DISGRACED FORMER FOOTBALL coach Barry Bennell was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Monday for abusing 12 boys he coached between 1979 and 1991, with the judge branding him “sheer evil”. The former football coach Barry Bennell was branded “sheer evil” and the “devil incarnate” on Monday after being sentenced to 30 years in prison for subjecting junior players from Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra to hundreds of sexual offences. Judge Goldstone QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, told him: “Your behaviour towards these boys in grooming and seducing them before subjecting them to, in some cases, the most, most serious, degrading and humiliating abuse was sheer evil.”

The judge said Bennell had appeared to his victims as ‘a God’ but added: “In reality, you were the devil incarnate. Addressing Bennell, Goldstone said: “Sadly, you did not learn the importance of remorse.”

Speaking outside court, Micky Fallon, one of Bennell’s victims, said that the sentence reflected the seriousness of the crimes and the distress Bennell had caused. Per Taylor, Goldstone did not hold back as he read the verdict: ''To those boys you appeared as a god...in reality you were the devil incarnate. You stole their childhoods and their innocence to satisfy your own perversion.”

Bennell, described by the prosecution as an “industrial-scale child molester” and a “predatory and determined paedophile”, made a point of not looking at his victims, now in their 40s and 50s, as they read out impact statements detailing how his crimes had affected their lives. “Your behaviour towards these boys in grooming and seducing them before subjecting them to, in some cases, the most serious, degrading and humiliating abuse was sheer evil.”

Bennell, who has already served three jail terms totalling 15 years for similar offences involving 16 other victims, stared at the floor and nodded as Goldstone handed down the sentence.
Former coach Barry Bennell is sentenced to 31 years in prison for 50 offences against 12 boys between 1979 and 1990.