Barry Bennell was once English football’s best person to spot youth talent, and was employed by Crewe Alexandra football club and had a close association with Stoke and Manchester City.
For years he coached some of the country’s brightest stars. In a position of privilege, allowed to spend many hours alone with talented youngsters, he abused their trust in the worst possible way.
His house was described as a kids’ grotto, complete with jukeboxes and games machines and even a caged monkey.
Bennell was also associated with junior teams in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester.
When he was 44 he pleaded guilty to 23 specimen charges at Chester Crown Court in 1998.
The court heard during the trial the period of abuse spanned from 1978 to 1992 as he travelled around the North-west and Midlands talent-spotting boys for junior football teams.
He would look for boys aged nine to 14 to play in teams in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire.
He would invite them to stay in his home or take them on tours, where the sex offences took place.
On sentencing Bennell to nine years behind bars in 1998, Judge Huw Daniel, told him: “You are a paedophile, that is not in doubt.”
In May 2015 he was sentenced to two years in prison for another historical sexual offence committed against a 12-year-old boy on a football pitch in Macclesfield.
Bennell is still permanently suspended from football.
With Andy Woodward waiving off his anonymity in this Barry Bennell case, in a recent interview to the Guardian, he disclosed that during his time with Bennell, his coach had started a relationship with his sister who was then just 16 years old.
‘He was so much older he didn’t want people to know at first and told me I would never play football again if I breathed a word of it,’ Woodward told the Guardian.
The psychological impact from years of abuse and later to remain quiet as football is considered, then and even today, to be a ‘manly’ game, is evident.
‘It was like a double whammy and he would try to abuse me sometimes even with my sister in the same house. Later, when their relationship became public, he would come round for Sunday dinner every weekend, sitting with my mum and dad and my family, laughing and joking. I was so frightened of him I just had to suffer in silence’, Woodward said in the interview.
The memories resulted in frequent and unpredictable panic attacks, later driving Woodward to the brink of suicide on numerous occasions.
The feeling of loneliness and fear of homophobic backlash resulted in many players who were sexually abused by Bennell to hide this incident in their life, fearing jeopardy to their playing career.
BARRY BENNELL’S SEXUAL ABUSE: HOW HE DID IT!
Steve Walters, who became Crewe’s youngest-ever player aged 16, recalled Bennell as a master manipulator and described his house as a ‘kids’ grotto,’ complete with a caged monkey in his interview with the Guardian.
‘There were jukeboxes, games machines, all sorts,’ said Walters, now 44. ‘I always remember this little monkey, wearing a yellow shirt, sitting on my shoulder and s****ing everywhere. Barry just used that as an excuse for me to take my top off.
‘Another time, he told us we were going to a haunted house,’ added Walters. ‘It was pitch black, in this old, haunted house, and we were s*** scared. Then he started telling us all these scary stories to leave us even more petrified. It was all so we would cuddle up close to him.’
Woodward went on to play for Bury, Sheffield United and Halifax Town while Walters’ career was curtailed when he was diagnosed with a blood disorder. The possibility that it might have been as the result of sexual contact with Bennell is something that haunts him.