He once saw his gymnastics coach as a role model, a father figure and a trusted friend — but that coach, he said, shattered his trust through years of what he described as “incredibly abusive” behavior. Then, the former student said, the coached secretly filmed him and dozens of others in a gym bathroom.
At a sentencing hearing for coach Adam Richard Jacobs, his former student told a judge that the man “inappropriately touched me for years” and “repeatedly made lewd and sexual remarks and jokes about my body.”
“For over eight years, I lived in fear of this man,” the victim said. “On the daily, Adam would yell at me and my teammates to the point of mental degradation. Every day I went home feeling like no matter what I did, I was never good enough.”
Jacobs, 35, admitted in a plea deal that he secretly filmed more than a dozen children and some adults over several months using a hidden camera he admitted placing in a restroom at USA Gymnastics World in Woods Cross, where Jacobs was a partial owner and coach.
He pleaded guilty in February to sexually exploiting at least 15 minors he filmed, as well as voyeurism involving two adults, admitting he secretly recording all of them without their knowledge.
On Thursday, 2nd District Judge Michael DiReda sentenced Jacobs to spend a one-to-15 year prison sentence for each of the 15 felony charges he pleaded guilty to. DiReda also sentenced him to spend up to two years in jail for two misdemeanor charges. Utah’s parole board will ultimately decide how much time Jacobs spends in prison.
That prison sentence is on top of a 10-year federal prison sentence a different judge handed down last week. Once Jacobs leaves prison, his federal prison sentence also requires that he be on probation for the rest of his life.
[Read more: Utah coach who filmed undressed kids: ‘I betrayed the trust … of people I deeply care about’]
In that federal case, Jacobs admitted to hiding cameras in a former student’s hotel rooms and bathrooms to produce child sexual abuse materials during trips to Texas and Florida for out-of-state meets.
Jacobs didn’t speak during Thursday’s sentencing in DiReda’s courtroom. But last week, he told a federal judge he was remorseful.
“I made really bad decisions to hurt people that I loved and was meant to protect,” Jacobs said. “I betrayed the trust and invaded the privacy of people I deeply care about.”
During Thursday’s sentencing, Jacobs’ attorney, Andrew Deesing, asked for his state sentence to run alongside the federal one, arguing that he already will receive extensive rehabilitation in federal prison.
“He’s already done more than other people in this situation,” Deesing told the judge. “Every victim that’s came to the government and said, ‘Yeah, I want accountability,’ we didn’t balk at it. He said, ‘I’m guilty.’”
DiReda, the judge, rejected his request. He told the courtroom of about a dozen victims and their families before handing down that sentence that he “can’t even wrap my mind around how these children must feel, the feelings of betrayal, the feelings of being violated.”
The former student who spoke at the sentencing told DiReda that Jacobs instructed the athletes not to share what happened during practices with their parents and prohibited parents from watching the sessions.
The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not name sexual abuse victims without their permission.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Adam Richard Jacobs arrives for his sentencing in Farmington on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025. Jacobs was sentenced for 17 state-level charges related to videos he made by placing a hidden camera in a bathroom at a gymnastics gym.
Another victim, who previously trained at USA Gymnastics World was not in the courtroom Thursday, but had a statement read on her behalf. She said that although Jacobs was not her coach, she respected and trusted him — a trust he broke by secretly filming her in the gym’s restroom.
“USA was my home away from home, my second family, my safe place,” her statement reads. “I got to do what I loved with the people I loved, but you ruined all of that.”
“When I hear USA, I think of the cameras,” her statement continued, referencing Jacobs’ hidden devices. “I think of the tears you caused. I feel ashamed, embarrassed, violated and exposed for something I didn’t even know was happening.”
Carl Hollan, who is prosecuting both the federal and state cases against Jacobs, said during Thursday’s sentencing hearing that Jacobs followed a common “grooming pattern.”
“He gained the trust of those parents,” Hollan argued when asking for consecutive sentences, “and then with that trust, he was able to have access to these children that gave him that ability to sexually exploit them.”
Hollan said that if all of Jacobs’ victims were present in the courtroom, there wouldn’t be enough space to accommodate them all.
(Google Maps) USA Gymnastics World in Woods Cross.
Charging records say a USA Gymnastics World employee discovered the restroom camera and alerted police, leading to Jacobs’ arrest in March 2023.
Prosecutors said files recovered from the restroom camera contained videos of 120 different people secretly filmed at the gym.
Police also found videos of Jacobs setting up the restroom camera and alleged in charging documents that Jacobs had downloaded some of the videos to his cell phone. All of the videos downloaded on his device depicted children with their genitals exposed, according to charging documents.
“He wasn’t passively collecting child sex abuse material that was being recorded in the bathroom. He was actively monitoring it,” Hollan said, explaining to DiReda how footage from the restroom camera showed Jacobs entering the bathroom after a child had used it and adjusting the camera settings to record a five-minute loop instead of one minute.
And when he set up the camera, footage showed Jacobs was sexually aroused, Hollan said.
Jacobs filmed older teenagers he had coached, as well as younger children, according to a detention petition filed in his federal case.
In his plea deal in district court, Jacobs admitted to placing a camera disguised as a USB charger in a public restroom at the USA Gymnastics World gym between January 2022 and March 2023. He said he intentionally pointed the camera at the toilet to capture images of children in various stages of undress.
“I placed the hidden camera in the bathroom with the intention of capturing images and videos of children’s genitals, buttocks and nude bodies,” Jacobs said in the plea statement.
DiReda said he wanted the sentence he handed down to reflect the importance of each individual victim. He noted that while only one victim spoke in person, many others were impacted.
“They placed the utmost trust in you,” the judge told Jacobs, “and you absolutely betrayed them.”