Manchester City have been accused of using the word of “a wholly unreliable liar” after the convicted sex offender Barry Bennell was called to give evidence on the club’s behalf in a High Court trial.
As an eight-week trial got underway to determine whether City should be liable for Bennell’s crimes, it was confirmed that the man previously described by a judge as “sheer evil” and “the devil incarnate” had already supplied the Premier League champions, via their insurers’ solicitors, with a statement from prison.
Bennell is currently serving a 36-year term for abusing young footballers while he was Crewe Alexandra’s youth-team coach and, before that, when he was an unpaid coach and scout for City. He was described on the opening day of the High Court case as “one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders” who had subjected his victims, as young as eight, to “life-changing acts of sexual abuse.”
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