One of the island’s top coaches has drawn unsettling comparisons between Bermudian football and the child sex abuse scandal that is engulfing English game.

Maceo Dill is aware of several former players who have suffered sexual abuse by people linked with the island’s clubs, which he believes have been a breeding ground for sexual predators looking to prey on vulnerable youngsters.

The coach has closely followed the shocking events in England during the past few weeks, during which more than 20 former players — including former England players Paul Stewart and David White — came forward to speak about their ordeals.

Dill, who has been involved in football for decades — first as a midfielder for North Village, where he also served as youth director, and now as a technical assistant at the ABC Football School — believes similar horror stories exist in Bermuda.

“I absolutely know people in Bermuda who have been sexually abused by people directly related to the football clubs,” Dill said. “The ages of these people vary and that tells you this problem has been around for decades.

“I’ve interacted with victims and the horror and hell that they live with is overwhelming. Some of the things I’ve heard are shocking and I’m not the only one who knows.”

Local football, Dill said, still does not have defence mechanisms in place to protect those players without a strong family unit and most likely to be targeted by child molesters.

He also describes some of the clubs as “cesspools of shenanigans” that not only attract antisocial behaviour, such as drunkenness and drug use, but also unsavoury characters who pose a potential threat to children.

“I’m aware of people who have worked at clubs who shouldn’t have been there,” said Dill, who completed a Football Association coaching course several years ago that focused partially on child sex abuse.

“Looking back to when I played as a kid, I remember a whole lot that seemed untoward.

“I came from a family with a mother, a daddy, a lot of protection, so I was someone who probably wouldn’t have been targeted.

“But I interacted with a lot of people — team-mates, schoolmates and opponents — who didn’t come from that; players whose parents weren’t at the games all of the time.”

Bermuda has a culture of sweeping problems and conflicts under the carpet, particularly in football, according to Dill, who thinks that much soul-searching needs to be done before it can seriously tackle “an island-wide issue”.

He also believes he has played with and against, as well as coached, numerous players who have suffered sexual abuse by a person known to them in a position of trust outside of the game.

“Truthfully, for sexual predators, Bermuda is a paradise; a paradise for anyone who wants to act untoward towards children,” said Dill, who has an 18-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son. “It’s rampant in our society at large.

“I look back at some of my friends, how they behaved and reacted emotionally, and I can understand them better and understand some of the possibilities that happened to them.

“Some of these people have had a life of alcohol, a life of drugs, a life of crime, as a reaction to some of the things they couldn’t mentally deal with. Where does the root of these problems originate?

“As a coach, I’ve seen situations and start to understand better why I can’t get through to this young player because of these things that could be happening to him.”

More than 20 former English footballers have come forward with allegations of historical child sex abuse, with 18 police forces investigating. The FA has announced an internal review, with about 350 people have alleged they are victims and 55 amateur and professional clubs linked to the allegations of abuse.

Dill, however, believes Bermuda’s cultural climate is less conducive for victims, football-related or otherwise, to share their experiences in public.

“Eventually, these things will come out,” said Dill, whose father, Sherwin, is the Village president. “I’m not at liberty to put those things out there because it has to come from the victim’s perspective.

“There is still not enough support with the clubs, within Bermuda as a society, for these people to feel comfortable telling their story.

“Because we’re such a close-knit society, the families know about it and the potential shame that comes with it means they want to hide it more than they want to address it.”

Dill said it is now imperative for football coaches and volunteers working with children to be subject to stringent background checks. Encouragingly, some clubs such as Village have started enrolling their coaches on the Saving Children and Revealing Secrets training programme, which Dill believes is an important step.

“Right now, if you just volunteer at a club, you can work closely with kids,” the Uefa B-licensed coach said. “We need to put proactive laws in place before we allow people to deal with kids, so abuse situations don’t happen. When I travel to Europe, I visit a lot of sports academies where there are strict laws in place prior to anybody dealing with kids. In Bermuda, there’s not enough support, legally, to prevent it.”

Sheelagh Cooper, the founder of the Coalition for the Protection of Children, said that vetting people who work with children is a complicated process.

“You can’t actually do a background check on someone because that information is not publicly available,” said Cooper, who has encouraged clubs to enrol their coaches in the Scars programme.

“The employer would have to request for the person that they are considering employing to actually get a police report.

“The problem [with sports] is that many [offenders] would volunteer rather than being employed. These are the type of people you especially want to check. There’s probably in excess of 100 sex offenders released after two thirds of their sentence living in our community right now. They’re often attracted to activities that involve children.”