Cops failed to act over 1998 Bennell confession
Paedo admitted to 9 more victims
PAEDO footie coach Barry Bennell was allowed to walk free after police failed to contact nine boys he admitting abusing in a 1998 jail interview.
The 65-year-old is expected to die behind bars after getting 30 years last February for a sick catalogue of crimes.
But evidence victim David Lean gave the Sunday Mirror suggests he should have got a lengthy term far sooner.
Police probing Bennell had the names of nine alleged victims in 1997 and said those they traced did not want to make complaints. Bennell was jailed in 1998 for abusing 15 lads and interviewed over ongoing concerns. He confessed to attacks on the other nine boys but police did not “revisit” them and the CPS decided that no further action be taken.
Bennell got out in 2004 and was jailed again in 2015, for abusing ex-Preston North End defender David in 1979, at 12.
David had at first been told Bennell would not be charged but challenged the decision. He only learned of the 1998 confession after the 2018 trial. David, 51, said: “I was stunned and angry. I went through two years of hell trying to get the police to charge Bennell.
“I could have been spared this if they’d spoken to the boys. It’s sickening. Now I’m wondering if he could have got a much longer sentence much earlier.”
Cheshire Police apologised last year after admitting that contacting the boys would have helped his case. The force told him the boys “who were ‘admitted’ to had not been revisited” and an officer probing David’s case “did not appreciate [the interview transcript’s] relevance”.
Cheshire Police accepted that “these boys could and should have been contacted in 2013”.
David will run Purple
Summer on June 14, to raise awareness of child abuse geraldine.mckelvie@
mirror.co.uk