Sex offences by sports coaches

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/26/010090/H

Version Date: 07/07/2026

The Performance & Analysis Department has provided the following information:

Data Source:

Crime information system – Niche

Data Processing:

Cancelled crimes excluded, Non-notifiable crimes excluded                                           

Qliksense Report: Crime and Outcomes                                         

Filtered by date: 1 January 2016 to 31 May 2026                                                 

Offence Group: Rape and Other Sexual Offences                                                

Victims age range: <18 at time offence committed

Person Occupation at time: Coach, Instructor or trainer

Suspect/Offender data was matched to victim data for relevance.

Data Limitations:

"Person Occupation at Time" field is reliant on the correct recording of the occupation and a correlating start date to be present therefore the data can be incomplete.                                                                                                                                                                     

Person Occupation at Time was filtered on for coach, instructor and trainer, then restricted to those deemed relevant or possibly relevant occupations (e.g. instructor was included and checked for relevance, but driving instructor was excluded).                               

All offences were then read for relevance to the request.                                     

1. Please manually review the approximately seven records where the occupation field contains coach, trainer or instructor, and confirm which of those relate to a suspect working in a sporting capacity with the victim.
   
   2. For those confirmed records, please provide a breakdown by offence type and, where recorded, the age range of the victim at the time of the offence.
   
   I appreciate that the occupation field is incomplete across the wider dataset, and I'm happy for that limitation to be noted in your response. I'm not asking for a review of all 25,007 records - only the small number already identified as potentially relevant.
   
   

Between 1 January 2016 and 31 May 2026, there were two recorded offences of rape or other sexual offence against a child, where the suspect/offender was the victim’s coach/instructor/trainer, within the Devon & Cornwall Police force area.                                                                                                                           

One offence was under the offence "offender 18 or over cause / incite a girl 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity - no penetration".                                                                                                                 

The other offence was under the offence "sex offences - abuse position of trust - engage in