Paedophile football coach Barry Bennell dies in prison after abusing more than 20 boys

18 September 2023, 16:20

Paedophile football coach Barry Bennell has died in prison aged 69 - after he abused more than 20 boys at top clubs.

Bennell, who abused more than 20 boys at top football clubs, is said to have passed away on Saturday morning at HMP Littlehey in Cambridgeshire.

The sexual predator, who had cancer, was a youth coach at Crewe Alexandra, Manchester City and Stoke City during the 1980s and 1990s. He also had links to youth teams across Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Greater Manchester.

Bennell, then 64, was most recently convicted of dozens of sexual offences against many young boys at Liverpool Crown Court in 2018.

Sentencing him to 34 years behind bars, the judge told Bennell he was "the devil incarnate".

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He said: "To those boys you appeared as a god... in reality you were the devil incarnate. You stole their childhoods and their innocence."

Bennell had been convicted of sexual offences against boys on five separate occasions - four in the UK and one in the United States.

He was first jailed in Florida in 1994 for raping a British boy on a football tour in America, before going on to face prison sentences in the UK in 1998, 2015, 2018 and 2020.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: "Prisoner Barry Bennell died at HMP Littlehey on 16 September 2023. As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate."