Bennell virtually always had boys, mostly aged 11 to 14, staying overnight, often three in a bed. He lived in a house that has been described as a “children’s paradise”, featuring arcade machines, a pool table, a jukebox and his own mini petting zoo, including a monkey, two Pyrenean dogs, an Alsatian named after the Brazilian footballer Zico and a puma that he walked on a lead until it clawed someone in a local Woolworths. He liked to be known as Bené, not Benny, and insisted it was spelt with an accent because that was how Pelé had it. He always seemed to have an attractive girlfriend. He wore designer labels and drove expensive cars, including a Porsche he had bought in cash. Yet Bennell, in his twenties and thirties, was remembered by the mother of one victim as “gorgeous - bronzed, handsome, with bouncing curly hair”. The stereotype of the paedophile is an old man with a long raincoat and lank, greasy hair. Others felt compelled to suffer in silence because, however much it made them want to scream with frustration sometimes, they felt too emotionally damaged to come forward, especially when they had children of their own and elderly parents.Īn artist’s impression of Bennell’s appearance in court via a video link from prison in 2021 I think of many others, too, who would rather not be named but have their own acute understanding of why a judge described Bennell as “the devil incarnate” and “sheer evil”. “Over a four-year period, virtually every weekend, every school holiday - and I’d even miss school on some occasions - we’d be talking about hundreds of times. He was 11 when the abuse started and once told me he had lost count of the number of times it happened. It (his death) raises many emotions and feelings of hurt and pain.”Ĭliffe has become such a good friend he asked me to go with him, in 2020, when he was invited to City to receive a personal apology from the club’s modern-day directors. “I am just glad I gained eight convictions against him to help with everybody else who put him behind bars. “He died inside prison, which is where he needed to be,” was Cliffe’s take. I also spoke to Gary Cliffe, who came through City’s youth system in the 1980s. Was there any remorse? Did he realise he was wrecking people’s lives? One of the first messages I received today came from another ex-player who had written to HMP Littlehey recently asking about arrangements to see Bennell because he wanted to look him in the eye, take back some more control and ask a number of questions that will now always go unanswered. I was working for The Guardian at the time and, on the night before publication, I had a wobble and asked whether he was absolutely certain he wanted to say the number of Bennell’s victims was in the hundreds.Ĭhris Unsworth (second left), Micky Fallon (centre) and Steve Walters (second right), victims of Bennell, outside Liverpool Crown Court in 2018 (Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images) Woodward was the first footballer to waive his anonymity in the unwavering belief that others would come forward. I think of Andy Woodward, the former Crewe player, who started what Greg Clarke, then the Football Association chairman, described at the time as a “tidal wave” and the worst crisis he could remember in the history of the sport. So those are the people I am thinking of today when I recall their courage and spirit of togetherness to make sure not just that Bennell was taken off the streets but that something good ultimately came of it, too. Unfortunately for all those people, now in their forties and fifties, the courts in the UK seem unable to cope with mass offending and the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was no point arranging any more trials given Bennell was almost guaranteed to die in prison anyway. But we can only dread to think what the true number might be, as we take in the news from the Ministry of Justice that Bennell has died in prison, aged 69.Īt one stage, the police told me they had received another 100-plus complaints - and rising - from other boys he had preyed upon in the junior system at Crewe Alexandra and, before that, as a coach and talent-spotter with links to Manchester City. He had received prison sentences on five occasions, including a 31-year term in 2018. Bennell was described during one trial as having an “insatiable appetite for young boys”. He was writing from his cell in a category-C prison for sex offenders and, as always, he was trying to manipulate people for his own purposes.īennell - let’s use his real name - was serving a 36-year prison sentence and he was writing to me because I was the journalist who had started the explosion of stories, from November 2016 onwards, with the countless boys he had raped and sexually abused and subjected to almost unspeakable horrors.
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