The conspiracy of silence: how big clubs betrayed me and all those boys They could have saved victims of paedophile coach, says youth boss

THE chairman of a youth team whose player was preyed upon by football paedophile Barry Bennell last night accused larger clubs of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ over their suspicions about the coach.

Bob Bowers asked his lawyer to make enquiries with Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra, where Bennell had previously worked, before hiring him to work at Stone Dominoes FC in 1992.

But neither club raised the alarm over the behaviour of Bennell around young players despite wellfounded concerns. Bennell is now suspected to have abused hundreds of boys.

Former Crewe Alexandra player Andy Woodward lifted the lid on the scale of Bennell’s crimes when he revealed he had been abused. Since then, at least five more named explayers have come forward claiming to have been abused, sending shockwaves through the game.

Mr Bowers, 67, whose club is based in Stone, Staffordshire, said: ‘I felt betrayed by the big clubs. There has been a conspiracy of silence. I think greed has been at the heart of it because the guy picked up so many amazing players.’

The latest developments in the burgeoning scandal came as:

Four police forces – Cheshire, Northumbria, Hampshire and the Met – said they were investigating claims of historical child sex abuse in football;

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse said it was ‘watching events closely’ and opened the door to examining allegations in the growing scandal;

England and Manchester United star Wayne Rooney urged anyone who may have been assaulted to seek help and praised whistle-blowers as ‘very brave’;

Crewe Alexandra’s director of football, Dario Gradi, said the club would be carrying out an internal investigation, while Manchester City said it was also reviewing its links with Bennell;

TV pundit Robbie Savage, a Crewe player in the mid-1990s, said he feared there could be many more victims of Bennell’s abuse.

Bennell was finally arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, during a 1994 Stone Dominoes tour of the United States and later jailed for four years for abusing boys – but the scale of his abuse was hidden until last week.

Mr Bowers said: ‘You cannot tell me that in the previous 20 years they had not seen something or had some complaint. We did the appropriate thing as business people to check out references. People did not tell us what we needed to know.’

Following his comments, a former director at Crewe Alexandra, Hamilton Smith, said yesterday that allegations Bennell had abused a young player had been made to senior figures at the club in the late 1980s, yet he kept his job.

Bennell, now 62, has served three jail sentences for sex offences against children. But in the 1970s and 1980s, his skills as a football coach and scout were highly regarded, even though there were repeated rumours about inappropriate behaviour.

When, in 1992, after seven years associated with Manchester City, and an even longer spell at Crewe, he met senior figures at Stone Dominoes, the club’s founder and chairman Mr Bowers asked his legal adviser to ‘check him out’.

Unbeknown to the Stone Dominoes, Bennell had been sacked from Crewe for reasons which have never been explained. ‘He said he was between jobs at the time,’ recalled Mr Bowers. ‘But before we ever took him in, we sought references.’ Mr Bowers said he turned to his own company lawyer, Michael Morrison, who had worked for the Football Managers Association. ‘I said to him, “We have got this guy who has been at Manchester City and was well known at Crewe, can you please check him out with them discreetly”,’ he said. ‘Nowadays we would have written references.

‘The calls were made by a reputable lawyer. They all came back affirmative. Based on that we gave him a trial run and it went very well. Before he came to our club, Manchester City should have said, “We cannot give you a reference” or “We couldn’t recommend him”.

‘If Crewe had said, “He left the club under a cloud”, we would not have taken him in. They could have done something about this. They could have saved more victims.’

To date, Alan Brazil has been the most high-profile victim of sex abuse in the sport in Scotland.

The talksport presenter fell victim to Celtic Boys Club chief James Torbett, who was jailed for two years in 1998 for abusing Brazil and two other boys between 1968 and 1974.

Brazil, who would go on to play for Ipswich and Scotland, was targeted by the paedophile as a 13-year-old rising star. He later wrote a book, detailing how the ordeal destroyed his dreams and changed his life.

Last night, neither Crewe Alexander nor Manchester City offered any further comment.