The former Premier League referee David Coote has been given a suspended sentence after he was found to have a sexual video of a 15-year-old boy in school uniform on his laptop.
Judge Shant said Coote, 43, had a “spectacular fall from grace” after police charged him with making a category A video, the most serious kind, of a 15-year-old schoolboy. The charge refers to activities such as downloading, sharing or saving photos or videos containing abuse.
The sacked referee was also given a 10-year sexual harm prevention order, which the judge said would restrict his “contact and communication with children” and where he was allowed to live. He has also been ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work.
Prosecutors said the 2min 11s video found on his laptop showed the boy undress until he was completely naked, before performing sexual acts on himself.
Passing sentence on Coote, Shant told him: “Those who commit this sort of offence must understand that they involve real children being abused, with all the consequent damage that comes from it.”
Coote was fired by Professional Game Match Officials Limited in December 2024 after an unrelated video surfaced in which he made comments about the then Liverpool manager, Jürgen Klopp.
Jeremy Janes, prosecuting, said: “He had been filmed making comments about Jürgen Klopp – those comments went viral and put him into the spotlight.
“There was a wider interest and investigation into his conduct by various tabloid newspapers.”
Police then went to Coote’s address in February 2025 and seized and analysed his devices, the court was told. They discovered Coote had extracted the sexual video of a 15-year-old boy from a hard drive to a laptop on 2 January 2020.
His defence lawyer, Laura Jane Miller, said Coote had been dealing with personal and mental health difficulties when he downloaded the video, and was “deeply ashamed by his actions”.
“At this time, there was an internal struggle with personal difficulties and an issue with his mental health. That followed the breakdown of a relationship and those personal struggles spiralled,” Miller said.
Miller invited the judge to consider a suspended sentence and an order to perform unpaid work. She told the court: “Looking at the prospect of rehabilitation and whether there needs to be an immediate custodial sentence, I would invite the court to impose a suspended sentence of imprisonment. It would save him being a burden on the public purse in the custodial setting.”
Coote refused to comment on his suspended prison sentence as he left Nottingham crown court on Thursday via a private exit. The 43-year-old was allowed access to an area normally reserved for witnesses before leaving via the entrance marked “probation liaison office”.
