Kevin Adams, the Fame Academy star convicted of sexually assaulting Andy Carroll, once urged the public to show kindness and take responsibility for harming another person’s mental health.
Adams, now 59, was jailed for 20 months in 2023 after sexually abusing the former Premier League striker while Carroll was asleep and naked.
Carroll, 37, disclosed over the weekend that Adams, who worked as a dance coach on the BBC programme Fame Academy, had assaulted him. The former footballer said the incident had a “devastating impact” on his life and his loved ones.
In his book, Carroll said he had been drinking “a few drinks” before waking to find Adams attempting to perform oral sex on him. Carroll then forced him out of the house and knocked him unconscious when he tried to come back.
Adams, who also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing, called for people to treat one another with kindness after the death of his friend Caroline Flack in 2020. He also told people to “shut your mouth if you’ve got nothing good to say”.
The convicted sex offender further argued that people should “take ownership” if their actions had contributed to worsening someone else’s situation.
Kevin Adams, who sexually assaulted Andy Carroll, once urged people to show kindness and take responsibility for damaging another person’s mental health
Andy Carroll, 37, said Adams, a dance coach on the BBC programme Fame Academy, assaulted him and that the experience had a “devastating impact” on his life and loved ones
However, Adams appears to have acted in the opposite way, lying to police and the court by claiming Carroll had attacked him without provocation and falsely alleging that he had consensual sex with the footballer.
During his 2023 trial, Judge Mary Loram told Adams: “You spun a literally incredible tale in which you painted yourself as the victim. You’ve actually started to believe your own lies.”
She continued: “In your narrative, you were the put-upon reluctant friend doing no more than helping out.
“The end of your unbelievable tale was that you were the victim of the most serious sexual assaults yourself.”
Despite his public calls for people to accept responsibility for wrongdoing, Adams also appears to have tried to conceal his crime from relatives and friends.
His mother told the Daily Mail that she remained in regular contact with her son but had no knowledge of the assault or his imprisonment.
Adams has also had no contact with his two daughters for several years.
In a Sky News television interview six years ago, Adams said: “People say you should be kind to people. And sometimes people react badly to that. They ask, ‘Why should I be kind to this person?’ You see them living this perfect life. You see perfect makeup, clothes, and you see them smiling for photographers.
“But you don’t see the other side, and that is the side we need to think about. If you’ve got nothing good to say, say nothing.
“You don’t need to be kind to these people; you just need to know when to leave them alone. Just leave them alone.
“You don’t need to bring negativity. People don’t need it. They just don’t need it.”
He added: “It’s so easy to pick up a phone, go on social media and say something detrimental to someone. If you’ve got nothing good to say, shut your mouth.”
‘As individuals, we have to take ownership. If we helped to make someone’s situation worse or if we’ve done that in the past, we need to think about that.
‘This is the thing within our life. I’ve never met a perfect human being, and I think that’s the one thing the public should take away.
‘Remember, no one is perfect. If you’ve got nothing to say, say nothing.’
He delivered the sermon a year after he assaulted Carroll. Court documents reportedly say the assault took place in 2019 although the ex-England striker said in his book it happened in 2021.
Before he was sentenced, Adams had run a children’s dance school, the Kevin Adams Academy, in Harlow, Essex. Records show that the company ceased operations in 2022.
The sex offender was best known for his role on the BBC talent show Fame Academy, which ran between 2002 and 2003 and was hosted by Cat Deeley and Patrick Kielty. He also appeared as a TV presenter for GMTV and Sky.
Adams, who also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing, was friends with Carroll’s former partner Billi Mucklow
He was married to a woman in 2005 in a ceremony attended by famous faces including Jade Goody and Alesha Dixon.
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They had two daughters and Adams was pictured with them at various film premieres in their youth.
But his marriage and relationship with his children broke down and he hasn’t seen them in a decade.
In a 2018 speech at a charity fundraiser he admitted he was reported to family court in 2011 because his children were allegedly scared of him. He said he was told they didn’t want to see him.
Adams was friends with Carroll’s former partner Billi Mucklow and was filmed running a fitness class attended by the footballer in 2014.
He was at Carroll’s house to watch a boxing match before he assaulted him.
Carroll – who now plays for National League South club Dagenham & Redbridge and serves as assistant manager – shared in his new book, Owning It, that he experienced the ‘traumatic’ assault.
He said after the attack he called the police and was ‘sobbing’ in the arms of his children’s nanny.
Adams was later found guilty of sexual offences and placed on the sex offender register. He was also banned from entering the village where Carroll lived.
Carroll testified in court, a process he says was ‘humiliating and embarrassing and absolutely horrendous’.
He said it has affected ‘every facet of my life’, writing: ‘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.’
He wrote in his new book, which was released last month: ‘Other things I’d quite like to forget but can’t, something happened to me a few years ago that was so traumatic I only decided to include it in this book at the very last minute.’
‘I was sexually assaulted, there I said it. Scary to even think about and only a few people knew about it before now.’
Carroll explained he was assaulted the evening after a Newcastle United game when Adams invited himself round to watch a boxing match.
Describing their relationship, he wrote: ‘He was always asking me and my ex to go out with him and even buys me clothes. He is divorced with kids but I can’t shift the feeling he likes me more than a platonic way.
He continued: ‘I was playing down south somewhere and on my way home this guy texts to ask what I am up to.
‘When he texts again to ask if he can come round to watch the boxing with me, my partner tells me to stop pieing him off [putting him off].
‘He takes over the kitchen, mixing drinks. I start to feel lightheaded and think has he slipped me something. ‘Right, time for bed,’ I say to him, ‘I’ll order you a taxi.’
‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘I’ll stay in the spare room.”
He then claims he woke up to find Adams sexually assaulting him.
‘I sleep naked and when I wake up this guy is under the duvet trying to give me a blowjob.’
Carroll went on to ‘smack’ him as he ordered him out the house. ‘I smack him as hard as I can and he hits the deck,’ he writes.
Adams was found guilty of sexual offences and placed on the sex offender register. He was also banned from entering the village where Carroll lived
Carroll, who played for England between 2010-2012, detailed the ‘traumatic’ assault in his autobiography
‘I grab hold of his feet and drag him out on the driveway. I go back inside, lock the door and call the police and the nanny. And then it suddenly occurs to me, what if I killed him?
‘He regains consciousness just as the police turn up and immediately starts telling the police I hit him for no reason. As it is the police arrest him and I have to go to the station as well.’
The footballer initially kept the identity of his attacker secret although he revealed it was Adams after learning he had been named in court documents.
‘Hopefully now I can finally start to put this chapter behind me,’ said Carroll.