GAA coach jailed for sex assaults on five boys

A Gaelic football coach has been sentenced to seven years and 10 months and placed on the list of sex offenders for a series of sex assaults on schoolboys.

Judge Petria McDonnell, who suspended two years of the sentence, described 72-year-old Ronan McCormack, as a man who “groomed” schoolboy footballers aged between 10 and 13 for sex abuse and had still not expressed remorse.

She said that, as a football coach trusted by parents, teachers, and children, there was definite predatory grooming involved.