David Simmons, 26, was jailed for three years and eight months for 17 sexual offences. Photo / Police handout
David Simmons, 26, was jailed for three years and eight months for 17 sexual offences. Photo / Police handout
A rugby coach has been jailed after molesting young boys and filming hundreds of videos using spy cameras inside digital clocks and shower bottles hidden in changing rooms.
David Simmons, 26, was jailed for three years and eight months for 17 sexual offences at Southwark Crown Court after admitting thecharges at an earlier hearing.
He exploited his position as a rugby coach, where he ran his own sessions and holiday clubs at more than 30 venues in south-west London, to hide the cameras inside digital clocks and shower gel bottles in showers and toilets.
Simmons also insisted boys should weigh themselves naked, claiming it was for body fat percentage tests, and secretly recorded them using his iPhone or iPad.
His role included selecting and coaching promising teenagers for a county representative side, including many academy players.
During the early part of 2014, Simmons employed a former friend.
The friend spotted a digital clock on the wall above the toilet and thought it was in an unusual position.
He later discovered five similar clocks in a filing cabinet.
When he confronted Simmons about that, he was told they were there when he moved in.
However in August 2014 he saw one of the clocks next to a desk used by Simmons He decided to have a closer look at the clocks in the filing cabinet and found some of them contained SD memory cards and all had camera lenses positioned at the front.
He looked up the clocks online and found them for sale as 'spy' recording devices which could be operated by a remote control - which he later discovered in a pen pot on Simmons' desk.
He challenged Simmons again, who denied any knowledge of the cameras.
However he decided to quit his role and reported his suspicions to the police.
Investigators found nearly 500 videos, often containing more than one boy, at Simmons' home in Ashford in Surrey and at a business address. They also found a secret camera hidden in a Lynx shower gel bottle.
Simmons also posed as a teenage girl on Skype to encourage a boy to take part in online sexual activity.
Sentencing him, Judge Martin Griffith later said: "Rugby Union is more than just a game played for 80 minutes on a Saturday.
"The lifeblood of the game is the young people who learn to play through schools, through club rugby, with the hopes and dreams, which might be dashed, that they might one day appear at Twickenham or other stadiums around the world.
Simmons hid the cameras inside digital clocks and shower gel bottles in showers and toilets. Photo / Police handout
"In this day and age, such hopes and dreams usually include the involvement of people like you as coaches and the specific formulae of body mass index testing.
"The players and parents who entrust these young people to coaches are entitled to and must be able to feel safe with you but you so gravely abused that trust by abusing those boys which is the worst part of this case.
"It is, I suspect you know already, why I have to send you to prison today."
London CPS reviewing lawyer Caroline Hughes said: "Over several years David Simmons abused his position of trust to systematically film hundreds of naked young boys for his own sexual gratification.
"He knew there was no reason to touch these boys but used the pretext of fat tests to sexually assault them.
"The overwhelming evidence in this case left Simmons with no choice but to plead guilty and accept responsibility for his crimes."
Detective Chief Inspector Zena Marshall, from the Met's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command, said: "Simmons abused the trust that was placed in him by both the victims and their parents; this was a terrible betrayal.
"We have been working closely with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Rugby Football Union, Kingston local authority and the clubs concerned to ensure that support is available to those who have been affected by this case.
"I hope the families can have some satisfaction that Simmons has been brought to account and is now facing the serious consequences of his actions."
An NSPCC spokesman said: "Simmons's behaviour was despicable and devious. He breached the trust given to him by the young players he coached and by their parents, who had every right to believe their children were in safe hands."
