"Cheer" star Jerry Harris, who pleaded guilty in February to charges of soliciting sex from minors and receiving child pornography, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Wednesday.
The cheerleading champion was handed the sentence at a federal court in Chicago by Judge Manish S Shah.
Since his arrest in September 2020, he has remained in custody at a federal detention facility. He appeared in court for the sentence, reported The Guardian. Following his sentence, the social media star will receive an additional eight years of supervised release, reported Fox 2 Detroit.
The victims' attorney Sarah Klein said that the sentence he received reflected the "severity of his crimes and the lifetime of pain his victims will suffer." He was indicted on seven counts of receiving and trying to receive child pornography and of persuading minors to engage in sexual contact from August 2017 to August 2020, reported NBC News. The acts involved victims in Florida, Texas and Illinois, said prosecutors.
In February, the 22-year-old pleaded guilty to two of seven felony counts against him. One was for persuading a teen, 17, to send him sexually explicit photographs for money. The other was stemming from a Florida trip that he took to "engage in illicit sexual conduct" with another teen, 15. Under a plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining five charges.
Prosecutors had asked Shah to sentence him to 15 years in jail. In a sentencing memo, they had argued that Harris used "his status as a competitive cheerleader, his social media persona, and eventually his celebrity and money, to persuade and entice his young victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct for him or with him."
But his defense lawyers had asked for a six-year sentence. The sentence was to be followed by eight years of supervised release. The lawyers described Harris as "both victimizer and victim." They said that he was sexually assaulted when he was a child.
In September 2020, Harris was arrested on a charge of production of child pornography. At the time, prosecutors alleged that he solicited images and videos from two 14-year-old brothers. Federal prosecutors said that Harris admitted to repeatedly asking a minor teen for pornographic clips and photos between December 2018 and March 2020, according to a complaint.
Later, he was indicted on more charges alleging misconduct in Florida, Texas and Illinois. He allegedly solicited sex from minors at cheerleading competitions, according to the indictment. He allegedly convinced teenage boys to send him obscene images and videos of themselves.
