Barry Bennell

Barry Bennell was born in 1954 in Manchester, United Kingdom, to Alec Bennell and Marjorie Bennell.

Barry Bennell was a youth player at Chelsea and was associated with many clubs. He was mostly linked with the Crewe Alexandra club which was a small town football club. This club was famous for developing talented young boys.

Bennell started working as football coach in the 1980s. Additionally, he also collaborated with Manchester City and several junior teams such as Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire.

He was known as the Pied Piper who would make stars out of junior footballers. But the Pied Piper turned into a predator and molested his own students.

Barry Bennell had the reputation of being the best youth coach in the country. He surely took advantage of his position and committed some heinous crimes again and again.

His crime was noticed back in 1994 when the police in Jacksonville, Florida charged him for the first time for sexually abusing a 13-year-old British boy on a trip. Bennell also used to take his students on trips and ‘soccer camps’. As per the report published in Birmingham Mail, the boy after coming back from his trip informed his parents about the abuse which resulted in Bennell’s arrest. He was sentenced in US prison for four years. This arrest threw light upon Bennell’s crimes.

Much later, on 16 November 2016, the former Crewe defender Andy Woodward spoke in an interview with The Guardian newspaper about years of abuse he had suffered at the hands of Bennell. In a much detailed interview, Woodward exposed Bennell and his intention behind coaching young boys. In his interview, Woodward had stated that Bennell had raped him more than hundred times during Bennell’s years as football coach of Crewe. In the next few days after Woodward’s interview, the police took reports of more than six people who had been victims of Bennell’s abuse.

Woodward criticised Crewe for not coming forward and apologising to the victims. However, on November 24, Dario Gradi, manager of Crewe during 1980s stated that he had no knowledge of Bennell’s intentions and crimes until he was arrested.

By March 2017, Bennell was already charged with a further 21 offences which included 18 counts of indecent assault, one attempted sexual assault, and two serious sexual assaults to four boys aged between 14 and 16. In July 2017, he was remanded in custody as his trial was to begin in January 2018.