A federal judge has sentenced Jerry Harris, a former star of the Netflix documentary series "Cheer," to 12 years in prison for coercing teenage boys to send him obscene photos and videos of themselves and soliciting sex from minors at cheerleading competitions.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah also ordered on Wednesday that the sentence be followed by eight years of court-supervised release. Shah told the 22-year-old Naperville man to consider the sentence an "expression of the seriousness of your crimes, tempered with some hope that all is not lost for you or for your victims."
Harris pleaded guilty earlier this year.
Sarah Klein, an attorney for two of the victims, issued a statement saying Harris’ guilt was “firmly established.”
“The sentence he received reflects the severity of his crimes and the lifetime of pain his victims will suffer,” Klein said.