A California jury convicted a former cheerleading coach of 23 felony counts involving the abuse of 10 girls — some as young as 9 — in a case tied to years of alleged misconduct within youth cheer programs.
Erick Joseph Kristianson, 46, of Antioch, Tennessee, was convicted Monday, Dec. 15 in Santa Ana of eleven 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, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
The district attorney’s office said Kristianson collectively abused ten girls in Orange County between 2002 and 2006 while working as a competitive cheerleading coach at Magic All-Stars, as an assistant cheer coach at Trabuco Hills High School in Mission Viejo and as a counselor at a South Orange Couny YMCA sleep-away camp in 1999 and 2000.
According to the district attorney’s office, the victims ranged in age from 9 to 16 — two of the girls later reported that they stopped cheerleading after the abuse but did not come forward at the time due to fear and embarrassment.
According to the release, many of the victims came forward in 2022 after Kristianson was arrested in Daytona Beach, Florida, on suspicion of masturbating on camera to three children between the ages of 11 and 13 and touching the private parts of another 13-year-old girl — all his students at the Champion Elite Legacy cheer club where he coached at the time.
The district attorney’s office said that after news coverage of that Florida arrest, one Orange County victim contacted investigators and reported that Kristianson, her cheer coach at the time, began molesting her when she was 14.
The victim reported that he would meet her during school lunch and take her to his home or the beach, where the conduct continued until she was 15, per the release.
The district attorney’s office said Kristianson also routinely took other girls he coached to non-cheer-sanctioned events and to his home, where he would molest them.
Kristianson was arrested in Fargo, North Dakota, in 2023 on a felony warrant related to the Orange County case and extradited back to Southern California to face prosecution, the district attorney’s office said.
In August 2022, Kristianson was arrested in Kansas on a warrant and extradited to Florida to face charges for allegedly exposing himself during a FaceTime call with three teenage girls, according to the district attorney’s office. The news release said he posted a $300,000 bond and was released without restrictions on leaving the state.
He is scheduled to be sentenced March 19, 2026, at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana. The district attorney’s office said he faces a maximum possible sentence of 165 years to life in state prison.
Two house bricks & a grinding motion would be a GREAT start !
Or prison, gen pop & make sure they know he was abusing children…….They like “Chesters” there !