Former GAA coach jailed for abusing boys in 1970s
A FORMER Gaelic football coach has been jailed for seven years for dozens of indecent assaults carried out on two young boys in the 1970s.
Ronan McCormack (75) went on to groom and abuse schoolboys as young as 10 in the 1980s. In 2014, he received a jail sentence of seven years and 10 months for these assaults.
Earlier this year, a jury convicted him of 14 counts of indecently assaulting two boys who were aged between seven and 13.
McCormack, a father of three and farmer from Cloonloo, Co Sligo, had pleaded not guilty to 26 counts of indecent assault of one boy on various locations on dates between June 1972 and March 1975.
He also denied three counts of indecently assaulting a second boy on dates between August 1972 and December 1973. The men came forward in 2014 after learning that McCormack had gone on to abuse other boys. At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Martin Nolan said that by his own conservative estimate, McCormack had abused one of the victims in this case between 60 and 100 times.
Reading his victim impact statement, the first victim told the court the abuse left him feeling soiled and like “damaged goods”.
In August 1972, McCormack began abusing a second boy, who was known to the first victim. In his statement, this man said that the abuse had left him with a lasting sense of insecurity.