A youth football coach spent years downloading child abuse images while helping oversee a young boys’ team.
Liam James Ball, 31, yesterday admitted possessing the vile material at an address in Perth between March 2013 and September 2018.
The former Fair City 2010 coach also admitted downloading illicit images between 2013 and 2015.
Ball, formerly of Simpson Square, Perth, and now living in Liverpool, was discovered to have more than 650 images during a dawn raid by police in September last year.
Just weeks later he made an attempt to join a different Perth football club, Jeanfield Swifts.
Officials at Jeanfield are now carrying out an urgent review after Ball was able to join several coaching sessions involving boys born in 2008.
It is understood officials were unaware of Ball’s arrest or the charges he faced until after he appeared in court yesterday.
Depute fiscal Charmaine Gilmartin told Perth Sheriff Court: “Confidential information was received by Police Scotland indicating indecent images may be held on devices.
“A search warrant was granted and executed at 7.30am on September 13 2018. Entry was granted and the accused was within.
“A number of electronic devices were recovered. Police obtained his PIN numbers and passwords.
“An examination showed the presence of 653 unique indecent images of children.
“They remained accessible to the user if they chose to restore back-ups.”
Mrs Gilmartin said 485 of the images were category C, 96 were category B and the remaining 72 were of the most serious nature, category A.
She said Ball declined to make any comment when he was cautioned and charged by police.
Sheriff Pino di Emidio deferred sentence for the preparation of a social work report and placed Ball on the sex offenders register.
He told Ball it was “a very serious matter” and granted him bail until early next year, when he will return to court for sentence.
Ball’s links with Fair City youth football team were on the club website until recently, but all mention of him was removed prior to his appearance in the dock yesterday.
The Fair City 2010 team is made up of boys born in that year.
A spokesperson for Fair City Junior FC confirmed Ball had undergone PVG checks and said: “Liam has not coached within our club for a couple of years.
“(I’m) absolutely shocked at hearing (this) and have no more to comment as I was not aware of any investigation.”
A source at Jeanfield said: “He approached us in November 2018 to ask if he could help out. He came along to a couple of sessions before drifting away.
“As a new volunteer, he would never have been unsupervised with the kids. We will be reviewing (procedures) in light of this.”
