A paedophile Fife football coach who sent vile videos to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl has been put on the sex offenders register for five years.
James Devine, at the time a senior figure at the John Thomson Football Academy in Cardenden, also sent explicit sexual messages to the decoy – an adult member of a paedophile hunter group.
The 42-year-old, now of Coatbridge, appeared at Dunfermline Sheriff Court for sentencing after earlier pleading guilty to attempting to cause an older child to view a sexual image and attempting to communicate indecently.
He sent photographs and videos of himself masturbating and sent indecent, sexualised and suggestive messages to someone he believed was a child between February 17 and April 8 last year.
The offending took place at an address in Cardenden and elsewhere.
Sick messages
Prosecutor Annie Henderson told the court a woman from Yorkshire Predator Hunters set up a decoy Facebook profile as a 14-year-old girl from Leeds.
The first message sent by Devine to the profile was “you are gorgeous”, before he acknowledged seeing her age on the profile.
Weeks later, he messaged asking what she was doing and was told “going to sleep because going to school the next day.”
She again mentioned her age and he replied she looked older and asked if she had a boyfriend.
Days later he contacted her again and asked if she was wearing any “knickers or shorts,” the fiscal said.
Other messages included asking her if she was “ever bad in bed,” whether she wears “a thong or normal knickers,” what colour her underwear was and saying he wanted to picture her in it.
He went on to send more sexually explicit messages about wanting to perform a sex act on her when she turned 16.
Devine sent a further message asking her not to tell her mum anything and another one which said: “I will travel to do it to you.”
The fiscal depute said the messages continued for “a few weeks,” adding: “Between March and April 2024 the decoy profile received five video messages from the accused, who was naked, his penis was erect and he was masturbating himself.”
Confrontation
The court heard a woman from Child Protection Team UK was contacted by the decoy to say Devine was going to be running a children’s football class at Bowhill community centre and due to concerns about him working with kids, she attended.
Devine was confronted in a video at the sports ground in April last year and police were contacted.
It is understood Devine was head coach of John Thomson Football Academy in Cardenden.
‘Fantasy world’
Speaking in mitigation this week, defence lawyer Elaine Buist said: “Since he has been charged he has taken a step back and realised he was allowing pressures in life from different areas, including his full-time occupation at the time, to pile on him and was turning to the computer and using it as a sort of fantasy world to escape the pressure of his own life.”
The solicitor said Devine has “benefited from the ten-week course he has undertaken” with abuse prevention group Stop It Now.
The lawyer said a social work report recommended a community payback order.
Sheriff Susan Duff said the report contained “a lot of minimising” from Devine about what happened but Ms Buist suggested this was because he is “acutely embarrassed by the whole thing”.
Sheriff Duff sentenced Devine to 200 hours of unpaid work, reduced from 300 hours to reflect his early guilty plea, and put him on offender supervision for a year.
For more local court content visit our page or join us on Facebook.
