A FOOTBALL league assistant referee who preyed on teenage girls has been jailed for 13-and-a-half years.
Gareth Viccars, 47, was locked up behind bars for a string of child sexual abuse offences involving three 15-year-old schoolgirls.
Viccars previously pleaded guilty to 16 counts, including sexual communications with a child, meeting with a child following sexual grooming, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and engaging in sexual activity with a child.
The offences spanned three years between November 2021 and October 2024 and involved three girls aged 15, Snaresbrook Crown Court previously heard.
On Thursday, Viccars was jailed for 13 and a half years with a further three and a half years on extended licence at the same court.
Viccars was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for life.
Addressing the referee, Judge Caroline English said: “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.
Viccars was an assistant referee at the time of offending.
He has worked as an official for League One clashes in the EFL alongside his day job as an estate agent.
The Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the organisation responsible for managing all Premier League and EFL matches across England, said he was suspended “as soon as the allegations came to light”.
Viccars was not considered for appointments after his initial suspension.
The PGMOL has since removed him from the organisation’s list, it is believed.
It is understood the former assistant referee did not officiate during the last season.
The judge said that despite Viccars’s guilty pleas and expressions of remorse, there remained a lack of acknowledgment from the defendant that he had “a sexual interest in female children”.
This interest was clear from the contents of messages sent to his victims and a statement from Viccars’s ex-girlfriend, which said he used to ask her to dress up in school uniform.
Viccars, who appeared in the dock wearing a dark green sweatshirt, nodded as the judge read out her sentencing remarks.
The prosecutor Charlotte Newell KC told the court Viccars had met his victims online through the messaging app Snapchat, telling one girl that talking on WhatsApp was “too risky”.
She said Viccars had lied and told one of his victims he was a teacher when they first started communicating and was aware that she was 15 years old.
The court heard he had abused another of his victims over a period of several years – taking her to football matches and told others he was “mentoring” her.
A scrapbook chronicling the two’s “relationship” that was made by the teenager, and given to Viccars, was handed to police and formed part of the evidence against him, the prosecutor said.
In court, Viccars watched the victim read out an impact statement during which she said he had been her “world” and that she had trusted him “completely” for almost three years.
Addressing her abuser, she said he had won her over with “kind words” and “attention” and had isolated her “in plain sight”.
“Now I know what you really wanted was someone young enough to manipulate,” she added.
After the sentencing, the Met Police said they believed there may be other victims of Viccars as he had been “spamming hundreds of girls on Snapchat”.
DCI Ross Morrell, who led the Met’s investigation, said: “He began with a profile of ‘sorry I think I’ve added the wrong person’, and then he would go in to lie, manipulate them, and then go on to abuse them.
“If anyone thinks they’ve been a victim, then please contact 101, reference this appeal.
“You will be entitled to specialist care, specialist advice, and you will be believed.”
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