Barry Bennell dies in prison aged 69: Paedophile football coach who abused more than 20 boys passes away in custody after cancer battle
Paedophile football coach Barry Bennell has died in custody aged 69, the Ministry of Justice has said.
Bennell, who abused more than 20 boys at prominent football clubs, is said to have passed away on Saturday morning at HMP Littlehey in Cambridgeshire.
Bennell, then 64, was convicted of dozens of sexual offences against many young boys at Liverpool Crown Court in 2018 and was described to a court as a ‘child molester on an industrial scale’.
Bennell was one of this country’s most notorious paedophiles and was at the centre of a sexual abuse scandal that rocked football after one of his victims, former Stockport defender Andy Woodward, went public with his harrowing story in 2016.
As he sentenced him to 34 years behind bars, the judge called the paedophile he was ‘the devil incarnate’, saying: ‘To those boys you appeared as a god… in reality you were the devil incarnate. You stole their childhoods and their innocence.’
Bennell was serving his fourth prison sentence, of 30 years, at the time of his death after being found guilty of subjecting junior players to hundreds of sexual offences following a series of investigations triggered by Woodward’s bravery.
Due to a cancer diagnosis it was believed that he would likely die in HMP Littlehey, a prison for sex offenders in Cambridgeshire.
Bennell, a former Manchester City scout, abused boys he coached in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He would entice boys to his house, where he kept a monkey and a puma. One victim was abused on the pitch at Maine Road.
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