Former England striker Andy Carroll has named TV dance coach Kevin Adams as the man who sexually assaulted him in 2021, telling the Sun newspaper that he decided to come forward after learning his attacker’s name appeared in publicly available court documents.
Carroll, 37, had already disclosed the assault in his autobiography, Owning It, which was published last month, but did not identify the perpetrator in the book. Adams, who appeared on the BBC series Fame Academy from 2002, was given a custodial sentence for the assault in 2023, BBC News understands. He was found guilty following a trial in September of that year and sentenced to 20 months imprisonment the following November at Chelmsford Crown Court.
The former Newcastle United and West Ham forward had previously described being attacked while he was asleep by a friend of his former partner, who had visited his home to watch a boxing match. At the time Carroll was playing for Newcastle United, the club he supported as a boy. He has said he was being assaulted when he woke up, threw his attacker out of the house, and then knocked him unconscious when the man tried to return.
In his autobiography, Carroll described the difficulty of deciding whether to write about the experience at all. He said he had “spent a lot of time discussing whether to mention it in this book or not”, adding: “I avoided my publisher for so long that they probably suspected I got cold feet.” He also wrote: “Scary to talk about but it’s made [me] the person I am today as much as any of the good stuff. And if me talking about it helps just one person then good, it will have been worth it.”
Adams built a television career as a dancer and dance instructor, making several appearances on screen from the late 1990s onwards. He has not commented publicly since Carroll named him as the man who attacked him.