A Former Man City Scout Repeatedly Abused Me As A Child | Minutes With | @LADbible

his abuse got so he got so confident with the abuse and the level of abuse that he could impose upon me um I would be invited to his house and so would another boy abuse one turn over and beat the other and that's how confident he was in being able to abuse young boys still knowing that even though somebody was present in the room that they wouldn't say anything [Music] start kind of at the beginning when did you start playing football oh I started playing football probably when I was three or four and discovered just naturally that I had an ability to play my earliest memories of running around with a ball my dad's adult friends not being able to take the ball from me I loved it I just I felt I was good at it I was able to do things that other people couldn't do and carry the ball and play with the ball in a way that just naturally came to me I was from that point just out playing with a ball until my dad found a junior side for me when I was about eight my dad apparently been approached by this person on the side of the pitch who'd been interested in in scouting me and asking me to go and play for them it introduced himself as a Northwest Regional Scout for Manchester City and that he could offer the opportunity to want to go to play for him and also to possibly get trials and an opportunity to go to play for Manchester City as a club um sort of beyond the small boys Wildest Dreams really and I was just you know playing in a small town with a an absolutely no name Junior side of no real ranking or ability and then this guy came along and and sort of offered a different a life really from it um and so it was it was exciting and how old were you at this point I was about 9 10. and so did you then join this new club under the guide of this coach yeah um he asked me to go for a trial to see how it fit in with the players he already had um I think I said it to two trials and then he asked me to go and play uh with his side and yeah his name was the coach his name was Barry bannell at that time everybody viewed him as a star maker he was very charismatic uh handsome athletic chap very talented at football himself and he was seen to be someone that had a lot of influence in the game that could you know make it happen for you could recommend that you you were a good enough player and get you that opportunity to uh potentially get to sign affiliate Schoolboy um forms with a club so it's usually admired um and um people really flocked to towards him in order to get those opportunities to play um at a higher level and played for him for about three three and a half years um very successfully you know we're very very successful side we were banned from one league for being too good um I remember we beat one side 37 nil I'd regularly score Double Hat Tricks or more you know scoring 40 out 50 goals a year um and in the football side of it was was extremely enjoyable it was um it was excellent standard except there was another side to playing for him that um I think now is a bit more widely known but at the time was probably one of football's worst Kept Secrets um and that is that he was a prolific pedophile the first time you abused can you talk about what happened and how you were feeling at that time it was it was at his shop uh in in furnace veil in a video shop that he owned um whilst watching a uh I think it was American wheel from London um horror movies and snuff movies as they were um things that would get you scared and terrified were one of his tactics for huddling up close and and starting that low level of abuse um there's a precursor to further things to come um and I can certainly remember that video shop in detail and I think my mind is focused on those elements as opposed to what actually happened as a as a mechanism for survival and um coping really one distinct thought and it's not about the actual abuse the acts of abuse um I think you know you often hear this phrase of fight or flight and actually the most common response in that type of situation is a reaction or a response called flop which means you've just been able to do anything and you shut down your brain shuts down the the human body and brain is an incredible thing that can protect us in a way that I don't think we really properly understand and they'll focus on the actual acts of abuse with something really that my brain's never allowed me to do but I can say that after that first time um I remember thinking how desperately I wanted to get out of there but I'd have to wait till the next day till after the game until my dad came to pick me up to be able to go home and I remember going home and trying to make everything as normal as possible as if nothing had happened and you were so young were you aware of kind of what was happening to you was a was bad or were you just I I I I knew it wasn't it was something I'd never experienced I was uh pre-pubescent um I hadn't had girlfriends I ran around with boys play football I had friends that were girls and growing up with friends that were girls but they were mates um the idea of sex or sexuality hadn't even entered my head at that point and so I was just incredibly confused I knew it didn't feel right or or something I enjoyed I was comfortable with but other than that because it was so confusing I really didn't know what to say or how to say something or who to say something to I remember thinking after the second time I went back and it happened again and got more severe I remember thinking to myself I'm thinking I've got to tell somebody but how do I explained to people that this has happened more than once why did I go back and I didn't think I'd be believed because if I come back maybe it was my fault or I was in some way responsible and it was something that somebody would question and every time I looked for a reason to say something I found that in the environment I was in that there wasn't a place or a person that I could speak to and so I think it was a matter of thinking Survival how how do I carry on and cope and that the simple matter of becoming shutting down my emotions and effectively becoming a very emotionally blunt um person and then it'd be a matter of putting on a mask and going about the Daily Business and um I was grateful for the for the normality of of getting up going to school going to lessons and doing the ordinary things um and that's what I focused on um to try and avoid just thinking about what happened or what might happen again really you mentioned that the abuse kind of spanned a period of about three and a half years how did it progressively get worse from those lower levels of abuse very quickly from from um touching to low-level abuse the masturbation onto oral sex onto full buggery it was a matter of weeks a couple of months as soon as he knew that he was had control of me to one degree he would escalate to the next and that happened very quickly and once it had escalated it then maintained itself on all levels of abuse any opportunity to which he could take one of the things that benell did was that he insisted Not only was I own did I only play for his club and no other but that I stopped all other social activities so I played a musical instrument I had social friends and social groups I wasn't allowed to go and have music lessons not allowed to have girlfriends not allowed to have social groups go out and party or birthdays it was all a distraction from football but what that meant was I had no experience of what you'd considered a normal childhood development through early teens you know the stuff where we we get girlfriends or boyfriends and we experiment with drugs or drink or social activities and we learn where that that social line is I had no experience of that because I had no comparisons against what was normal this was my normal and that's all I know didn't take long for him to see how or what he could get away with abusing myself with um when that started it escalated very very quickly um from what you call low level abuse to the most serious uh levels of abuse I certainly was one of the people that he abused more regularly um you know I I was there pretty much every weekend every school holiday I missed a lot of school he took me abroad he took me away to Butler into various places for about three three and a half years and uh you know his abuse got so he got so confident with the abuse and the level of abuse that he could impose upon me that for a at least a couple of those years if not longer um I would be invited to his house and so would another boy and there may be others but regularly myself and this one or the boy were invited um and he would have us both sleep in his bed and abuse us both abuse one turnover and abuse the other and that's how confident he was in being able to abuse young boys still knowing that even though somebody was present in the room that they wouldn't say anything and you mentioned that he would take you away on holidays into Butlins it was that kind of under the guise of football team bonding mostly he took me where wherever he wanted whenever my parents would allow which was pretty much every weekend all weekend pretty much all I remember going home to just collect clothes in the summer holidays you know six weeks or so um and so he would just take me wherever and whenever he wanted during that period where he abused me I spent a lot of time with him he wanted to take me to America um the very last year I was playing for him my parents thankfully put their foot down and said that regardless of cost they wouldn't let me go because he was going for two or three weeks so it was a chunk of time um and I know that he would have absolutely taken advantage of me whilst he was away and goodness knows if anybody else might have um I know that he's certainly established contacts and business out there after that the point did the abuse stop him was that when it stopped was that the last time you saw venel yeah it stopped very abruptly um it was about 14. we turned up for a game and um we were all gathered around then he literally announced okay that's it uh we're disbanding and it was to everybody's shock um and bemusement nobody really understood where this had come from or why at that moment in time would it suddenly be folded because at 14 was the year 1314 that was the age that you signed Associated Schoolboy forms with any big clubs so for him to be a scout to pushing you through to get to that stage to just stop six months before that critical point seemed very bizarre and odd but he just basically said there's nothing that he could do anymore for us and that was the end of it and then there was nothing and so I needed to fill this great big hole um and I did that really quite successfully um with alcohol and recreational drugs and that that that replaced the emotional void that I had from leaving football and the anger and the frustration and the negative emotions I felt the impacted what happened to me it was so great and I and I I wasn't yet at an age where I was able to reflect on what happened in a positive way and learn and progress from it that I was just really coping as best I could was it still your secret through this time as well um yeah I I hadn't told anybody at all uh and I didn't tell a soul I didn't indicate it there was a uh a girlfriend while I was at school that one time at home I broken down crying saying you know I felt terrible and then I stopped it I didn't even go close to saying who what where or why I was just I got upset the only other time that I'd spoken about it was much later on when I moved to London um and uh my partner and I got together and when we were looking to consider it being a long-term relationship through various conversations this subject came up and we'd started to tentatively talk about what had happened to me and that was well I know when that was it was 1994 and I can reference that because that's when the police first contacted me in relation to um seeing if I would prepare to give any statements and evidence about what might happen to me as a child and the landline rang and I picked it up and it was uh the Cheshire constabulary who said that they'd been given my name with a view that I might know something about Barry Bonnell and that they wondered if anything might have happened as a child um and would I want to say anything if it had in that they had um been in contact with a 13 year old boy um who had reported suspected abuse from Bonnell whilst he was in America on tour and this Boyd reported alleged abuse that happened to him and would I consider given a supporting statement if there's anything that I might know the reason for saying something wasn't about me and it never was it was the fact that there was this 13 year old boy I was 25 26 age that had just very recently suffered this abuse and to avoid being re-abused and made a complaint about what happened and it broke my heart that that this was still happening to all the boys but the Clincher really was the fact that the police said no one would come forward and corroborate this boy's story and I knew from my own experience that that had that had to be wrong though there had to be other people um I just felt if I was to say something I'd hope knowing there was a boy in the bed next to me for two or three years that somebody else would have the courage to come forward and say something on my behalf how are you now I'm probably healthier and better than I've ever been in my life I've processed and will continue to process these things on an ongoing basis but process the majority of the things that happen to me and have a far better understanding of them through therapy and counseling and speaking about this and it in in a more positive light and it's it's enabled me to grow strength and confidence that um my life isn't worthless it has some meaning um and from 2016 the fa and the PFA had employed me in part because of my lived experience and that's for any survivors of abuse of any sort of abuse not just sexual racial physical Financial emotional abuse in football either historically non-recently or currently and even just be an ear for survivors to be able to help them understand that actually none of this is their fault and that there are things that they can tap into and you know I I I'd highly recommend anybody that's been through abuse of this sort or any sort to speak to not just somebody else but to try and seek formal counsel and therapy because for me it's really helped from my experience not been able to speak to anybody feeling like it's only you in a silo could be one of the most destructive things that can happen to you and um having known people that haven't managed to get through life and have no longer with us um and those that have helped to continue on I would always say that it's always worth speaking about it and having hope to go forwards than feeling like you're on your own because that's a terrible place to be in something I hope we can eradicate sooner rather than later I reconcile myself to the fact that you know um you can't always choose your life's Destiny we like to think we're in control of everything but often we're not and uh certainly that part of my life I didn't have any control over and um it's one thing I tried to do now is have agency over my own life and understanding from it so if nothing else we hope we learn from these experiences please [Music] I felt like defeated when I lay down because I just was hoping that you wouldn't want to have sex with me

Channel: LADbible TV

Views: 86,200

Keywords: the lad bible, lad bible, lad, bible, videos, viral videos, viral, documentaries, exclusives, interviews, sport, sexual abuse in football, barry bennell, manchester city, ian ackley, dispatches football, football uk sexual abuse scandal, sexual abuse sport coach, abusive sport coaches, child abuse, pedofiles, manchester city coaches, andy woodward, uk child abuse

Id: ptNvc00BY9M

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023