Club statement regarding Barry Bennell's conviction

[twosips]

CRB and DBS checks didnt exist nor did laws stopping hitting kids etc.

The 70's were definitely not the same as today.....yeah pedos are all over and we all need to grass them up or disclose any information.

In the 70's this just didnt happen

I agree it's a different culture. It's safer, but there aren't less. They're not gonna go away. Just either less getting caught or less given the opportunity to act on it, thankfully.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

CRB and DBS checks didnt exist nor did laws stopping hitting kids etc.

The 70's were definitely not the same as today.....yeah pedos are all over and we all need to grass them up or disclose any information.

In the 70's this just didnt happen

Just as it seems prevalent that women were getting knocked about by husbands, but people turned the other cheek, as also still happens today.

 

[lancs blue]

By that time, City no longer had any links with him. As is well attested, he was involved in the 1970s in an amateur feeder club (Whitehill) i.e. we had an arrangement to take on their most promising kids, and he clearly played that link strongly to dazzle and entice his victims.
He applied for a scouting job at City, and was turned down so went to Crewe instead. It seems that the reason he was turned down was as a result of Steve Fleet (our youth team manager?) expressing his strong intuitive feelings that he was "dodgy". There was no evidence , so it seems somewhat unfair to blame anyone else at the club - but thank you very much STEVE FLEET for being so insistent and forthright in expressing your instinctive doubts, you clearly saved City from employing this monster.

The problem for me is that for around 4 years after Steve Fleet opposed Bennell's full time appointment City still retained their connection with his junior teams and allowed Bennell access to club premises before finally severing the link in 1984, and Bennell subsequently joined Crewe as a full-time employee in 1985. Crewe apparently asked City why they had cut their links with Bennell and were told it was because he'd been touting tickets given to him as complimentaries for use by his junior teams. If that was the real reason then fair enough but if the reason had anything to do with continuing rumours about his behaviour then I think City really should have told Crewe about that.

 

[Neville Kneville]

My dad told me he used to go to some 'club' in Hulme in the late 60s and Saville would be in there after a recording of Top of the Pops.

Saville had a mate who ran it called Ray 'Ugly' Terrett. My dad recalled even then as a young man how young girls were treated and how many were wary.

I know Terrett later got done and it was pretty chilling to watch a documentary a couple years aback about a record shop he later ran in Sale on Marsland Road (now opposite Emilios) .

All the girls who came forward remembered they used to write their names and messages on the walls, so the police stripped the wallpaper and there they all were, which helped convict him.

I live close to that location and it just goes to show that you may never be too far away from these evil monsters.

I was introduced to Terrett once, as he was working for Piccadilly radio & had a pint with him, didn't know he had connections with Saville etc.

It was probably then that I was warned by others about stories relating to Saville, which I thought 'nah he's a weird **** but he gets awards off the Queen & everything, they'd know & keep him at arms length'.

 

[mancityvstoke]

Just as it seems prevalent that women were getting knocked about by husbands, but people turned the other cheek, as also still happens today.

yeah...disgusting .....especially in front of kids like I had to witness when my lovely step Dad strangled my Mum and held a bread knife at her throat.

 

[mancityvstoke]

I was introduced to Terrett once, as he was working for Piccadilly radio & had a pint with him, didn't know he had connections with Saville etc.

It was probably then that I was warned by others about stories relating to Saville, which I thought 'nah he's a weird **** but he gets awards off the Queen & everything, they'd know & keep him at arms length'.

Teret was a ****......him and his doormen

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

I was introduced to Terrett once, as he was working for Piccadilly radio & had a pint with him, didn't know he had connections with Saville etc.

It was probably then that I was warned by others about stories relating to Saville, which I thought 'nah he's a weird **** but he gets awards off the Queen & everything, they'd know & keep him at arms length'.

Instead of giving him the keys to homes and hospitals.

You're correct, though, Saville regularly bragged he was protected and had friends in the IRA.

 

[Neville Kneville]

This is a wider point, but relatively on topic. What gets me is how many seem to think that it's era related - like there was just loads in the 70s with the beeb etc and it was a thing then and it's obviously not now. Like it was just a culture. Is it fuck. Paedophiles are absolutely everywhere in every form of life sadly. And they always will be whether we like it or not. I think there's more people with these urges than we realise, but most, thank god, have the decency not to act on them. The only difference is that the 70s etc was such a long time ago that those around to cover it up aren't really there anymore so it all comes out, hence why people just think that that was an era when there was loads of them.

I guarantee that in 20 years down the line there will be stuff out about people around today sadly and people will just think 'god the 70s and the 2000s were bad, but now is probably fine'. I don't think we know how to deal with it. It's just pushed underground and left unregulated as it's horrific and terrifying, but it isn't gonna go away. People don't *choose* to be this way. Their heads are messed up. So many awful things could be prevented in a society where these people could speak to a counsellor in confidence and get help before anything happened, but of course that could never happen as they'd be lynched as our culture would leak their identities and they'd be killed for admitting something that they cant help but think. I am not in anyway defending them, at all. It's horrific and one of the scariest things we can think of. And some are just fucked up monsters, Bennell for example, but all the revelations point towards a pretty shocking underground culture that we've barely scratched the surface of I reckon. A huge societal change needs to happen. Preventive and not reactive. It won't though, cos we've not got the fucking balls as a species to confront things like this.

You are right of course, but at least a big investigation, (which I hope to christ this is going to become) at least makes it more difficult for people to get away with it, which is better than nothing, & back then, it was pretty much nothing.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

yeah...disgusting .....especially in front of kids like I had to witness when my lovely step Dad strangled my Mum and held a bread knife at her throat.

I'm very sorry to hear that mate, nobody should be subjected to or see anything like that.

I hope one day you were able to redress it.

 

[Hart of the Matter]

Can we get over the issue of how the media are covering this please. Rochdale and Rotherham were not the only places child sexual exploitation was happenning on a grand scale. The media latch on to this to provide a hook or a short cut. We are that in this case. It is not part of a wider ant City agenda. We have to suck it up. If it means that others are outed and kids are safer going forward it is a small price to pay. The issue here is not our PR it is the victims.