Cheerleading Coach Erick Joseph Kristianson is facing up to 165 years in prison for molesting young girls.
A former cheerleading coach, Erick Joseph Kristianson, has been convicted in offenses related to the sexual molestation of at least 10 young girls, some as young as 9 years old.
The evidence presented showed that these crimes took place over many years. The prosecutor’s office detailed that Kristianson abused his position of trust as a coach. Many of the crimes occurred between the 2000s while he worked as a cheerleading coach and a counselor.
“For decades, Erick Kristianson used cheerleading gyms in Orange County and across the country as a kind of perverted catalog from which to select the next young girl he was going to molest,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.
“He was hiding in plain sight, a trusted coach banking on the fact that he could trust his young victims not to say anything about the abuse they were enduring. Pedophiles will never stop until law enforcement stops them.”
It’s shocking how people in such positions abuse it and take advantage of vulnerable people.
The predator’s reign of terror in Orange County only came to light in 2022 after he was nabbed in Daytona Beach, Florida, for allegedly sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl and masturbating during a FaceTime call with three youngsters, prosecutors said.
The alleged victims in the Florida case were all students of Champion Elite Legacy — the competitive cheer club where Kristianson was working at the time.
When news of Kristianson’s arrest in the Sunshine State broke, one of his victims from Orange County alerted cops that she, too, had been molested by him when she was just 14.
She accused him of regularly meeting up with her for lunch at school and taking her to his home or the beach to molest her, according to prosecutors.
An investigation uncovered a slew of evidence that he had also abused seven other Orange County girls — ranging from 9 to 16 — whom he coached between 2002 and 2006.
Two other victims met Kristianson through a relative and when he was a sleep-away camp counselor with the South Orange County YMCA.
It’s good that Erick Joseph Kristianson has been convicted and waiting to be sentenced. This should serve as a lesson to everyone in position.
