Andy Carroll has confirmed he was sexually assaulted by Kevin Adams, a dance coach who appeared on the BBC talent show Fame Academy, after Adams was convicted of sexual offences and jailed.
Adams, now 59, was sentenced to 20 months in prison at Chelmsford Crown Court in 2023. He was also placed on the Sex Offender Register and banned from entering the village where Carroll lived.
Carroll, 37, said he was identifying Adams after his name appeared in publicly available court documents. “Now that Kevin Adams has been named in court documents as my abuser, I can confirm it,” he said.
“Hopefully now I can finally start to put this chapter behind me. This had a devastating impact on my life and loved ones.”
The former Newcastle United and Liverpool striker, who now plays for National League South club Dagenham & Redbridge and serves as assistant manager, described the assault in his new book, Owning It.
Carroll wrote that the incident happened after a Newcastle match, when Adams invited himself to his home to watch a boxing match. He said Adams mixed drinks in the kitchen before he began to feel light-headed and decided to go to bed.
According to Carroll’s account, Adams said he would sleep in the spare room. Carroll later woke to find him attempting to perform a sex act on him.
“I was sexually assaulted, there I said it,” Carroll wrote. “Scary to even think about and only a few people knew about it before now.”
He said he struck Adams and forced him out of the house before contacting the police. Carroll also recalled fearing that he might have seriously injured him.
Adams denied the allegations and argued that he had been assaulted by Carroll. However, the judge rejected his account, telling him: “You spun a literally incredible tale in which you painted yourself as the victim. You’ve actually started to believe your own lies.”
Before his conviction, Adams ran the Kevin Adams Academy children’s dance school in Harlow, Essex. Records showed that the company ceased operations in 2022.
Adams appeared as a coach on Fame Academy in 2002 and later featured on Strictly It Takes Two in 2021.
Andy Carroll speaks out about male sexual assault
Carroll said he had initially been reluctant to include the account in his book, and only decided to do so at the last minute after lengthy discussions with his publisher and his partner, Lou Teasdale.
He described the court case as “humiliating and embarrassing and absolutely horrendous”, saying it lasted two years and affected his ability to concentrate on football and other aspects of his life.
“What happened to me affected every facet of my life,” he wrote. “I’d think about it every day, making it difficult to focus on anything else, including football… The trauma of what happened to me hasn’t gone away.”
Carroll said he had since received messages from men sharing their own experiences of sexual assault after he spoke publicly about what happened.
He said it was important that men should be able to decide for themselves how much they disclose, when they speak and whether they name the person responsible.
“For me, taking back control means being able to tell my story in the way that feels right for me, without feeling pressured to give people more than I’m ready to give,” he said.
