Ex-coach and editor sentenced for sex offenses against female players

May 13, 2016 at 1:19p.m.

JEFFERSON

Donald McCormack, the former Jefferson High School basketball coach and sports editor of the Ashtabula Star Beacon, was sentenced to six months in the Ashtabula County Jail Friday for sex offenses against his female players following an emotional statement from one of his victims.

Last March, McCormack, 52, pleaded no contest as part of a plea bargain in which the counts against him were reduced to attempted child endangering, a felony, and two misdemeanor counts of sexual imposition. The incidents occurred while McCormack was coaching between 1999 and 2006 and serving as the newspaper sports editor. The newspaper fired him in August 2014 after the charges were filed.

Two of his victims were among the courtroom spectators, but only one wanted to speak. The 23-year-old, identified in court only by her initials, wiped her tears as she read from a prepared statement about the molestation McCormack inflicted upon her.

It began when she was just 13.

“What you did was inexcusable,” she said. “I was oblivious to your manipulation.”

The woman said that McCormack’s conviction has not ended her emotional trauma.

“I feel pain where I used to have joy,” she said. “My scars are for the world to see.”