Gary Speed Footballer Suicide: His tragic secret?
Channel: lookagain2011
Date: 2011-12-01

Since last Sunday November 27th, the World of football has been wracking its brain to work out how a man, seemingly with everything to live for, would end his own life.
 
On the surface Gary Speed had everything; outstanding professional success, a perfect personal life, good looks and admiration from everyone. Despite acres of newspaper column inches no one seems to have an inkling of what would drive him to suicide.
 
However, hidden away in a little seen TV documentary aired only once, in January 1997 when Gary would have been 27 years old, is possibly the one important, and ultimately tragic, factor that may have never been fully dealt with.
 
The current affairs investigation was by journalist Debbie Davies. Anyone viewing the documentary at the time would've wondered and worried, as I did, how it would pan out for Gary over the following years.  His was the name and the face that stayed with me from the report. The most troubling thing is that after it was shown there was never again any mention of the story in the media. Whatever happened between Gary Speed and influential football talent scout Barry Bennell, was never fully examined in the media at the time or since. Yet Barry was a man who was later convicted of the systematic and long term sexual abuse of young boys who were relying on him for their football careers. The documentary contains testimony regarding rape of boys as young as 11. According to the testimony he would show favouritism to the boys who went with him and help them get on in football. Bennell was later sent to jail yet his victims were known to keep their terrible experiences bottled up inside them. 
 
It's not impossible to imagine boy victims who had already become successful men by 1997 would not wish their terrible experiences, some 15 or more years earlier, to become known. Only those men would know what traumatic abuse had happened to them. Weighing up all the ramifications of revealing their story you could understand if they decided to keep it tightly bottled up inside forever.
 
Having discovered a copy of that documentary I can bring you now the relevant portions.  You too may find them compelling and the one crucial factor when we try to fathom what it was that was troubling Gary to the end.
 
It is noteworthy too, isn't it, that right now there is a similar story being uncovered about Penn State University, and that this has been receiving widespread media coverage.