A cheerleading sexual abuse scandal once confined to South Carolina has now gone north of the state border, as a lawsuit was filed alleging an athlete was sexually abused by adults affiliated with cheer-oriented gyms in North Carolina.
Identified as John Doe 1 in a sprawling, 61-page civil racketeering complaint, the plaintiff was a teenager at the time he was allegedly abused by coaches at Cheer Extreme gyms in Raleigh and Kernersville, N.C., as well as a choreographer approved by Varsity Spirit LLC, and the United States All Star Federation, a non-profit student athletics standards and coaches’ credentialing organization for competitive cheer and dance.
“At this point, we are seeing a pattern,” attorney Bakari Sellers said in a press release announcing the latest in a series of lawsuits targeting the organizations. “These entities have every chance to protect their athletes from sexual predators but, until a family goes public and the information can no longer be shuffled to the side or into a file somewhere, they do nothing. It turns my stomach every time.”
The alleged victim began cheering in 2013, when he was about 12 years old, the lawsuit says, and attended his first Cheer Extreme event, a clinic, when he was 14 or 15. After the clinic, the teenager transferred to cheering for Cheer Extreme in Raleigh on their “Elite Worlds” team.”
“During his first-year cheering for Cheer Extreme, when [Doe 1] was about 15 or 16, an older male coach initiated a sexual relationship with [Doe 1],” the lawsuit alleges. “The coach had previously contacted [Doe 1] via social media and Snapchat while [Doe 1] was cheering for his former team, but they never officially met one another until [Doe 1] began cheering for Cheer Extreme.”
The original petition then details some of the alleged abuse:
On regular occasions, Plaintiff John Doe 1 would hang around socially with the older coach and the other coaches, owners, and administrators from Cheer Extreme, including Defendants Kelly Helton, and Defendants Chase Burris and Shawn Wilson, where the coach would caress Plaintiff John Doe 1, hug him and touch him in front of the other Cheer Extreme adults.On at least one such occasion, the adult coach pressured Plaintiff John Doe 1 to use cocaine. Plaintiff was just sixteen or seventeen at the time.Around the same time, a coach from Cheer Extreme Kernersville found Plaintiff John Doe 1 on snapchat and began sending Plaintiff John Doe 1 nude photos.
In 2016, at a cheer competition in Indianapolis, the lawsuit alleges, the Kernersville coach arrived at the teenager’s hotel “under the influence of alcohol” after messaging him on social media about “spending time together.”
“The coach insisted that [Doe 1] get into the coach’s vehicle, after which time the coach proceeded to drive around, eventually stopping and forcing [Doe 1] to perform oral sex,” the complaint states. “The Kernersville coach tried to push [Doe 1] into having sex, but [Doe 1] refused.”
The next day, the lawsuit says, the teenager was “forced” to see the coach who forced him into having oral sex during the competition.
The filing goes on to allege that a choreographer affiliated with Varsity and USASF invited the boy, when he was 17 years old, into his hotel room and propositioned him for sexual acts but that the boy refused.
Largely premised on liability under a federal law that imposes a duty on adults who are part of national governing body or athletics organization, the filing also presents a theory of enterprise liability under the RICO act.
The filing alleges, at length:
This Enterprise as previously described in this Complaint, consists of a group of persons associated together for the common purpose of recklessly, intentionally, and willfully endangering the Plaintiff as a minor athlete by exposing him to illegal sexual abuse and exploitation of children while continuously and repeatedly taking money from Plaintiff, and also assuring his parents and/or guardians he was particularly safe in order to take this money.The Defendants, and all of them in concert with the Enterprise, were engaging in misleading and fraudulent messaging to children and their families which they knew or should have known endangered children who were not in a position to discover the danger since Defendants were concealing the danger and failing to report it, acting in reckless indifference to the safety of the children in the name of growing profits.
The lawsuit alleges nine additional causes of action including assault and battery, unjust enrichment, fraud, conspiracy, gross negligence, negligent supervision, and a violation of Tar Heel State consumer protection laws.
Law&Crime reached out to Varsity Spirit, the USASF, and Cheer Extreme gyms for comment on this story but no responses were immediately forthcoming as of the time of publication.
[image via screengrab/Shanita Lovelace/Youtube]