Ex-footballer Andy Woodward bravely reveals how sick paedophile coach Barry Bennell raped him over four years of hell
The 43-year-old has decided to waive his right to anonymity and has given a hard-hitting interview on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme
FOOTIE-MAD Andy Woodward thought all his dreams were coming true when he was scouted by a top coach at the age of 11.
Instead it was the start of a nightmare that has lasted more than three decades.
The youth coach, Barry Bennell, took the lad under his wing then raped and abused him for four years, the former Sheffield United defender revealed for the first time yesterday.
And he has lived in torment ever since, coming close to suicide on several occasions and suffering panic attacks so bad that he had to give up his beloved sport aged just 29.
Bravely waiving his right to anonymity in The Guardian, Andy said: “My life has been ruined . . . but how many others are there?
“I’m talking about hundreds of children who Barry Bennell cherry-picked for various football teams and who now, as adults, might still be living with that awful fear.
“We’ve seen with the Jimmy Savile case how people have had the courage, yet I’d say within the football world it’s even harder to speak out.
“Only now, at the age of 43, I feel I can actually live without that secret . . . I want to get it out and give other people an opportunity to do the same.
“I want to give people strength. I survived it.
“I lost my career, which was a massive thing for me, but I’m still here. I came through the other side. Other people can have that strength.”
Stockport lad Andy was playing for his local boys’ team when serial paedophile Bennell, now 62, spotted him and and recruited him for Crewe Alexandra’s youth club.
To help him get to practice more easily Barry arranged for him to stay at his house near the Peak District on weekends and holidays.
The lair was set up to enchant children and it was where the abuse began, lasting until Andy was 15.
He said: “It was like a treasure trove, a child’s dream. When you walked through the door there were three fruit machines.
“He had a pool table. There was a little monkey upstairs in a cage who would sit on your shoulder.
“He had two Pyrenean mountain dogs. He even kept a wild cat.
“It was my dream, remember, to be a footballer and it was like he was dropping little sweets towards me, ‘You can stay with me and this is what I can do for you.’ I was a kid, I trusted him.”
Then the abuse began. Andy told Victoria Derbyshire on BBC2 yesterday: “Initially it was sexual touching but it rapidly got worse and then he raped me. I don’t want to put a number on the times but put it this way, it was for a four-year period.”
Andy added to The Guardian: “What he’d do sometimes, to show the fear factor and make sure I never told anyone, was get out some nunchucks.
“He was a master with them. He’d tell me to hold out a piece of paper. I’d be physically shaking.
You see what I can do, you see how powerful I am?
“Then he’d hit it with enough force to split it in half and make a little comment, ‘You see what I can do, you see how powerful I am?’
“It was either threats of violence or he’d use football to manipulate control. ‘At any point,’ he’d tell me, ‘you will go, you will disappear and that dream won’t happen’.”
Bennell was eventually jailed for nine years in 1998 after admitting abusing boys as young as nine over two decades. He had been reported by another player and Andy gave a witness statement.
In 2015 Bennell was given a further two-year term for another historical sex offence against a 12-year-old boy.
Andy is sure there are others.
Bennell was a youth coach at Crewe Alexandra in the Eighties and Nineties and also coached at Manchester City. He scouted for Stoke City and also had close connections to other teams in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester.
One former player linked to Bennell was Wales manager and ex-Leeds United ace Gary Speed, who took his own life in 2011 aged 42.
In 2012 Bennell admitted to The Sunday Times that Speed was one of the boys who stayed at his house.
He told the paper he had not abused Speed, but added that even if he had done he would be unlikely to admit it.
He then said cryptically: “There’s no peace now. How can you have peace when you’ve killed somebody?
To me, killing someone is what you’ve done to them, because their life’s never the same again.”
Lawyers for Speed’s wife, Louise, subsequently put out a statement saying they had been assured he was not one of the pervert’s victims.
Meanwhile, the abuse of Andy had a chilling twist — when he was 14, his 16-year-old sister began an affair with Bennell. They went on to marry four years later — so Andy’s rapist became his brother-in-law.
Andy said of the early days of the relationship — which ended as soon as the first allegations were made against Bennell: “He would come round for Sunday dinner every weekend, sitting with my mum and dad and my family, laughing and joking. I was so frightened of him I just had to suffer in silence.”
In spite of it all, Andy progressed at Crewe Alexandra and made his first-team debut aged 15.
Though even then his anguish was playing out on the pitch.
He explained: “Living with a secret is probably one of the hardest things you can ever live with.
“If you look at my career you will see I was plagued with quite a few injuries. A lot of those injuries were actually mental injuries.
He would come round for Sunday dinner every weekend, sitting with my mum and dad and my family, laughing and joking
“I had desperately wanted to be a footballer. It’s all I lived for. Yet there was so much anger and hurt within me .” League one team Bury signed him in 1995 and while playing for them in 1999 he suffered his first panic attack on the pitch.
He eventually moved to Sheffield United, then went on loan to Scunthorpe United, finally retiring in 2002.
Despite being rated as a promising and reliable defender, he made only 154 league starts in ten years.
The abuse had pushed him to become what he describes as “a mess, spiralling to the point where I wasn’t going to be here any more”.
He continued: “I’ve parked in my garage with a pipe. I’ve been to woods with a rope. I’ve had tablets, ready to go.
“I took it to the point where I couldn’t be here any more.
“People talk about it being for attention or a cry for help but I can say, categorically, mine was because I didn’t know how I could live. The only thing that ever stopped me was knowing the devastation it would cause others.”
I can finally have a voice and I want to give others a belief
After his football career Andy spent 12 years in the police force, but was dismissed last week after a disciplinary tribunal for having a relationship with the adult sister of a crime victim.
Now Andy hopes to do good with his revelations. He said: “I’m convinced there is an awful lot more to come out.
“This has taken an immense amount of strength and courage but I need closure. I can finally have a voice and I want to give others a belief.”
Andy Woodward: Timeline of abuse
*He started playing for Stockport Boys at the age of 11
*He came to the attention of Barry Bennell, a scout and youth coach, at Crewe Alexandra
*He joined Crewe Alexandra’s youth team and was sexually abused by Bennell between the ages of 11 and 15
*He signed to Bury Town in 1995
*He suffered his first panic attack while playing for Bury Town in November 1999
*He was signed to Sheffield United by manager Neil Warnock
*He struggled with the mental effects caused by the abuse
*He retired from football in 2002, aged 29
*He decided to waive his right to anonymity in 2016
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