A former East Cobb wrestling coach who volunteered with the Pope youth program has been sentenced to a long prison term in Pennsylvania for sexually assaulting young boys he once coached, according to news reports there.
Ron Gorman, 52, will serve 20-40 years, according to WNEP-TV. He pleaded guilty in November in Monroe County, Pa., to two counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child.
According to Monroe County prosecutors, Gorman also was required to enter a guilty plea in Georgia as part of his plea deal in Pennsylvania.
The district attorney’s office said the crimes in Pennsylvania began in 2006 in the East Stroudsburg area, where Gorman lived and coached.
He moved to the Marietta area in 2009, and was a volunteer coach with Pope Junior Wrestling, which feeds into the Pope High School program, one of the best in Georgia and a winner of several state championships. Gorman later was a coach at Life University before he was charged in Pennsylvania.
According to the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office, Gorman’s victims, now 20, accused him of a long series of abuse beginning when they were 10 years old and while they were involved in a youth wrestling program where Gorman was a volunteer coach.
Gorman was arrested at his East Cobb home in March 2017 and eventually was charged by Pennsylvania authorities with a total of 513 counts, including child rape and statutory sexual assault.
After being detained in Pennsylvania, he was held on $1 million bail. His accusers claimed Gorman subjected them to frequent and continuous assaults, sometimes on a weekly basis, for several years, including in Georgia.
News reports last March and earlier this month quoted a Cobb woman who said she became concerned about Gorman in 2011 when he she saw a crude, sexually themed Facebook message sent by him to her son, then 12, and a member of the Pope junior wrestling program.
She told the AJC she went to then-Pope principal Rick Beaulieu, whom she said told her not to go to police.
Gorman eventually was investigated in Georgia, and that probe alerted authorities in Pennsylvania, according to WFMZ-TV in Allentown, Pa.
Gorman also has been accused of other molestations in Monroe County that were reported to police there in the late 1980s, but they could not be prosecuted due to a statute of limitations, the district attorney said.
The district attorney’s office also said at the time of Gorman’s guilty plea that he will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
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