Funeral Service Times August 2017 November 2018 | Page 28

28 OFFSIDE TRUST
Helping survivors to survive
After former professional golfer Chris Unsworth helped to spearhead one of the biggest investigations
into sexual abuse in the sports industry he decided to set up the organisation Offside Trust to help
and connect with other survivors. Here, he speaks to SHEKINA TUAHENE to share his story
I
n 2016, former professional golfer and
funeral director Chris Unsworth helped to
make history when he, Steve Walters and
Micky Fallon shared their stories of the
abuse they suffered at the hands of football
coach and youth scout, Barry Bennell, during
their childhood. Unsworth bravely disclosed
what he had gone through after he saw
former English footballer Andy Woodward
on BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show waive
his anonymity and come forward to share
his account. The allegations made by the
professional sportsmen were some of the
first accounts detailing the prevalent but
often concealed problem of sexual abuse in
the football industry and encouraged some
350 victims to come forward anonymously
or otherwise. It then led to a surge of arrests
and convictions of 12 other football coaches,
scouts and managers and charges brought
against five others. This was then followed
by an inquiry by the Football Association into
the suspected “institutional cover-up” of
peadophilia in the sport.
Bennell was sentenced to 31 years
imprisonment and shortly after Unsworth
waived his own anonymity and revealed
the pain he had been holding onto for
NOVEMBER 2018
almost four decades, he decided to turn his
negative experience around and set up the
Offside Trust with Walters in January 2017
to help other victims, starting with those in
the sporting industry. “We're the directors
and then there's a handful - eight or nine
- ambassadors who have all been abused
who have different stories,” Unsworth says.
“It's all on a voluntary basis, we've all got full
time jobs.”
In relation to the issue of sexual abuse
in football and other sports, Unsworth
adds: “It's a big issue, a big taboo subject.
Even now even with the figures we're
talking about we feel we're still not being
recognised we're still being ignored.” The
allegations of abuse which took place in
the 70s, 80s and 90s came to a head in
2016 and by July 2018, some 300 suspects
were identified by 849 alleged victims.
“We knew what sort of numbers we were
talking about,” he says. “There was nothing
really out there that helped us so that's why
we had to come forward. With our abuser
there was going to be 100s if not 1,000s
of lads out there, so we needed to create
somewhere for them to come because
there's not many places that they can turn to
- certainly not two years ago anyway.”
Through the Offside Trust, victims of
sexual abuse can gain access to therapy,
counselling, guidance or simply speak to
someone who fully understands how they
may be feeling as all the volunteers are
survivors themselves. “We just signpost and
then we get the help wherever they need it.
Some people want to pursue the criminal
trial so we help get the police involved; so
it's whatever the survivor wants we will help
them with,” Unsworth says. “The aim at the
moment is to help other survivors in the
healing journey.”
While the issue helped to shine a light
on the problem in the football industry,
Unsworth points out that the survivors that
do approach the Trust for help come from
all walks of life, as the former footballers’
decisions to come forward publicly helped
others to work up the courage to share their
own accounts. “They've heard a lot about
[our stories] because we've been in the
press, on the news, the radio - so a lot of
the time we could be the first people they
disclose to,” he says. “We've been contacted
by survivors all around the world - it's quite
humbling.”
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