The disgraced football coach Dario Gradi is to be stripped of his MBE after complaints made by survivors of child sexual abuse.
The Offside Trust, a group formed by survivors of sexual abuse in sport, wrote to the Cabinet Office in 2021 asking that Gradi lose the MBE he received for services to football more than two decades previously. After a two-year process, an official forfeiture will be enacted this week.
The former Crewe manager, 82, was “effectively banned for life” from coaching by the Football Association after the revelations of the 2021 Sheldon Review into child sexual abuse in football. Gradi was found to have failed to protect children from the abuser Barry Bennell, though there was no evidence of his having acted inappropriately with children himself. In an assessment conducted by the FA, however, a further judgment was made that Gradi “could potentially cause or pose a risk of harm to children”.
Clive Sheldon QC, the author of the independent review, found that Gradi “should have done more” to investigate concerns expressed about the serial abuser Bennell but was not involved in a cover-up.
Two of the abusers focused on in the review – Bennell at Crewe and Eddie Heath at Chelsea – were in posts at those clubs in periods which coincided with Gradi being there.
Gradi was criticised for not doing more when abuse involving Heath was reported to him in 1975, and for failing to act in relation to allegations about Bennell, described as the “devil incarnate” by a judge who imprisoned him in 2018 for abuse against boys aged eight to 14. In the report, Sheldon stated that Gradi “did not consider a person putting their hands down another’s trousers to be an assault”, something he changed his mind to accept when Sheldon insisted that it was assault.
Gradi has always denied any knowledge of Bennell’s crimes. According to reporting in the Athletic, Gradi has been informed of the decision to strip him of his honour. An announcement is expected on Tuesday.
