Simpson, 29, said the pair had ‘kissed and cuddled’ and she would have ‘s*****d’ him if he had not been pulled over by the police. 

Coleen then flew back from Spain with their children and wrote a candid Facebook post about the scandal. 

She penned: ‘Before all the stories begin, Yes, I have put my wedding ring on……. A lot of people will be saying ‘you don’t have to explain yourself, don’t feel like you have to do this’ etc, I know I don’t, but I am and I want to.

‘It didn’t feel right wearing my ring, I see it as a sign of commitment and I was unsure what was happening. I don’t always wear my ring day to day, especially when I go the gym.

Insisting she is a ‘strong person’ and doesn’t need people to feel sorry for her, Coleen set the record straight once and for all about her marriage.

She continued: ‘A few people are probably thinking am stupid for staying in my marriage. I am not stupid, I know my own mind and it’s something I want to try and work on.

‘Before the headlines start…. No, I’m not taking Wayne back as he’s never left. Yes, it has been a s**t time, and yes, time was spent apart and I thought my marriage might have been at an end. 

‘I’m not going to list Wayne’s good qualities as a person as I don’t think he deserves it at this time but one thing is that he is a brilliant dad.

‘He’s made silly and selfish mistakes, some he’s learnt from, some obviously not. However maybe that will change? In life, you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.’

Referencing the night of Wayne’s arrest for drink driving, Coleen appeared to blame the influence of alcohol for his behaviour.

She wrote: ‘One thing I do know is that too much alcohol on a night out is a dangerous and a lot of stupid mistakes are made and things are said under the influence.

‘I would never trust ANYONE who has had a lot of alcohol, it changes some people drastically.

Coleen also hit back at fan speculation she was staying with Wayne for his money, insisting that love and family is what is keeping them together.

She penned: ‘It’s my decision …. do I love Wayne … yes I do. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be trying to make it work. I know I would be fine on my own, with just me and my children, but I don’t want to live like that, I want to try and continue our marriage and live as a family, because that’s what I want to do.

‘I’m not saying everything is fine and forgotten about, but we are as good as can be at this point, I’m not the type of person to put a show on and say we’re all loved-up….I’m just real.’

 

Coleen’s emotional Facebook post was met with an overwhelmingly positive response from her fans, who wished her luck and praised her for her ‘brave’ decision.

The family then moved to the States, but Wayne was embroiled in another scandal in 2019, with reports that their marriage was ‘hanging by a thread’ after Wayne was spotted drinking with barmaid Vicki Rosiek until 2.30am. 

The January incident came just weeks after he was arrested for being drunk at an airport in Washington DC.

Fast forward to the summer, and Wayne was embroiled in another cheating scandal in August after he was pictured at 5.30am in a Vancouver hotel with a mystery woman following a night out with his DC United teammates.

Wayne insisted that nothing untoward had happened, however, tweeting: ‘Nothing happened between me and any girl on that night in Vancouver. I did not enter the lift alone with the girl pictured in the hotel foyer.

‘The girl pictured in the club was simply one of many who innocently asked for autographs and pictures.’

Wayne then hit headlines once again this year after pictures emerged of the star partying and falling asleep in a hotel room with young women.  

The married father-of-four later admitted he ‘made a mistake’ and apologised to his family and Derby County after he paid the three party girls £1 to buy the copyright to the images after accusing them of blackmail, prompting them to offer an apology.

Wayne told Sky Sports News after he managed Derby to a friendly victory over Real Betis on Wednesday: ‘I made a mistake.

‘I went to a private party with two of my friends and from me, I’d like to apologise to my family and the club for the images which were going round and I want to move forward on this.

‘I’m grateful to Derby County for giving me this opportunity to get this club back to where it belongs, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure I do that.

‘It’s dealt with. I’m looking forward to moving forward and preparing for another game.’