NEW FEARS OVER ABUSE
Bennell and Roper took same boys’ team on trips FA inquiry investigating links between evil coaches
THE FA’s inquiry into historic child sex abuse is studying possible links between several high- profile alleged paedophiles, as The Mail on Sunday today reveals that serial abusers Barry Bennell and Frank Roper coached a team together and took a set of boys away on trips to Blackpool and Wales.
Bennell will be sentenced tomorrow at Liverpool Crown Court on 50 counts of sexual abuse, while Roper, the deceased coach who abused Paul Stewart, has at least 31 more
criminal allegations against his name. The pair are said to have organised matches against teams run by former Chelsea scout Eddie Heath, another alleged abuser.
Clive Sheldon QC, who is carrying out a comprehensive inquiry to scrutinise the role of clubs and the FA, is i nvestigating whether a national paedophile ring existed and the l evel of collusion between abusers.
Sheldon has completed a review of 3,000 boxes of documents from the FA Archive and 6,000 files. His team of barristers have al ready heard accounts from more than 100 survivors of abuse and are set to hear more following Bennell’s latest convictions.
Andy Woodward, the first player to come forward in late 2016, is convinced a paedophile ring existed: ‘Definitely there was a network,’ he said. ‘There was Roper and there were others.’
It has also emerged that the FA pulled funding of its ground-breaking study into child welfare in the game 15 years ago, before it had time to properly assess how effective its policies had been.
The study, set up by former chief executive Adam Crozier in 2001 and which commissioned world- renowned expert Professor Celia Brackenridge, was axed in 2003 amid a round of governing body budget cuts.
Gareth Nutt, who worked at the University of Gloucestershire on the report, said: ‘We were disappointed. The project was beginning to develop valuable data which could have been of advantage to the FA and, in due course, to the clubs.’