Ex-premier League coach George Ormond bags 20 years in jail for sexually abusing 18 teenage boys

Paedophile football coach and former Newcastle youth football manager, George Ormond has been jailed for 20 years for sexually abusing 18 teenage boys over three decades.

According to reports, Ormond, 62, who worked with a prominent youth team in the city in the 1970s and 1980s, before assisting at the Premier League club in the 1990s used his power over impressionable and ambitious boys, one as young as 11, to sexually abuse them and keep them silent.
He was convicted on Tuesday of 35 indecent assaults and one count of indecency.
Judge Edward Bindloss, sitting at Newcastle Crown Court, 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."

According to the judge, Ormond was in a position of trust and used his popularity with the boys and their families to groom victims, some of whom he could not remember now.
He said: "No one 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."
It was clear the victims did not want to give their evidence in court, revealing to strangers the abuse they had suffered, the judge said.

Judge Edward told Ormond in court that: "Some victims you do not even remember - what was for you momentary sexual gratification was for your victims a lifetime of difficulty."
Statements from his victims revealed how they felt ashamed and embarrassed about the terrible experience.
One said his ambition had been to become a footballer but "that dream turned into a living nightmare". Another explained: "I feel from today my life starts again as I no longer have to keep that awful secret."
Some never kicked a ball again after being abused, the court heard.
Ormond's crime records show that he had already been jailed in 2002 for abusing young footballers, among them Derek Bell, who rejected his right to anonymity.