Kevin Adams, the former Fame Academy dance coach convicted of sexually abusing ex-Premier League footballer Andy Carroll, has been condemned as a “monster” by his own daughter.
Adams, 59, received a 20-month prison sentence in 2023 after being found guilty of sexually abusing Carroll while the former striker was asleep and naked.
Carroll, 37, disclosed last week that Adams had assaulted him, describing the experience as having a “devastating impact” on his life and those closest to him.
He first discussed the incident in his autobiography, Owning It: My Untold Story, but did not identify the man involved at the time.
In the book, Carroll wrote that after drinking “a few drinks”, he woke to find a man attempting to perform a sex act on him.
Carroll said he ejected the man from his home before knocking him unconscious when he attempted to come back inside.
Adams’s daughter, Avia, 21, has now spoken publicly about the case, saying her father did not tell her that he had spent time in prison.
Speaking to The Sun, she said: “I feel really bad for [Mr Carroll]. I just think my dad is a monster.”
Andy Carroll, pictured, has identified Kevin Adams, a dance coach on Fame Academy, as the man who assaulted him, saying the experience had a “devastating impact” on his life and loved ones
Adams, pictured in 2010, has been labelled a “monster” by his daughter
Asked whether Carroll had shown courage by speaking out, Avia replied: “100 per cent.”
She added that she supported his decision to reveal Adams’s identity, saying: “He’s done something terrible to you, so name him. If I was in that position, I’d do the same.”
Avia also claimed that Adams had concealed his true age from relatives, telling them until around two weeks ago that he was in his 40s.
Having grown up in Essex, where her family mixed with well-known figures, Avia said she intends to change her surname as part of her decision to distance herself from her father.
Adams married Avia’s mother in September 2005, six months after their daughter was born. The couple separated in 2011.
During Adams’s 2023 trial, Judge Mary Loram accused him of creating an implausible account in which he portrayed himself as the victim.
“You spun a literally incredible tale in which you painted yourself as the victim,” she told him. “You’ve actually started to believe your own lies.”
The judge said Adams had presented himself as an unwilling friend who had merely been trying to help, before claiming that he had himself suffered the most serious sexual assaults.
Court documents reportedly place the assault in 2019, while Carroll wrote in his autobiography that it happened in 2021.
Before his conviction, Adams operated the Kevin Adams Academy, a children’s dance school in Harlow, Essex. Company records indicate that it stopped trading 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 was friends with Mr Carroll’s former partner Billi Mucklow and was filmed running a fitness class attended by the footballer in 2014.
He was at Mr Carroll’s house to watch a boxing match before he assaulted him.
Mr 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 Mr Carroll lived.
Mr 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.’