Perverted cheerleading coach facing huge sentence for molesting at least 10 girls as young as 9

A disgusting California cheerleading coach is facing up to 165 years in prison after being found guilty of sexually assaulting at least 10 girls as young as 9.

Erick Joseph Kristianson, a coach at the Magic All-Stars club and an assistant cheer coach at Trabuco Hills High School, was convicted on Tuesday of molesting his victims when he was a competitive cheer coach and camp counselor in Orange County in the early 2000s.

The dreadlocked predator — who was first arrested while working in Florida — preyed on the girls at competitions, and often molested them at his own home.

“For decades, 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,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.

Erick Kristianson was found guilty of sexually abusing at least 10 young girls in California. Orange County Distric Attorney's Office via AP

“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 predator’s reign of terror in Orange County only came to light in 2022 after he was nabbed in Daytona Beach, Florida for allegedly sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl and masturbating during a FaceTime call with three youngsters, prosecutors said.

The alleged victims in the Florida case were all students of  Champion Elite Legacy — the competitive cheer club where Kristianson was working at the time.

When news of Kristianson’s arrest in the Sunshine State broke, one of his victims from Orange County alerted cops that she, too, had been molested by him when she was just 14.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said the creep used cheer gyms as a “perverted catalog” to prey on his victims. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

She accused him of regularly meeting up with her for lunch at school and would take her to his home or the beach to molest her, according to prosecutors.

An investigation uncovered a slew of evidence that he had also abused seven other Orange County girls — ranging from 9 to 16 — that he coached between 2002 and 2006.

Two other victims met Kristianson through a relative and when he was a sleep-away camp counselor with the South Orange County YMCA.

Some of the victims told investigators they were too ashamed to report the abuse at the time.

Kristianson was initially arrested in Kansas in 2022 on a warrant and extradited back to Florida to face charges there. He posted a $300,000 bond and was released without any restrictions on leaving the state.

He ended up being arrested in Fargo, North Dakota the following year on a felony warrant tied to the Orange County case.

The perv has since been convicted of 11 felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts upon a minor under age 14 years of age, four felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts upon a child age 14 or 15, six felony counts of sexual penetration by foreign object of a minor under 18, and two felony counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object of a minor under 16.

He is facing a maximum sentence of 165 years to life in prison when he is sentenced next March.