Ex-Crewe Alexandra manager Dario Gradi failed boys then and still is

IAN HERBERT: Dario Gradi failed boys then and he still is now – he is more interested in conveying his own victimhood than offering a genuine apology

  • Dario Gradi’s cursory statement materialised 36 hours after the Sheldon report
  • Former Crewe Alexandra boss escaped major criticism in the bombshell report  
  • But Gradi still has questions to answer based on the evidence given by survivors 
  • He is more interested in conveying his own victimhood than offering an apology 

From the individual who gave free rein to two of football’s most prolific sex abusers came an extraordinary statement on Friday night in which, as ever, he was far more interested in conveying a sense of his own victimhood than apologising to those whose lives have been changed indelibly.

Dario Gradi’s seven-paragraph statement, which materialised nearly 36 hours after the Sheldon report was published, listed ‘disappointments’ with detail taken ‘out of context’ and the FA’s declaration that he is ‘banned from football for life’.

Nothing on survivors’ evidence that Barry Bennell was allowed to share a bed with children in Gradi’s own home, while Gradi was present.

Dario Gradi was far more interested in conveying a sense of victimhood than apologising 

Nothing on why a former Chelsea player has described, in granular detail, how Gradi visited him and his parents, ate tea and cake with them, and told them to go easy on paedophile Eddie Heath after he had abused the boy.

Nothing on the fact that Sheldon concluded that the rumours circulating around Bennell and his sexual proclivities were very well known to Gradi. Section 9.2.176 of the QC’s 710-page report, to be precise.

That’s Gradi for you — a man whose version of events has never tallied with the mass of evidence. The man who, when approached about the Heath allegations, skulked behind the frosted glass panes of his front door for a minute or two, then scuttled off into the depths of the house.

After a preliminary apology and expression of ‘deepest sympathy’, Friday night’s narcissistic exercise in self-justification saw Gradi seize on Sheldon’s conclusion that he had — contrary to Chelsea’s own independent investigation — reported the Heath abuse to ‘higher management’ at Stamford Bridge.

Gradi (left, at Crewe alongside Barry Bennell) was interviewed in the report and detailed that he ‘did not consider a person putting their hands down another’s trousers to be assault’ 

That ‘higher management’, Gradi claims, was the acting first-team manager Ron Suart. Sheldon put it to him that this might be a ‘fabricated’ story, told in the knowledge that Suart is now dead and in no position to challenge it.

The episode ‘didn’t seem to matter too much’, Gradi went on to tell Sheldon. Well, it did to that young Chelsea player. When word got back to Heath that he had complained, the teenager was humiliated by him.

Gradi’s statement expresses his disappointment that ‘certain sections of the report have been taken out of context by the media’. He is talking about Sheldon’s revelation that ‘he did not consider a person putting their hands down another’s trousers to be an assault’.

Gradi’s statement declares that he was ‘uncertain of the definition of what can amount to an assault’. This takes the word ‘preposterous’ to new realms. From the 1920s, to the 1970s and now, that act is, of course, assault.

The questions Gradi has to answer extend way beyond these episodes. What, for example, did he know about another vile serial abuser, Bob Higgins? Enough to send a letter to the FA coaching chief Charles Hughes, jocularly pointing out that Higgins was expanding his soccer schools and suggesting this should not happen.

It would help if the FA elaborated on why Gradi is ‘effectively banned from football for life’, though this week’s report leaves little to the imagination.

The former Crewe managing director Hamilton Smith described how Gradi was too obsessed with Bennell getting new players to take any action.

‘There was a relationship of some sort between the two of them,’ Smith said. 




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