Crewe boss should ‘have done more’
FORMER Crewe Alexandra manager Dario Gradi ‘should have done more’ to investigate claims against Barry Bennell, according to a major child sex abuse report.
The Sheldon review has examined historical child sex abuse in football over the decades and has made 13 recommendations to the Football Association.
The report has found many clubs knew what was going on but did nothing about sexual abuse.
Part of its findings say that Mr Gradi should have done more when issues relating to paedophile coach Bennell came to light. However, it says the former manager was not involved in any cover-up.
The Sheldon review looked at two abusers - Bennell and Chelsea’s Eddie Heath who were at clubs at the same time as Mr Gradi.
Mr Gradi was criticised for not doing more when abuse involving Heath was reported to him in 1975, and similarly for failing to act in relation to allegations about Bennell, described as the ‘devil incarnate’ by a judge who sentenced him to 31 years in prison for abuse against boys aged eight to 15 in 2018.
In the report, Clive Sheldon QC states that Mr Gradi ‘did not consider a person putting their hands down another’s trousers to be an assault’ something he changed his mind to accept when Sheldon insisted that it was assault.
Mr Sheldon said overnight stays by boys were ‘normalised’ at Crewe in a way which they were not elsewhere, with some boys staying at Mr Gradi’s house.
Mr Sheldon said there was no evidence Mr Gradi acted inappropriately with boys on any of those visits or in any of his other interactions with them, but he accepted Mr Gradi had been ‘vague about certain things’ during his interview for the review.
But he said: “On the whole I felt he was genuine and was trying to help out.
“There were lots of rumours about Dario Gradi being overly close to young boys, and people were also complaining about Dario Gradi having boys staying over at his house. There is no evidence that Dario Gradi acted inappropriately with any of the boys who stayed at his house or any of the boys that he was working with.
“I think he thought that because he wasn’t doing anything wrong, that he was acting entirely innocently, well that must be the same with Bennell. I don’t think he could conceive that Bennell was behaving in a negative, inappropriate and abusive way to the boys because it was outside his own thinking.
“I say he should have done more. I say that he should have thought outside of himself, and asked really much greater questions about what was going on, and I think that should have been informed by what had taken place at Chelsea with Eddie Heath.”
Mr Gradi has been suspended from football since 2016.