David Coote has been sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to making an indecent image of a child.<\/p>\n
The court heard that police seized the disgraced former Premier League referee’s electronic devices and an explicit two-minute video of a 15-year-old boy, initially in a school uniform, from January 2 2020, was found on his laptop.<\/p>\n
Coote was charged in October with an allegation relating to a category A video, the most serious kind, recovered by police in February.<\/p>\n
The 43-year-old appeared for his sentencing hearing at Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday where prosecutors said a clip was found after a separate probe into comments he made about ex-Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp in 2020.<\/p>\n
The court heard the former referee answered no comment to relevant questions in a police interview in February 2025, and was cautioned after officers found cocaine in his house in the same month.<\/p>\n
Sparing Coote an immediate prison sentence, Judge Nirmal Shant KC told the former referee: “You have had a spectacular fall from grace.”<\/p>\n
She told him videos such as the one Coote had downloaded “involve a real child being abused”, adding that those viewing similar material should bear in mind the “consequent damage that follows from it”.<\/p>\n
Speaking about his state of mind, Judge Shant told him: “You were a lonely man. You had a relationship that had broken down recently.<\/p>\n
“You had mental health difficulties and you were consuming cocaine, which of course was your choice, but it had a direct effect on your thinking.”<\/p>\n
Coote was granted access to an area normally reserved for witnesses before leaving the court building via a private exit marked “probation liaison office”.<\/p>\n
He did not speak when asked if he had any comment to make. Coote’s barrister Laura Jane Miller said he was “deeply ashamed of himself”.<\/p>\n
She told the court: “For the last six years, Mr Coote has faced intensive media scrutiny.<\/p>\n
“He has shown remorse for this offending to the probation service.<\/p>\n
“He said he’s deeply ashamed of himself and his actions.”<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Jeremy Janes said the offence of making a category A image can lead to a maximum sentence of three years in prison.<\/p>\n
The charge of making an indecent image of a child refers to activities such as downloading, sharing or saving photos or videos.<\/p>\n
Coote was sacked by Professional Game Match Officials Limited in December 2024 after a video of comments he made about Klopp came to light.<\/p>\n
In August 2025, Coote was given an eight-week suspension by the Football Association over the Klopp footage.<\/p>\n
In January last year, Coote came out as gay in an interview with The Sun and said a lifelong struggle to hide his sexuality had contributed to his comments about Klopp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Coote has been sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-234268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}