ATLANTA — The Cobb County Sheriff is warning residents after the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a requirement for “sexually dangerous predators” to remain on electronic monitoring for the rest of their lives.

In a post on Instagram, the Sheriff urged the public to be aware, “We ask the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious person or activity to local law enforcement,” the post said. There are five registered sex offenders currently being monitored in the Cobb area.

Under the previous law, offenders who were deemed as a “sexually dangerous predator” had to wear and pay for an electronic monitoring system for life.

In Monday’s unanimous opinion, the Georgia Supreme Court found that the Georgia code, “authorizes a patently unreasonable search that runs afoul of the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” which protects citizens against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The court heard the case in response to the appeal of Joseph Park, who was convicted of child molestation and nine counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in Douglas County in 2003. Park was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with the requirement to serve eight years.

After Park was released from prison in 2011, the Sex Offender Review Board classified him as a “sexually dangerous predator,” which meant he had to wear an pay for an electronic monitoring system linked to GPS for the rest of his life.

Following his probation release, Park asked the board to re-evaluate his classification, but it was upheld. He then petitioned for judicial review in Fulton County Superior Court, challenging the classification on constitutional grounds. The trial court also upheld his classification as a “sexually dangerous predator” and the Supreme Court denied Park’s application for appeal, making the ruling final. By April 2015, Park completed his criminal sentence and probation and was released from state custody.

In Feb. 2016, Park was arrested and indicted for tampering with his ankle monitor, which carries a prison sentence of up to five years. He challenged the indictment, arguing that he could not be prosecuted in part because the electric monitoring system under Georgia code was unconstitutional. Once again, the ruling was upheld and Park again asked the Supreme Court to intervene, which agreed to review his pre-trial appeal to determine whether or not the Georgia law is unconstitutional.

In his appeal, Park argued that Georgia’s lifelong ankle monitoring rule was unconstitutional because it, in part, authorizes unreasonable lifelong, warrant-less searches of sex offenders who are deemed to be sexually dangerous predators.

In Monday’s opinion, the Supreme Court pointed out that the Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable” searches.

“Accordingly, we must determine if a lifelong search of the individuals required to wear a GPS monitoring advice … is reasonable,” today’s opinion stated. “The permanent application of a monitoring device and the collection of data by the State about an individual’s whereabouts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through warrantless GPS monitoring for the rest of that individual’s life, even after that person has served the entirety of his or her criminal sentence, constitutes a significant intrusion upon the privacy of the individual being monitored.”

Furthermore, the state Supreme Court ruled that the purpose of collecting data generated from a GPS ankle monitor is “to collect evidence of potential criminal wrongdoing” against the person.

“We must conclude that individuals who have completed their sentences do not have a diminished expectation of privacy that would render their search by a GPS monitoring device unreasonable,” the ruling stated.

Other states have passed statues authorizing lifelong GPS monitoring that “have passed constitutional muster,” the ruling also pointed out. For example, in Michigan, a sex offender gets lifelong GPS tracking as part of the offender’s actual sentence.

Today’s decision does not take away life sentences and the decision does not prevent sentencing courts from handing down lifelong GPS monitoring. Georgia law already states that those convicted of forcible rape, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy and aggravated sexual battery must be sentenced to life imprisonment, or prison time followed by lifetime probation.

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For five years, a Marietta mom hoped she was imagining the worst.

Jaquelyn (who requested 11Alive use only her first name to protect her son) wanted to believe that the hundreds of text messages sent to her son were innocent. She prayed her hunch that something sinister could be going on with her son’s wrestling coach was a misunderstanding.

“I always just thought to myself, God, please show me that my suspicions are wrong,” Jaquelyn said.

But Jaquelyn’s mother’s instinct was right on. Yet, it would take her five years of filing complaints, searching and collecting evidence before law enforcement would step in to stop Ron Gorman.

In the beginning, it wasn’t easy for Jaquelyn to convince anyone her son’s coach was abusing children. In fact, she says Gorman came across as helpful when they first met in 2009. She originally viewed him as a family friend who was there for her son.

“Mr. Gorman was always very willing to give him rides, bring him home from practice, take him to dinner, stay over at their house, take him to tournaments. So I was very thankful and very you know, naive not realizing or seeing the signs,” she said.

In hindsight, Jaquelyn believes the coach was grooming her son by earning the trust of their family. Gorman had children about the same age as her son. She liked that he could serve as a positive male role model for her son.

That changed in August 2011. Jaquelyn found a vulgar Facebook message from the coach written to her 13-year-old son on the family computer. It’s too profane for us to quote.

“That was my ah-ha moment. Once I saw this message I knew at that point that my suspicions were correct and it was most definitely an inappropriate relationship,” she said.

Within hours of finding the message, Jaquelyn says she went straight to Pope High School and showed the message the principal. She says the school launched an investigation. She says Pope High School officials acknowledged the message was inappropriate, yet asked her not to go to police with her concerns. Gorman was put on one-year suspension from the wrestling program.

“The principal told me that Gorman admitted to sending the message, and said that he shouldn’t talk to boys like men. Going forward he would work on that and not do that,” she recalled.

We asked the school about those allegations.

“The person accused of sexual misconduct was never an employee or representative of the Cobb County School District,” says a spokesman for Pope High School.

Gorman was a parent volunteer for the wrestling program at Pope High School. His son was on the team.

Jaquelyn didn’t stop with the school. She also took the Facebook message to law enforcement. Cobb County investigators told her it wasn’t enough to press charges without more evidence.

She says even other parents at her child’s school began to doubt her son’s accusations. Jaquelyn remembers one particular comment from another mom that left her feeling silenced.

“She said as a mother I’m appalled that you still have your son on the wrestling program if you really think that something is happening to your son,” Jaquelyn disclosed. “For her to say that to me, I just broke down and I think that was the moment I realized nobody was going to help us. They might not have even believed us at this point.”

She was determined to find evidence to prove her son’s abuse was real. For the next five years she learned everything she could about the coach. She set up Facebook forums for other parents to report suspected abuse, and received dozens of replies. She sent every reply to the police.

In March 2017 the call came in that she had been right all along.

“I answered the phone, and it was the criminal investigation unit. They were able to get enough evidence to charge him and he was being arrested that night,” she said.

But it wasn’t a Cobb County case. The March 3 criminal complaint from Pennsylvania cites 51-year-old Ron Gorman for a number of felony charges, including involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, unlawful contact with minor, statutory sexual assault, indecent assault and corruption of minors.

According to the criminal complaint, Gorman had sexual contact with his victim on a weekly basis over the course of several years, beginning when the victim was just 10 or 11 years old. The alleged abuse happened at Gorman’s house, another Pennsylvania residence and at other out-of-state locations – including in Tennessee and here in Georgia. The contact, according to the victim, would happen when Gorman’s wife was not around or when the coach’s family was asleep.

Through the years, Gorman allegedly used Facebook to communicate with his victims on occasion and would asked the boys to delete sexually explicit text messages. Gorman would also allegedly buy them gifts, give the boys money and request they stay silent. In one case, alleged abuse finally ended when the victim, then 15-years-old, told Gorman he didn’t want it to continue.

“He was charged with 513 child sex crimes for only two victims. I say only because my research indicates that there may be several more,” Jaquelyn said.

In the past five years, she’s spoken with other concerned parents wondering if their child could be trapped by abusive actions of a coach.

“One of the main things I see a lot of other parents’ post on social media in terms of this topic is if something was happening to my kid, I would know. I was of that mentality too. If the predator is really good at what he does, which most of them are, you’re not going to know. Unless you take the extra steps and the extra precautions, you’re not going to know.”

Jaquelyn says her son is now 20 years old. She says he has a good job, a good girlfriend and recently got a new dog that he loves with all his heart. However, she worries about the long-term effects of his abuse.

“Maybe when he’s older and he has kids he’ll realize why I did everything that I did. Hopefully I stopped Gorman and prevented future victims as well. I mean, one can’t say for sure. But I’m thrilled that he’s off the streets. That’s for sure,” she said.