Paedophile football coach Barry Bennell who abused more than 20 boys dies in prison aged 69

Convicted paedophile and football youth coach Barry Bennell has died in prison.

On Monday the Sun reported that Bennell died at HMP Littlehey in Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning aged 69.

A Prison Service spokesperson subsequently said: "Prisoner Barry Bennell died at HMP Littlehey on 16 September 2023. As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate."

In the Eighties and Nineties, Bennell was a youth coach at Crewe Alexandra, Manchester City and Stoke City.

He also had links to youth teams across Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Greater Manchester, where he used his position to sexually abuse boys.

Bennell was first jailed for four years in the United States in 1994 after he was convicted of abusing a 13-year-old British boy at a football camp in Florida.

The youth coach returned to the UK, where his record as a sexual predator was exposed by Channel 4 Dispatches film Soccer's Foul Play in 1999.

Bennell was subsequently jailed for nine years at Chester Crown Court, having admitted to 23 offences dating back to the Seventies.

Moreover, in 2015 Bennell pleaded guilty to enticing a boy under the age of 14 to commit an act of gross indecency in the early Eighties - and was jailed for two further years.

And after footballer Andy Woodward revealed he had been groomed and abused by Bennell for four years, starting when he was just 11, more victims came forward.

In 2018 Bennell was convicted of over 50 sexual offences against 22 boys at Liverpool Crown Court.

When he was sentenced Judge Clement Goldstone QC described Bennell as "the devil incarnate" and a "child molester on a industrial scale".

Judge Goldstone said: "Your behaviour towards these boys in grooming and seducing them before subjecting them to, in some cases, the most serious, degrading and humiliating abuse was sheer evil."

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Topics: Manchester City, Stoke City, Football

Chris Byfield

Sport journalist with experience writing on football, rugby, boxing and the Olympics. I'm also a Crystal Palace fan. Please don't hold this against me.