West News Wire: The Ministry of Justice announced that former football coach Barry Bennell, who was 69 years old and was serving a 34-year term for sexual charges, passed away in jail.
On Monday, a prison spokesman stated: “Prisoner Barry Bennell passed away at HMP Littlehey on September 16, 2023. The prisons and probation ombudsman will look into this incident as they do with all deaths while in detention.
The cancer-stricken serial paedophile was found guilty on 50 charges of assaulting the boys he coached between 1979 and 1991 and received a sentence in 2018.
He pleaded guilty to nine sexual offences, including six counts of indecent assault on two boys, and was given an additional four years in prison after being given his fifth prison sentence in 2020.
Police said at the time that his possible victims could number more than 100.
Bennell was first jailed in Florida in 1994 for raping a British boy on a football tour. He also was sentenced to prison in the UK in 1998, 2015, 2018 and 2020.
As he read out the lengthy declaration, Judge Clement Goldstone, who was presiding over the case in 2020, said: “You were the devil incarnate. To sate your selfish depravity, you robbed their innocence and childhood.
“Your behaviour towards these boys was pure evil,” the judge said. “You groomed and seduced them before putting them through, in some cases, the most severe, degrading, and humiliating abuse.”
Bennell’s case caused a stir in the British footballing community when it was revealed that youngsters had been subjected to physical and sexual abuse at football clubs all around the country in the 1970s and 1980s.
Paul Stewart, a former player for Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur as well as the national England squad, spoke at the trial about being bullied as a youth.
His account came after former Crewe player Andy Woodward went public with allegations against Bennell.
