Ron Gorman, who served as a volunteer coach with the Pope wrestling teams, pleaded guilty in Cobb Superior Court on Tuesday to two counts of child molestation.
Gorman, 53, was given a 25-year sentence by Judge Gregory Poole, with 20 to serve without parole, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Gorman was to have gone on trial after being charged with abusing a 14-year-old boy in Cobb County in 2010, according to prosecutors, who said the victim disclosed the abuse last year to authorities in Monroe County, Pa.
That’s where Gorman had been sentenced to 20-40 years in February for sexually assaulting boys there, including the boy prosecutors said was also victimized in Cobb.
According to the Cobb DA’s office, Gorman was extradited to Cobb to face the charges here and will be returned to Pennsylvania, where he will serve his sentences concurrently.
“This is a prime example of how child predators can work their way into positions of trust and authority, and then turn that trust into a weapon against children,” said Chuck Boring, Cobb deputy chief assistant district attorney and head of the Cobb DA’s special victims unit.
Gorman moved to Cobb in 2009 and was a volunteer with Pope Junior Wrestling, which feeds into the highly successful Pope High School program, where he also was a parent volunteer. He also was a coach at Life College in Marietta.
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.
His accusers in Pennsylvania 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 year quoted a Cobb woman who became concerned about Gorman in 2011. That’s when 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 said she was told by then-Pope principal Rick Beaulieu not to go to law enforcement. Gorman was suspended from any involvement with Pope wrestling for a year, but it was six years later that he was charged.
Boring said in court Tuesday that there are no other charges that Gorman is facing in Cobb. In Pennsylvania, prosecutors heard allegations that Gorman abused minors dating back to the 1980s, but the statue of limitations had run out.
“Hopefully this conclusion gives his victims some sort of closure and justice, whether they have reported his abuse or not,” Boring said.
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