‘She was lonely and… wanted someone to talk to’: Disgraced football referee jailed after preying on vulnerable teens

Former English Football League assistant referee Gareth Viccars has been handed a significant jail sentence after he pleaded guilty to a shocking string of child sexual abuse offenses involving teenage girls. This is absolutely awful news, and it shows a complete abuse of a position of trust. Viccars, who is 47 and from Milton Keynes, was jailed for 13-and-a-half years with an additional three-and-a-half years on an extended license for his despicable actions.

It’s a harsh sentence, but after hearing the details of what he did, I honestly think it’s necessary for someone who so clearly targeted vulnerable children. The offenses spanned a period of three years, between November 2021 and October 2024, and involved three separate girls, all of whom were just 15 years old at the time.

Viccars admitted to a staggering 16 counts in total, including serious charges like engaging in sexual communications with a child, meeting a child after sexual grooming, and causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. It’s clear this wasn’t an isolated mistake; this was a deliberate pattern of behavior, according to The Guardian.

Football ref took advantage of the young girls

Judge Caroline English didn’t mince words when addressing the former referee in court. She stated clearly, “You did deliberately target these three young victims and you did so on account of their ages at the material time. I am therefore quite satisfied that in all three cases you preyed upon young women that were vulnerable”. You can’t get much more direct than that.

The court heard how Viccars used the messaging app Snapchat to meet his victims online. Prosecutor Charlotte Newell KC revealed that he told one girl that communicating on WhatsApp was “too risky,” which immediately flags how calculated his actions were. He also lied to one of his victims, claiming he was a teacher when they first started talking, and he knew perfectly well that she was only 15.

The prosecutor read out an extremely disturbing transcript of a voice note Viccars sent to one of the girls, where he referred to her as “little girl” and himself as “daddy” and “teacher”. This is not only incredibly predatory but also shows how deep his manipulation went. Ms. Newell KC shared a heartbreaking detail about that victim’s state of mind at the time: “She says effectively that she was lonely and she just wanted someone to talk to. He, it seems, was aware of that and abused it—turning the communication sexual.” I can’t imagine how awful that must have felt.

Another victim’s abuse lasted for several years, and the court heard how Viccars took her to football matches and even told others that he was “mentoring” her. He isolated her “in plain sight,” as she later described in her impact statement. This teenager had trusted him “completely for almost three years” and had even made him a scrapbook chronicling their “relationship,” which was later handed to the police as evidence.

During her impact statement, the young woman addressed her abuser directly, saying he had won her over with “kind words” and “attention.” But then she delivered the devastating truth: “Now I know what you really wanted was someone young enough to manipulate”.

A statement from a different victim highlighted the immense damage to her trust, saying she now struggled to sleep and was plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. She spoke of blaming herself for his actions and feeling like she’d “never going to find happiness”. Judge English, however, had some important advice for the victims, telling them, “You must not allow your lives to be blighted by seeking to shoulder any responsibility for what took place, that would be wholly wrong. You must allow all the responsibility to rest where it belongs and that is entirely with Mr Viccars”.

Despite Viccars pleading guilty and expressing some remorse, Judge English pointed out that there was a clear lack of acknowledgment from him that he had “a sexual interest in female children”. The court was given even more disturbing insight into this from a statement by Viccars’s ex-girlfriend, who claimed he used to ask her to dress up in a school uniform. This guy sounds like he’s in complete denial about the core issue of his abuse, but at least he didn’t get away.