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Football coach Barry Bennell was determined paedophile, court told Football coach Barry Bennell was determined paedophile, court told
(about 1 hour later)
The former football coach Barry Bennell was a “predatory and determined” paedophile who engaged in systematic abuse of young boys, a court has heard. The former football coach Barry Bennell was a “devious paedophile” who subjected boys to hundreds of sexual assaults and even carried out his crimes inside the ground of one professional club, the opening day of his trial has heard.
The 63-year-old appeared at Liverpool crown court via video-link on Tuesday, accused of 48 counts of child sexual abuse. Bennell, 63, is alleged to have carried out offences at Crewe Alexandra’s ground, and the jury at Liverpool crown court was told that he had “pretty much unfettered access to large numbers of young lads who dreamt of a life in professional football”.
Nicholas Johnson QC, prosecuting, told the court that the ex-Crewe Alexandra coach, who has since changed his name to Richard Jones, worked as a youth football coach in Cheshire, Manchester and Derbyshire in the late 1970s and into the 1990s. Nicholas Johnson QC, prosecuting, told the court that Bennell, who has since changed his name to Richard Jones, worked as a youth football coach in Cheshire, Manchester and Derbyshire between the late 1970s and the 1990s.
Johnson said: “As such, he had pretty much unfettered access to large numbers of young lads who dreamed of a life in professional football. “Although it seems that Mr Jones, or Mr Bennell, was a skilled and relatively successful coach, we allege that he had a much darker side,” Johnson said. “He was also, we say, a predatory and determined paedophile. His particular predilection was pre-pubescent boys.”
“Although it seems that Mr Jones, or Mr Bennell, was a skilled and relatively successful coach, we allege that he had a much darker side. He was also, we say, a predatory and determined paedophile: his particular predilection was pre-pubescent boys.” One boy alleges he was abused more than 100 times, aged 11 to 13, after Bennell introduced himself as a scout for Manchester City and took him under his wing. Bennell, in police interviews, has denied the boy’s allegations but remembered him as “a nice looking lad ... but one who got away”.
Johnson said some of the abuse took place at the ground of Crewe Alexandra and when the football club was on tour, while many of the incidents also took place at his home addresses. Bennell has admitted seven charges of sexually abusing three boys, aged 11 to 14, but denies 48 other counts relating to 11 boys, aged as young as nine, from 1979 to 1991.
Bennell is charged with offences including indecent assault, buggery and attempted buggery on boys aged between eight and 14. The court was told he had already served prison sentences in England and the United States for child-sex offences committed against junior footballers but that he now claims he is the “victim of a concerted effort by people from his past”.
The jury, made up of seven women and five men, was told that Bennell was appearing in court via video-link because he needed to be fed through a tube as a result of illness. It heard that, if he gave evidence during the trial, he would be present in court. Bennell’s account is that the complainants are “jumping on the bandwagon and maliciously making up stories about him … motivated by attention-seeking or the prospect of compensation”.
Ahead of his trial starting on Monday, Bennell pleaded guilty to six counts of indecent assault. On the first day of a trial that is scheduled to last eight weeks, the jury of seven women and five men was told that Bennell was appearing in court via video-link because he needed to be fed through a tube as a result of illness. The court was told that, if he gave evidence during the trial, he would be present.
A reporting restriction on a guilty plea to a charge of indecent assault entered at an earlier hearing was lifted by the recorder of Liverpool judge Clement Goldstone QC. The prosecutor told jurors there were admissions of mutual masturbation but that Bennell was also accused of much more serious offending, including oral sex and buggery – which would be categorised these days as male rape. Johnson added that the jurors would have to decide if they agreed with Bennell’s version of events or believed the prosecution case that a successful coach was committing serious sexual offences on a large scale and over a long period of time against “very vulnerable lads”.
The seven offences Bennell has admitted relate to three victims and happened between 1981 and 1991, when they were aged between 11 and 14. One boy, the court heard, recalls his family being completely taken in by the way Bennell “presented to the world as an attractive, confident and skilful individual”, giving him sports kit and treating him to fast-food takeaways on overnight stops at his house.
The prosecutor told jurors that part of the evidence they would hear concerned serious sexual allegations made in the past against Bennell by young footballers in England and Wales, and also in the US. According to the boy’s evidence, Bennell had a room where he kept bunk beds for boys to stay over. Before bed-time, the court was told, Bennell would “soften” the boys by playing horror films, deliberately frightening them to make them “more receptive” to being comforted and abused. He would share his bed two at a time and put on music to mask the abuse, it was alleged.
He said that, as a result of some of those allegations, the defendant had pleaded guilty to a number of sex offences and had served prison sentences in this jurisdiction and in the US.
When interviewed about the allegations he currently faces, said Johnson, from time to time the defendant said people were making things up about him and using details they had gleaned from the internet – put there by youth footballers who previously made complaints of serious sexual misconduct against him.
Johnson said: “He alleged that he is now in effect the victim of a concerted effort by people from the past to make false allegations against him. He suggested that when, in the past, he had been arrested for serious sexual offending, he had admitted what he had done.”
Johnson told jurors they may have already heard that Bennell had admitted some sexual offending against three people in this case.
Those were admissions of mutual masturbation, said the prosecutor, but Bennell is also accused of much more serious offending including both oral sex and buggery – which would be categorised these days as male rape.
He told jurors they would have to decide in evidence whether they were listening to a group of men who, as Bennell alleges, had “jumped on the bandwagon” and maliciously made up stories, or if they agreed with the crown’s case that a devious paedophile was committing serious sexual offences on a large scale and over a long period of time against “very vulnerable lads”.
Johnson added: “In those circumstances we will suggest in due course that it is no surprise either that the extent of his offending has taken so long to emerge or that there is repetition in the way, we allege, he committed his offences.”
The trial continues.The trial continues.