Ashtabula, OH Sports Editor arrested

I hate seeing this thread creep back up to the top.

But six months? Good grief.

 

Does he get credit for time served? Does that mean he is effectively out and only has to register as a sex offender?

Though for this guy to get only six months there must be a lot of back stories.

 

He hasn't served any real time. Was bailed out after a day or two. Official sentencing in a few weeks. Looks like he faces up to 18 months, officially, but my sources say the agreed-upon term is a third of that.

I'm told because of the time frame (1991 to present), getting convictions on everything was going to be difficult and the prosecutor wasn't confident it would end with anything more than a couple misdemeanors. Hard to believe, because there are three decades worth of stuff here.

I'll post a story as soon as the link goes up tonight.

 

What was his alias on here, as he's admitted guilt?

 

I'm far from one of those legal experts, but I do know that a coach near Pittsburgh just got 11-23 months for sex with a teen athlete. Read the story this morning, in fact.

 

Vindy.com - Ex-Ashtabula County sports editor, -coach convicted of sex offenses against players

 

One thing that jumped out at me was this paragraph.

"His third offense, according to an assistant prosecutor, was improperly touching another girl after helping her move to Jefferson to play basketball, giving her a job, a cellphone, computer and transportation to earn her trust and then molesting her." This conduct took place in 1999 or 2000.

At that time McCormack was an assistant coach. While the head coach and other administrators can claim they knew nothing of sexual contact they must have have had a pretty good idea that a player moved into the district to play basketball. Is woman's basketball in Ohio so competitive that this kind of thing routinely happens?

 

Not only did he help her move into the district, she was apparently living in his apartment until his boss at the paper got wind of it. My source says the editor told him either she moved out or he moved on. I was told she eventually found somewhere else to live and he stayed as SE.

I don't doubt for a second that the school knew where this girl came from. It's a large, but sparsely populated county. Fewer than 10 high schools. Everyone in the area knew where she had been before coming to Jefferson.

That said, there are lots of high schools in Ohio that bring in players from other places. One private school in the Cleveland won a series of state titles in the 1990s because its girls coach was a business owner who routinely offered players' parents jobs. One of the schools I covered had a 6-5 girl who eventually played at UNC. The guy offered her mother a job as part of his sales pitch, but the girl stayed put.

 

So Jerry Sandusky gets 30-60 years and this asshole gets six months? WTF.

 

Glad to know I am not the only one questioning this.

 

Do you think the concerns the prosecutors laid out about the difficulty of getting convictions that far back are legitimate? I was also surprised that none of the convictions were for events within the last 10 years.