When Barry Bennell, the paedophile football coach, was called as a witness for Manchester City in a High Court trial, his victims were united in their condemnation of the club.
Eight former footballers had initiated the civil proceedings because they were seeking damages from City for the sexual abuse they had suffered in the club’s junior system.
Bennell’s appearance as a defence witness for City in December 2021, giving evidence via video link from prison, hardened their view against the club and was described by one former player as “beyond cruel”.
How, they asked, could City’s legal team involve a man who was serving a 36-year prison sentence and had been described as “a child-abuser on an industrial scale” targeting hundreds of boys as young as nine in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s?
Today, though, it can be revealed how City have set about trying to mend relations with the former players and, to a large extent, how they have succeeded in showing the relevant people that it was not perhaps as it may have seemed from the perspective of: who called Bennell?
The case against the club — TVZ and others (anonymised) v Manchester City Football Club Limited — ended in 2022 with the judge, Justice Johnson, ruling against Bennell’s victims because he felt the claims had been brought too late to result in a fair trial. City had denied liability for Bennell’s crimes.
An application to the Court of Appeal was ruled out in 2023 and that, in effect, seemed to signal the end of a long, gruelling and highly distressing ordeal for those eight men, now in their 40s and 50s, who had chosen to take their own legal action rather than going through the club’s compensation scheme. Their right to lifelong anonymity, as well as that of other victims, is why comments on this article have been disabled.
Since then, however, City have been trying to come up with a more satisfactory conclusion for all the people who were involved, as well as seeking to clarify the legal processes that led to Bennell giving evidence to the High Court from a windowless room at Littlehey prison in Cambridgeshire.
Quietly, without seeking any publicity, it was communicated to the former players that City wanted to invite them in, individually, to receive a face-to-face apology for what happened to them as children. The same opportunity was also offered to four other claimants who had initiated separate legal action.
All 12 have been offered compensation, in the form of ex-gratia payments, separate from the redress scheme that City set up in 2019 on behalf of Bennell’s victims, as well as those of two more paedophiles who were previously linked to the club, one in the 1960s and one in the 1990s.
In total, City have now paid out nearly £5.5million ($6.7m) to 84 sexual abuse survivors (the vast majority linked to Bennell), with club director Simon Pearce taking it upon himself to be involved in some long, difficult and often emotional conversations with the 12 former players who had tried, unsuccessfully, to sue the club.
In those conversations, it has been made clear that the club fully accept the players’ accounts, that City do not dispute the club’s links with Bennell and have always wanted his victims to receive compensation for the crimes that led to the judge, in his 2018 criminal trial, describing him as “sheer evil” and “the devil incarnate”.
A number of follow-up meetings were arranged in which the relevant people were invited to the Etihad complex. Counsellors were made available. Parents, wives and other family members were also made welcome. They, too, received apologies in the same way that Gary Cliffe — whose story was covered in The Athletic — did when it was his turn, as a former City prospect, to go back to the club where he suffered almost unspeakable horrors.
Cliffe was one of the 12 men whose testimony led to Bennell being convicted (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
Some meetings lasted several hours and, for the people involved, it quickly became apparent this was never just a box-ticking exercise. Many have told The Athletic the apologies felt sincere and heartfelt and that it has helped them enormously to realise that despite everything else going on with City, people at the club are emotionally invested in their stories.
A lot of Bennell’s victims, if not all, have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and other issues because of what happened in their childhoods. Many still suffer to this day and, though it is difficult to gauge every opinion, some have taken the opportunity, sitting opposite City’s executives, to disclose what happened to them.
It is the first time any of those players have received personal apologies and, rather than it just being a one-off gesture, many have kept in touch with the people expressing that sorrow on City’s behalf.
Nic Scott, City’s director of safeguarding, has also been involved, explaining how the modern-day club make sure their academy boys and girls are kept safe.
There have been follow-up invitations to attend games, or just to talk, and an underlying promise that City will be there for them in the future, too — a statement that has meant a lot to some of the people, granted lifetime anonymity, who had come to feel the club had pulled down the shutters on them.
“The apology meant everything,” says one, who attended the meeting as a family. “Nobody had ever said sorry before. But they knew our story, they listened and they acknowledged what had happened. We felt it was totally genuine. He (Pearce) basically said, ‘This was on us, we should never have let that happen to you’.
“We came away from that meeting with a bit of peace. It was very emotional. The High Court was such a devastating time in our lives and we were so angry that we’d been put in that position. I couldn’t watch City on television, I couldn’t look at a City shirt in the street without feeling sick. But our opinion of City has changed now because they have gone beyond our expectations.”
That still leaves the question about why Bennell was called as a defence witness for City when his involvement was obviously going to be hugely distressing, to say the least, for the people whose lives he had already damaged.
City’s explanation is that decision, and the case as a whole, fell into the remit of the solicitors representing the company’s insurers rather than the club itself. Could the club not have stopped it? City are adamant that, no, there was nothing they could do about it — and that they, too, were acutely aware of how terrible it looked.
Bennell died in prison, aged 69, in September 2023 and, as it turned out, his evidence did not have any bearing on the outcome of the High Court case. Instead, the judge described him as a “manipulative liar” and wholly unreliable witness.
It did, however, give Bennell — red sweatshirt, gold watch and clearly prepared, flicking through boxes of legal files — one last chance to spite some of the people who had helped put him behind bars.
His account was that he had never represented City as a scout, despite holding a business card to the contrary, and that none of the boys he had abused had anything to do with the club. One of the players, he said, was a “born liar” and another had put on “an Oscar performance” during the 2018 criminal trial that ended with Bennell being convicted of 50 specimen charges. “I was amazed at the acting, good acting,” he said. “The tears!”
A court artist’s depiction of Bennell appearing as a defence witness for City
Bennell was a coach and scout in City’s network of junior teams, credited with discovering many professional and international footballers, before leaving Manchester in the mid-1980s to become Crewe Alexandra’s youth coach, using his position with both clubs to prey on so many boys the detectives investigating his case described him, numbers-wise, as one of the worst paedophiles in UK criminal history.
His appearance as a High Court witness led to James Counsell, the barrister representing the former players, accusing City’s legal team of calling a “wholly unreliable liar” who had been “disbelieved on his oath, to the criminal standard, on numerous occasions”.
The judge agreed and, against that backdrop, it is easy to understand why it caused so much resentment and distress for the ex-players who, as kids, were raped and molested by the man giving evidence.
“The engagement with City (since the case ended) has been a positive step,” says one. “We deeply appreciate the club’s active interest in addressing the harm caused to those involved in the High Court case. This signifies an important shift toward recognition and support, which was long overdue.”
Three years on, however, the effects of the High Court case are still being felt. “The trauma inflicted upon us has left a lasting scar,” adds the same man, still living in the Manchester area. “The decision to use Barry Bennell as a witness was particularly heinous… a profoundly cruel act that exacerbated the suffering of those already impacted by his abuse.
“The repercussions of that abuse, and subsequently the civil case, have been devastating. Lives, relationships and futures have been lost or irreparably damaged by the actions of those determined to ‘win’ at all costs.
“While we are committed to building a positive relationship with City, it must never be forgotten that the abuse we suffered was horrific and the handling of the civil case compounded that harm immeasurably.”
Keoghs, the legal firm representing City’s insurers, has issued a statement defending the decision to involve Bennell, saying it was “taken very seriously and carefully given the likely impact it would have” and “we fully acknowledge the great difficulty and understandable distress that each of the claimants and their families experienced in pursuing these civil claims”.
Bennell’s involvement, says Keoghs, was “based upon counsel advice and instructions from the insurers” and taken with City’s knowledge.
“Unfortunately, Bennell had to be called as a witness because he was the only remaining living person available to give evidence about his alleged connection with MCFC (City) during the relevant period. If Bennell had not been called to give evidence, then MCFC would have potentially been open to criticism for not presenting the court with his evidence on the central issue in the case.”
Keoghs, based in Bolton, Greater Manchester, specialise in defending football clubs and other organisations, including ones linked to the Roman Catholic church, from civil claims relating to victims of abuse.
The company’s tactics have been criticised as overly aggressive — or “barbaric”, to quote one player — by many former footballers in the sexual abuse scandal that Greg Clarke, then chairman of the Football Association, described as “a tidal wave” and the biggest crisis he could remember in the history of the sport.
Keoghs, however, appears to be saying that the players in the City case could have been spared some distress if their own legal representatives had chosen a different line of cross-examination. “The claimants’ representatives took the decision to question Bennell at trial about the abuse he committed, despite this being unnecessary as it was never being suggested by MCFC that the abuse did not take place.”
The damage will never be fully repaired and, in a story of this nature, there will never truly be a happy ending. Too many lives have been wrecked, too much hurt caused.
More than 100 ex-players, linked to City and Crewe, reported Bennell to the police without their cases coming to court. Other victims have decided against coming forward, often trying to protect their children or elderly parents from the trauma it would cause.
As for the 12 former players who sought to sue City, at least there is a more positive outcome than seemed likely after the High Court proceedings ended in acrimony and bitterness. New bonds have been made. Many of those people say the modern-day City have shown considerable empathy in a position when many big organisations might have regarded the High Court verdict as the end of the matter.
Critics might question whether it is an attempt on City’s part to shape the headlines more positively. On the contrary, City have never involved journalists.
Everything has been handled away from the media spotlight and it would have remained an entirely private arrangement but for the author of this article having written the original stories that led to Bennell’s imprisonment and, as such, developing a long-standing relationship with many of the players and their families.
It is only now, with many lives changed for the better, that it feels appropriate to report what has happened. Pearce alone has been involved in more than 100 face-to-face meetings. It has been a priority even at a time when City have been dealing with all sorts of other issues, most notably the 115 charges they are facing for allegedly breaking financial rules. Other executives, such as Abi Leckenby and lawyer Charlotte English, have been prominently involved and have been praised for their sensitivities.
“Our greatest hope for this process is that each survivor, and their family and friends, understands the deep and sincere admiration that the club has for them — those who have spoken freely, those who spoke anonymously and those who are yet to disclose and indeed may choose never to do so,” says Pearce.
“Their bravery and strength must never be forgotten and will always be acknowledged by the club. Our experience is that every survivor has had a different journey and each is uniquely remarkable and heroic.”
(Top photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
