GRADI ACCUSED
Coach ‘showed sex video to 14-year-old’
DARIO GRADI invited a 14-year- old footballer to his home and showed him a pornographic film, the FA has been told this week.
The former Crewe Alexandra youth player has given a statement to an FA safeguarding officer and police are set to be notified.
The accuser has spoken out over the ex-Crewe manager after Barry Bennell, a former coach at the club, was jailed for 31 years for 50 counts of child sexual abuse last week.
Gradi, 76, declined to comment when approached by Sportsmail yesterday.
DARIO GRADI showed a schoolboy footballer a porn movie at his home, then invited him on a skiing holiday, according to a statement given to a safeguarding officer at the Football Association this week.
The former Crewe player wants to protect his identity but is still working in English football.
He has chosen to approach the FA and is set to speak to police after seeing former Crewe and Manchester City coach Barry Bennell jailed for 31 years for 50 counts of child sexual abuse.
Now in his 40s, he was coached by Bennell, but was not among his victims and was unaware at the time that some of his teammates were being sexually abused by Bennell.
Gradi, the long- time Crewe manager, has always said he was oblivious to the abuses committed by Bennell until allegations surfaced in 1994.
However, the whistleblower has called on Gradi to make a full public statement addressing his role in the club’s failings now Bennell has been sentenced for his terrible crimes. The former player told the FA that he was one of Gradi’s ‘chosen ones’ when he was in the club’s youth set-up in the 1980s. He was invited by Gradi to train with the first team, travelled to matches on the team bus and even sat with Gradi on the bench.
He was taken by Gradi to the then manager’s home ‘six or seven times’ and says it was a ‘kids’ paradise’ with a large, state-of-theart television and video cassette player, table football and a pool table — and lots of training kit.
‘He’d give you a pair of new boots and make you feel like a million dollars,’ said the ex-player.
On one occasion when he was 14, he told the FA, Gradi took him and another boy to a butchers in Crewe where they were invited to choose a piece of steak for their lunch. He says Gradi then cooked the steak for the boys and invited them to eat it while watching TV.
It was then, he claims, that Gradi started to play a pornographic film. Even now he says he remembers specific details about the film, which was very graphic.
The boy was then invited to join Gradi with at least one other boy on a skiing holiday, but the whistleblower’s parents would not allow him to go.
He told Sportsmail: ‘We basically trained with the first team in the morning, and then what he (Gradi) used to do was take us to the butchers and we could choose whatever steak we wanted, then we’d go back to his house and we’d eat it, play table football or whatever.
‘But this one time he put on this porn movie. It sticks in my mind because it was such a bad quality movie.
‘And then he asked if I could come skiing. I wanted to go. He was paying for everything. I wanted to be the youngest player to play for Crewe. When my mum and dad said “no” I was devastated.’
The FA have provided the explayer with details of the Sporting Chance clinic, should he feel he requires counselling.
Gradi has been suspended from all football activities since December 2016 pending an FA investigation into sexual abuse in football.
Last week this newspaper revealed that the 76-year- old, who remains Crewe’s director of football, joined others who worked with Bennell in providing a statement of support following Bennell’s first arrest for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in the United States in 1994.
A court heard in 1998 that Bennell had abused one victim at Gradi’s house, although there was no suggestion that then Crewe manager knew what had happened.
Gradi has been at Crewe since 1983, spending 24 years and more than 1,200 games as the club’s manager before moving into his current role. He has an MBE for his services to football and has been publicly defended by former players in response to being suspended by the FA. The governing body declined to comment yesterday while their investigation into sexual abuse is ongoing.
‘He wanted to take me skiing but my mum & dad said no’