Former Alabama cheer coach gets max sentence in ‘disturbing’ child porn case

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that a former Montgomery cheer coach has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

According to the DOJ, Darren Frank McCoy, 55, pleaded guilty to transporting child pornography in a case tried in Galveston, Texas, and now a federal court says he will spend decades behind bars.

McCoy was once a coach to numerous young athletes at Top Dog Cheer in Montgomery. The facility was home to athletes working on perfecting their tumbling and cheer skills. Some of those girls were even on the competitive all-star team.

Abby Nowak was one of those girls. For her, it’s a place that holds a lot of fond memories but also many dark ones.

“He doesn’t really deserve to ever walk freely on this earth again,” Abby said of McCoy.

Abby says McCoy owned and operated Top Dog Cheer when she competed in 2012 and 2013. At the time, Abby said she never had any reason not to trust him.

“You could tell that he cared about his team, he wanted us to win, he wanted us to succeed,” Abby said. “He never touched me inappropriately, he never made inappropriate comments to me, you know he was my coach and that is what I saw him as and that’s the type of relationship that we had.”

That’s why it came as a shock when years after leaving the gym and moving away, Abby and another athlete Olivia Brewster, listed as Jane Doe No. 2 in court documents, were contacted by federal agents. The agents said the women were victims of child pornography at the hands of McCoy.

“Olivia had just invited Darren to her wedding. I mean we were still Facebook friends, keeping up with each other’s lives you know, just didn’t think that this was possible,” Abby said.

According to court documents, in November of 2019, McCoy was getting off a cruise ship in Galveston, Texas after a trip to Mexico when Customs and Border Protection officers asked for an inspection of his luggage and electronics.

Authorities flagged him for a search because he was involved in a 2015 child exploitation investigation in the Dallas/McKinney, Texas area. When authorities checked his belongings, they discovered the electronic devices in his possession contained 10 videos and 290 images of child pornography.

Court documents detail that dozens of images were of sex acts being performed on corpses of minors ranging in age from infant to 14 years. Federal agents also identified nine videos on McCoy’s flash drive which appeared to be taken with a hidden camera. These videos were of minor females exiting from showers, drying off and getting dressed.

Authorities were able to identify Abby and Olivia as two of the victims from the videos. Court documents detail that one video of Abby was filmed in 2013 at Top Dog Cheer. The video was shot in a storage-room-type setting.

Abby described the room as a place most girls would change.

“I was 14 or 15 in that room, undressing, and you can see just about everything, so that was pretty difficult for me to look at,” Abby said.

So far, Abby has been the only minor identified in that video.

Court documents say other shots of Abby and Olivia were also found on Darren’s devices. These were recorded in a hotel bathroom in Panama City, Florida at a cheer competition.

Abby says McCoy had a separate room and bathroom from her at the hotel but suspects he managed to sneak into their bathroom and install a hidden camera.

Because Olivia was 18, she was not included in the federal charges.

“He got everything he could have ever wanted; I mean those images are pretty raw,” Abby said. “In the videos that Darren had taken you can see me changing into this bright pink shirt and that’s how we were able to get detectives the dates of when we were recorded without our knowledge.”

Abby and Olivia filed a civil case against McCoy and Top Dog Cheer in 2021 through the Montgomery County Circuit Court and each won $750,000 in damages.

Since McCoy was detained and charged, several women have come forward on social media alleging abuse when they were young girls. One of those is Megan Gorsuch. She claims McCoy sexually abused her on multiple occasions.

“The moment he walked into the gym I knew something was weird about him,” Megan said.

Megan described times when Darren used “stunt spotting” as an opportunity to grab her inappropriately.

“It was almost like he never seemed to fail to grab something inappropriate with me when I was falling and then I would know it was intentional because he would look at me with this mischievous facial expression like I got you, what are you going to do now?” Megan said.

Deaf and partially blind, Megan says Darren used her disabilities to his advantage. For example, she claims he would ask her to change in front of him in his office.

According to Megan, this went on for almost 10 years.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you but I won’t do it again if you take your top off and so I would do it in the back office with the door shut,” Megan described. After practice, he would be like okay I’m going to talk about what you did wrong or whatever is what he would say and I knew that meant okay it was time for me to go in the back and I know what’s about to happen.”

When she was 14, Megan said she and her younger sister rode with Darren to a competition in Panama City. Her parents could not attend because her grandfather had just passed away.

Megan says that on the drive back home she claims Darren touched her under her clothes.

“I just remember feeling trapped and I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t ask for help,” Megan said. “In that car that day, I knew that I was in trouble, and he was like, ‘Well if you tell anybody about what we did in the car on this trip your Dad will kill me, you don’t want me dead do you?’”

According to the Montgomery District Attorney’s Office, Megan reported McCoy and Top Dog Cheer in 2018. The case was presented to a grand jury but there was not enough evidence to support a criminal charge.

At Tuesday’s federal sentencing, both Megan and Abby spoke out about their individual experiences with McCoy.

U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani for the Southern District of Texas said McCoy was the “definition of a predator.”

“We encourage our children to engage in sports, believing that they will be safe when doing so. Instead, these athletes were betrayed. This so-called coach surreptitiously recorded teens and sexually abused a minor for several years. Hopefully, knowing the only bars he will see now are behind a federal prison cell will give his victims some long-awaited peace,” Hamdani said.

McCoy’s 20-year sentence was the maximum amount. His sentence will be immediately followed by 10 years of supervised release.

We reached out to McCoy’s lawyer for comment but have not heard back.

clarification: Editor's Note: The business that occupies the building where Top Dog Cheer was originally located is NOT affiliated with the former cheer company or Darren McCoy in any way.

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