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This article is more than 1 year old

The mother of a former Crewe Alexandra youth team member raised concerns about three of the football club’s coaches to police 20 years ago, a sexual abuse trial has heard.

Janet Johansen said she expressed worries about the men, who were not named in court, during a police investigation into the coach Barry Bennell in 1998.

Giving evidence at Chester crown court on Thursday, Johansen said: “I expressed my concern about three coaches. They said there’s no evidence about two.”

Johansen, whose son Benjamin played for Crewe’s youth team in the late 1980s, was giving evidence for the prosecution in the trial of Paul McCann. The former coach, 57, denies six charges of indecently assaulting a teenage boy between 1987 and 1990, when the alleged victim was aged 15 to 17.

Johansen, a nurse, told the jury she made the report to police 10 years after discovering an inappropriate photograph of her son when he was 15 years old in 1988. It showed the teenager soaking wet and startled, clutching a blue handtowel over his groin, she said.

“He had a startled face, stern face, shocked, and he was very wet,” she said. “I looked at it and thought ‘He’s coming out of the bath or shower’… he looked shocked, unexpected, stern. He was just: ‘What are you doing?’ He didn’t expect it.”

Johansen said she told police about the photograph and “my worries about all three coaches” 10 years later during an investigation into Bennell. She gave no further detail about the three coaches or her concerns.

Giving evidence via videolink from Australia, Benjamin Johansen told jurors about an incident when McCann allegedly took photographs of fellow youth team players in the shower.

He said he saw McCann take white tablets after photographing the boys and when he asked him what the tablets were, the coach replied: “It’s to stop me from getting hard-ons.”

Benjamin Johansen told the jury: “Lads are coming in and out of the shower, 10 to 15 lads. What I saw as I was getting out – Paul’s taking pictures and lads are saying: ‘What’s he doing?’

“He [Paul] said he was just joking, but he was taking pictures. I remember a couple of them [the boys] saying: ‘What’s he doing?’ – laughing and turning their back to him. I thought it was a bit weird.”

He said it was the first time he’d seen anyone taking pictures of the boys in the shower.

“It’s been in my mind for years since that incident.”

He said that after his shower he was sitting down when he saw McCann approach the team bags at the other end of the bench.

“He bent down into his bag and started getting some tablets and pills out. He was taking these tablets crouched down, bent down, and I said to him: ‘What tablets were them?’ and he laughed, sniggered.

“His exact words – I still remember them to this day – he said: ‘It’s to stop me from getting hard-ons.’”

Johansen, who played for the youth team from 1986-88 when he was aged 14 to 16, told jurors that another time McCann grabbed him from behind” and held him tightly when he was wearing only his underwear.

The defence barrister Mark Ford suggested the incident was merely “horseplay” between friends – a suggestion Johansen disputed.

Ford said McCann did not accept that he took photographs of boys showering or that he had the camera in the changing rooms. Johansen replied: “You’re saying he didn’t have the camera? That’s a total lie. It was him with the camera.”

The barrister put to Johansen that the “hard-on” comment was just changing-room banter, to which the witness replied: “You’re totally far from the truth there, mate. No one says things like that.”

The jury has heard that McCann allegedly groomed a teenager by giving him gifts, taking him on football tours and allowing him to drink alcohol underage on holidays.

The trial continues.