I never told my father about the abuse I suffered at City. That would have destroyed him
AMONG the emotions that David White experienced when his father Stewart passed away, the overriding one was of relief.
Not just because his dad’s suffering from bowel cancer was finally over, but also because he had gone to his grave without discovering his son’s deepest secret.
The former Manchester City star had never been able to tell his dad – the driving force behind his career – that he had been a victim of convicted paedophile football coach Barry Bennell.
He had not told anyone for 18 years, and when he finally opened up to his first wife, brother and sister-in-law, and eventually his mum, he begged them not to tell his dad.
“I just thought the guilt would destroy him,” says White, now 50 and with five children of his own. “I thought he would never find out and if he did I would lose him.
“Even after the ‘Dispatches’ TV programme [which exposed Bennell] when the police came to interview me in 1998 about Bennell and whether he had sexually abused me, I just lied to them saying, ‘No, nothing ever happened’.
“I just worked out that I couldn’t do it. My dad just can’t find this out. So even though I had no career to protect at that stage – I had finished because of an ankle injury – I just didn’t want him to know.
“I told my wife and other family members at the time of the police interview but pleaded with them to keep it secret from him. I eventually told my mum – who was divorced from my dad – and she agreed that he could never find out. When he passed away in 2010 my overriding emotion was one of relief. That I had managed to get through without telling him.”
White’s story is another heart-rending example of the devastating effects child abuse has on its victims, their subsequent relationships and the control abusers such as Bennell hold over them.
He looks back now and regrets the decision not to tell his dad and also not to blow the whistle much earlier in his life on Bennell – then coach of Manchester junior club Whitehill FC – who had first sexually abused him when he was an 11-year-old on a trip to Mallorca with another boy.
Parents were as much in Bennell’s thrall as the boys and White’s dad encouraged him to go on the sunshine trip thinking it would be good for his budding career. “You
compartmentalise it. You block it off. Career-wise it was definitely the wrong thing to do because had I disclosed that I had been abused early on, I would have got over the initial problem with my dad and I would have been miles better off.
“More than anybody else I needed psychological help in my career but I didn’t go because I felt I was going to be found out.
“The big problem was my dad was my best resource for support and help. If I had a physical injury he’d go to the end of the world to help. Yet the thing I needed him most for, I couldn’t ask him for help because he didn’t know and I could not tell him. He, more than anybody, couldn’t understand my dips in form and inconsistencies.
“The biggest memories I’ve got is being in the car, with my dad saying, ‘Are you all right, what’s bothering you?’ I would just say, ‘Yeah, yeah, nothing, nothing’.” Many would say it is a tribute to White’s strength of character and resilience that he went on to play over 400 games for City, Leeds and Sheffield United, winning an England cap and scoring more than 100 goals, despite keeping such a devastating experience secret for so long from family and friends before writing his autobiography Shades of Blue in 2016.
He does not agree, though, describing himself as “weak” because he felt he could have achieved so much more.
“People say to me – and it’s a frustration if anything – ‘You must be so strong to go through what you went through and you still played 400 games, scored 120-odd goals and played for England’. But the ironic thing is through all that period I felt so weak.
“I remember seeing Bennell at Platt Lane [City’s old training ground in Moss Side]. I was then 21 and in City’s first team, scoring goals, approaching the peak of my powers, and he was walking around the training pitch with two young lads. What did I do? I just said ‘hi’ to him because it was the easiest thing to do. It just makes you feel incredibly weak as a person.
“It did hold me back. I didn’t want to play just one game for England, I wanted to play 100. I didn’t want to score 96 goals for City I wanted to score 150 or 200.
“It took away my competitive edge. I was such a confidence player and super sensitive to criticism, whether it was from my manager, the fans or the media. On a good day I was as good as anybody. But on a bad day I was really bad.”
White, fellow abuse victim Paul Stewart and Tony Adcock have been invited to City’s game against Huddersfield at the Etihad on Sunday. All three scored hat-tricks in City’s record 10-1 win over the Terriers in 1987, when no one had any inkling of the ordeals White and Stewart had experienced.
For a signed and delivered copy of David White’s autobiography Shades of Blue (£20) email david@ saveassociation.com.