A man who volunteered in Cobb County as a wrestling coach has been sentenced for sexually assaulting two Pennsylvania boys, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Ron Gorman, 52, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years in prison and will be eligible for parole after 20 years for his crimes against the boys, which took place while he was coaching them, said Julieane Fry. At one point, he faced 500 charges.
There were more young men who came forward with tales of abuse by Gorman, but statues of limitation prevented any other convictions, she said.
“We identified 11 total victims, but there’s a whole bunch up here that we couldn’t prosecute,” Fry said. “ ... It’s extremely frustrating.”
Fry is a prosecutor in Monroe, about 75 miles north of Philadelphia, where Gorman lived before coming to Georgia.
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The majority of these victims reported abuse while Gorman was a martial arts instructor in the mid to late 1980s, the Monroe County district attorneys office said in a news release.
An investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution detailed a Cobb mother's attempts to unmask the affable wrestling coach.
In 2009, Gorman began his involvement with Georgia athletics as a volunteer coach with Pope Junior Wrestling, a chartered club and the feeder program for Pope High School wrestling, one of the most competitive programs in the state. He also coached at Life University.
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Gorman is accused of molesting one of the victims, a 14-year-old Pennsylvania boy, at his Marietta home in July 2010.
According to an arrest affadavit from Pennsylvania authorities, Gorman flew the boy down to Cobb twice.
Fry said Gorman is set to return to Georgia to plead guilty for charges filed by Pennsylvania authorities in Cobb County related to that incident.
She said she wasn’t sure of when or how that would happen, as she hasn’t dealt with such a situation before.
“Both victims reported that while Gorman was their volunteer wrestling coach, he used that position to gain their trust and then began sexually abusing both victims,” the news release said.
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