A kids’ football coach who admitted sending explicit videos of himself to a paedophile hunter who was posing as a 14-year-old girl has avoided jail. The Record previously told how twisted James Devine was arrested at one of his own training sessions.
The married dad-of-four was snared by activists online who then confronted him in person last April. Last month, the 42-year-old admitted sending indecent communications to someone he believed to be a teenage girl.
He returned to the dock at Dunfermline Sheriff Court on Wednesday for sentencing.
Devine was given a Community Payback Order for 12 months supervision and ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work within nine months. He was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register for five years.
His online confrontation was streamed live on social media with the video viewed 18,000 times. It showed him in his coaching gear with his head in his hands, then having to face his distraught wife.
She could be heard shouting at the group, questioning what they were doing, while members could be heard telling her he is “a paedophile”. The vigilantes were heard saying they would show her the evidence collected against him.
His wife is then heard crying while she tells him: “You’ve ruined everything, everything.” Two police officers, wearing hi-vis vests, then arrived at the scene and asked to speak to him before leading him away from the group.
Devine – originally from Glasgow and now of Coatbridge in Lanarkshire – spent two months thinking he was luring a 14-year-old girl into his warped secret double-life. But the “youngster” he was grooming was a paedophile hunter based in Yorkshire.
He sent the decoy explicit videos and encouraged her to commit sex acts and send him photos, but he was nailed by a tattoo of his wife’s name on his hand. On the tape, he told his accusers: “I’m so sorry, honestly, I really am.”
The boys’ club he founded in Cardenden, Fife, has also since folded. The club was named in honour of a tragic local legend who starred for Celtic and Scotland.
Goalkeeper John Thomson’s life was cut short at only 22 after his head accidentally collided with the knee of Rangers striker Sam English during an Old Firm match in 1931 – but his memory is revered in Cardenden and a local park bears his name.
Devine set up the John Thomson Academy last year, and it coached dozens of local boys and girls from the age of five up to teenage years. He said at the time: “Thomson Park is part of his legacy and we hope that the football academy will add another strand to that.”
Devine received funding from the community council and the John Thomson Celtic Supporters’ Club. Ex-Parkhead striker Frank McAvennie was guest of honour at the Academy’s Christmas party last year.
Officials at the club were floored by the arrest of their head coach. A statement on Facebook hours after his arrest read: “We are as shocked as everybody else.”
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