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Jerry Harris, 22, was first arrested in September 2020, that was, a few months after the release of the popular Netflix series about a national champion cheerleading team, in which Jerry starred as one of the cheerleaders. Jerry was arrested and charged with producing child pornography.
During the period of his arrest, the then 19yr-old Jerry was equally sued by teenage twin brothers who claimed that Jerry harassed them by sending them explicit sexual messages and also asked for their nude photos. And, according to the USA Today reports, Jerry befriended the boys when they were 13.
The twins both read statements in court during sentencing. “You literally preyed on my brother and I like some animal hungry for young children,” one said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.”
“I couldn’t stand up for myself,” the boy’s brother reportedly added. “Basically, Jerry took over my life.” The boys’ mother said Harris “took their innocence.”
Jerry Harris — Jerry’s Deal With Prosecutors
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Jerry had agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors that, after sentencing on two out of seven counts against him (receiving child pornography and using interstate travel with the intent to elicit a sexual act with a minor), they would ask that the remaining charges be dropped. The agreement came after Harris originally pleaded not guilty to all charges in December 2020.
Federal prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence while the defense had asked for six years, noting that Jerry was himself a victim of sexual abuse as a child. Jerry will also serve eight years of court-supervised release following his prison term.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah reportedly told Jerry to view the sentence as an “expression of the seriousness of your crimes, tempered with some hope that all is not lost for you or for your victims, and that in the future some healing can occur.”
Jerry Harris — Jerry’s Escapades With Sexual Contents
According to the Sun-Times, Jerry admitted to offering money as payment to a minor in exchange for sexually explicit images and also obtained a masturbation video from another “…admitted he offered $2,000 in payments for sexually explicit images from one minor victim, persuaded a second to send him similar images, and obtained masturbation videos from a third. He also admitted he sexually assaulted a fourth minor victim in a public bathroom.”
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The New York Times also reported that, according to a criminal complaint, Jerry admitted in a voluntary interview with authorities that he exchanged sexually explicit photos with at least 10 to 15 people he knew to be minors and had sex with a 15-year-old in 2019.
In presenting their case, Jerry’s attorneys emphasized their client’s traumatic childhood, including physical and sexual abuse, homelessness, bullying, and watching his mother die from cancer.
“Jerry is a 22-year-old young man whose story can only be understood through the lens of the extreme poverty, sexual abuse, and neglect of his childhood,” Jerry’s attorney Todd Pugh said in a statement to EW in February. “Jerry was himself exploited, manipulated, and sexually abused as a child within the cheer community in a way that perversely made him believe that this sexual conduct was somehow normal when it was not.”
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