Perverted cheerleading coach facing up to 165-year in prison for molesting at least 10 girls as young as 9
Erick Joseph Kristianson, a former cheerleader coach and camp counselor, has been sentenced to up to 165 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of molesting at least ten girls, the youngest 9 years old, while he was working in Orange County during the early 2000s.
Kristianson, who once taught at the Magic All‑Stars club and assisted coaching at Trabuco Hills High School, was first arrested in Florida, where prosecutors alleged he sexually abused a 13‑year‑old girl and masturbated during a FaceTime call with three other minors while working at the Champion Elite Legacy cheer program.
The case surfaced in 2022 when authorities seized him in Daytona Beach. A victim from Orange County soon reported that she had also been abused by Kristianson when she was 14, prompting a broader investigation.
A judge’s report and witness statements revealed that Kristianson had lured girls to school lunches, taken them to his home or the beach, and assaulted them there. He had also abused seven other Orange County girls ranging from 9 to 16 while coaching from 2002 through 2006, and two more girls who met him through a family friend while he served as a summer‑camps counselor for the South Orange County YMCA.
“During decades of teaching, 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,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer.
“The police said 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.”
The investigative team uncovered evidence of multiple offenses, including 11 counts of lewd or lascivious acts with minors under 14, four with teens aged 14‑15, six counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object of a minor under 18, and two counts involving a minor under 16.
In August 2022, Kristianson was detained in Kansas on a warrant, extradited to Florida, and released on a $300,000 bond without travel restrictions. He was again arrested the following year in Fargo, North Dakota, on a felony warrant linked to the Orange County case.
He is scheduled for sentencing in March, where he faces the maximum penalty of 165 years to life imprisonment. The case highlights a long‑standing pattern of abuse that was only fully uncovered after Kristianson was apprehended in another state. The victims, many of whom had shied away from reporting at the time, have now been granted justice.
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