Shedding shame by naming their abuser

Hey there!

This week I spoke to two people involved in a story that shook the UK’s most popular sport, football.

Let me say upfront that this edition includes reference to child sexual abuse, so if you want to skip this week, I’ll see you next time.  

“I write about VAR decisions and hamstring injuries … I didn’t really ask to get into this side of things.” Daniel Taylor is a sports journalist at The Athletic and, before that, The Guardian. Even after breaking the story that exposed one of the greatest scandals in English football, he told me he doesn’t see himself as an investigative journalist – more “a football journalist that quite likes taking on difficult subjects”.

It started ten years ago, when a reader put him in touch with a man called Andy Woodward, who had a story for him. All Daniel knew about it was that it involved the paedophile Barry Bennell, who had been a youth coach at Crewe Alexandra, Manchester City and Stoke City. 

In 1994, Bennell had been jailed in the US for an indecent assault on a British boy while on a football tour. It was the beginning of the unravelling of his sickening abuse. A Dispatches documentary followed in 1997. In September of that year, Bennell was deported back to the UK, where he was charged with and jailed for sexual offences against more than a dozen boys in 1998. After a second trial for another offence in 2015, he was jailed again. (see here for a timeline). 

But there were still many men who had been abused by Bennell in the 1970s, 80s and 90s who hadn’t felt able to speak out publicly – Andy, the man Daniel met, was one of them. He’d been involved in the 1998 trial, but as a victim had been granted lifelong anonymity.

For three hours, Daniel listened while Andy poured out his story in his front room. From the age of 11, the “football-daft kid” from a family of Manchester United supporters was abused by Bennell at Crewe Alexandra. Daniel remembers feeling stunned. Andy said he could use whatever he wanted in his article. 

On 16 November 2016, the story went live.

“It was madness,” Daniel told me. “If I answered the phone and spoke for 10 minutes then I missed like 10 other calls. I felt like every radio or TV station in Europe had my number.” “It started conversations,” said Daniel, “Even as far as Brazil … so it did kind of go global.” 

And it wasn’t just the media contacting him. Other survivors came forward, including former Crewe midfielder Steve Walters. Others contacted the police. Daniel stayed on the story, getting to know the men who reached out, being part of WhatsApp group chats and attending multiple court cases.  

Bennell faced fresh charges in 2018. By coincidence, Daniel was sat very close to where Bennell was in court on the day he was found guilty of 50 offences relating to 12 junior players. That night he “floated” from the court to Wigan Athletic where he was covering a match. 

“The professional exhilaration and emotion of sitting in that court and thinking, ‘God, this all started with Andy…’ ” Daniel won nearly every award going for the investigation, but says it made him feel a bit awkward. “These lads, I know their stories and what they have done by talking publicly … compared to what I have done, which is just my job.”

Bennell was convicted five times in his life, most recently being sentenced to 34 years in prison. The judge in the 2018 trial called him “the devil incarnate”. There could be more than 100 survivors of his abuse. He died in prison in 2023. 

The impact of Daniel’s series of articles has been huge, including triggering inquiries by the Football Association (FA), various clubs and the government. 

Manchester City conducted its own inquiry into abuse by coaches. It established that there had been child sexual abuse conducted by Barry Bennell, John Broome and Bill Toner. The offences spanned the 1960s to the early 1990s but weren’t connected to each other. The report also noted the “wholly inadequate response” of Manchester City and its failure at that time to investigate fully or involve the police.

Manchester City apologised unreservedly for the “unimaginable suffering experienced by those who were abused as a result of the Club’s association with these men.” It set up a compensation fund that has paid £5.5 million to 84 abuse survivors. In response to the FA’s inquiry, Crewe said it “sincerely regrets and is disgusted by the terrible crimes committed by Mr Bennell”, and it has the “deepest sympathy” for the survivors. In 2018, Stoke City said it was participating fully with the FA’s inquiry. 

Unfortunately, there are other abusers and many other survivors, not all of whom will get their day in court. “I’ve had hundreds of cases sent to me,” Daniel said. He remembers forwarding them on to Andy Woodward with a simple message – I hope you realise that you started this.

Daniel doesn’t think that a Barry Bennell situation could happen again today. “Football clubs tell me that they've massively tightened up the whole sport,” he says, recalling someone from a Premier League club jokingly telling him: “You don’t know how much trouble you’ve caused.” 

“The very first time Barry Bennell got arrested was in America in 1994. It was all over the news. And all the parents, including mine, said, ‘It’s all wrong, we need to send money to help.’ He actually called our house from his prison, and my mum was saying we were going to fundraise for him and I said, ‘Stop, stop! It’s all true.’ She didn’t have a clue, none of the parents did. They trusted him, loved him. We fed him and looked after him. 

That was the catalyst. So when Cheshire Police came to me as part of the fallout of that investigation, I kind of welcomed them with open arms. At that point I was in my early 20s. I told them everything that happened, all the details, but I didn’t make a complaint.

Bennell got arrested and jailed several times after that and in 2015 I picked up the phone to Cheshire police and said, ‘I’m ready now’. I was getting older and didn’t want to have any regrets, and I could also deal with the shame and embarrassment a bit better. I was a police officer for 23 years and I took my own statement. It was in 2018 that we went to trial. I got eight [guilty] counts in my name, it should have been 800. 

I got wind that Danny Taylor had done a story with Woody [Andy Woodward] for The Guardian in November 2016 and it went bang. It went massive. That empowered a lot of other boys to come forward. Danny contacted me and we did a story. We published it post-conviction with my name, as I waived my right to anonymity.

Danny ran with the story and it went global. He got lots of plaudits, rightly so, because he’s empowered many, many boys. It’s so eloquently written too. He came to the trials. His part was massive in terms of telling the truth, letting the world know about the known secret within football. There has been some other great media coverage. The original Dispatches documentary by Deborah Davies in 1997 was amazing. She did a fantastic follow up on Al Jazeera too. There was a really good three-part documentary on the BBC in 2021. 

The 2016 publicity was a massive wake up call to the FA. The chair, Greg Clarke, called it one of the biggest crises in the history of the FA. They stepped up to the mark. They formed a survivor support and safeguarding advisory group, that I’m part of, and have set up a fund for the lads that have nothing. 

I also gave evidence to the Sheldon inquiry [commissioned by the FA] and, more recently, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. It recommended mandatory reporting of known or suspected abuse, which I am a big supporter of. 

I got released from Manchester City at an early age. I didn’t have any education to speak of. So, then I went to college and worked at leisure centres, because I was good at sport. I then joined the police quite late, at 32. I did 23 years and left with skills and qualifications in detective work, investigations and dealing with people and horrible situations. 

Now I’ve gone back to football. It’s sort of full circle. Now I’m Head of Safeguarding at Port Vale FC. I’m so blessed and fortunate to be back in that bubble. There have been loads of bumps in the road. I’ve been on medication for 20, 30 years and had loads of counselling, help and support. But it was the best thing to break my silence because to carry that burden, it ate you up inside.”

Stories about abuse are always profoundly difficult to tell and hard to read. It can be tricky, I think, to see where change is possible when the actions of a few people can harm so many. But what Daniel’s investigation – and Gary and Andy’s honesty –accomplished was more than simply justice for Bennell’s victims. The safeguarding procedures in place now protect hundreds of children who might otherwise have been at risk from other Bennells.

As an old editor here at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism used to say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

See you next week,