Pedophile British soccer coach branded 'devil incarnate'
Sports | 20 Feb 2018 6:30 pm
Former British soccer coach Barry Bennell, a pedophile who has been called the 'devil incarnate' by a judge who convicted him of sexually abusing 12 boys aged eight to 15 between 1979 and 1991, has been jailed jailed for 31 years at Liverpool Crown Court.
The court sentenced him on 50 counts of child sexual abuse. Judge Clement Goldstone QC said Bennell, 64, was "sheer evil,'' the BBC reports. He will serve half of a 30-year sentence in custody, with the rest on license. He was also sentenced to an additional year on license.
The convict Bennell shook his head as the judge sentenced him and there was clapping from the public gallery as he left court.
"To those boys you appeared as a god... in reality you were the devil incarnate," Judge Goldstone said. "You stole their childhoods and their innocence."
The judge said Bennell, who worked at Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra, was "hell-bent" on abusing boys, and left a "trail of psychological devastation.''
"If the boys tried to resist, you convinced them their football careers would suffer," he said.
Outside court, victim Andy Woodward said: "No sentence is long enough for that man and right to the death he didn't show any remorse or say sorry to anyone.
"I'm proud that I did speak out. If I hadn't have done, we all wouldn't be stood here now today."
The BBC reported another victim, Micky Fallon, as saying: "Today we looked evil in the face and smiled because, Barry Bennell, we have won." Photo: Facebook, via BBC.
