Mr Cannon said: ‘I believe if my adoptive dad was in a heterosexual relationship then my complaints would have been listened to earlier. ‘It seems the council didn’t want to be seen as victimising gay people – they would rather look politically correct and let them get away with it to avoid any repercussions. Ultimately,…
“It would be a mistake, however, to focus our anger on one ignorant bigot. Bristow was giving crude form to attitudes which, for many male survivors, are all too familiar. The expectations that males – even young boys – can and should be able to fight off attackers is every bit as prevalent and as…
This blog had its Clinton and Trump moment ten days ago when I read about Andy Woodward’s disclosure that I stumbled upon at the Guardian last week, passed the story to Mike who posted about it himself as it grew and built up over the past week and a half. Throughout this time I hadn’t…
Andy Woodward’s harrowing account of the sexual abuse he suffered from the football coach Barry Bennell in the 1980s has led to six people coming forward to the police and the Football Association setting up a helpline for potential victims. Following up on something we linked to earlier this week. Unsurprisingly, once one former player…
When the abuse started, Bennell used threats and blackmail to make sure his victims did not go against him. “What he’d do sometimes, to show the fear factor and make sure I never told anyone, was get out some nunchucks,” Woodward says. “He was a master with them. He’d tell me to hold out a…
Anna, now 14, said she believes the abuse started when she was around three. She said: “I didn’t see that what I was going through was bad or abnormal. I remember seeing posters about sexual abuse when I was much older and they had phone numbers on them. “I didn’t think for one minute that…
