Ex-Newcastle coach who sexually abused boys jailed for 20 years
A PREDATORY paedophile who worked with Newcastle United’s youth players and sexually abused boys over three decades has been jailed for 20 years.
George Ormond (62) worked with a prominent youth team in the city in the 1970s and 1980s before assisting at the Premier League club in the 1990s.
He used his power over impressionable and ambitious boys, one as young as 11, to abuse and silence them.
Judge Edward Bindloss said: “Evidence showed that over a 25-year period, George Ormond was a man wholly preoccupied with sex who used his position as a respected football coach to target boys and young men in his care.”
Ormond was convicted of 35 indecent assaults and one count of indecency.
Judge Bindloss added: “Noone observing this trial could have failed to have been moved by the complainants and other witnesses over the six weeks of evidence, largely men in their 50s, largely from working class and sporting backgrounds, speaking with calm and quiet dignity about how they failed to understand what was happening to them and because of the times they lived in and due to their circumstances, they were unable to speak about it.”
Judge Bindloss told Ormond: “Some victims you do not even remember – what was for you momentary sexual gratification was for your victims a lifetime of difficulty.”
One victim said the sound of studs on concrete, the smell of liniment or seeing players getting changed reminded him of the abuse he had kept buried.
Another said his ambition to become a footballer had turned into a living nightmare.
Some never kicked a ball again after being abused.
Yet another said he had been unburdened by telling the police, explaining: “I feel from today my life starts again as I no longer have to keep that awful secret.”
Ormond had already been jailed in 2002 for abusing young footballers, among them Derek Bell, who waived his anonymity.
When the football abuse scandal broke in 2016, Mr Bell spoke out again and that prompted more victims to come forward for this new investigation. (© Press Association)