Attorneys for Harris, a former star of the Netflix documentary collection Cheer, are in search of a sentence of six years.
Assistant US Legal professional Kelly Guzman wrote in a sentencing memo late on Wednesday that Harris used “his standing as a aggressive cheerleader, his social media persona, and ultimately his celeb and cash, to influence and entice his younger victims to have interaction in sexually express conduct for him or with him”.
A prosecutor has requested for Jerry Harris to obtain 15 years in jail for coercing teenage boys to ship him obscene pictures of themselves and soliciting intercourse from minors at cheerleading competitions.
Ms Guzman additionally requested the sentence embrace 10 years of supervised launch after the jail time period.
Harris, 22, of suburban Illinois’ Naperville, pleaded responsible earlier this yr to at least one depend every of receiving little one pornography and touring with the intention to have interaction in unlawful sexual conduct. He is because of be sentenced on July 6 by US District Decide Manish Shah.
Defence legal professionals, in asking {that a} six-year sentence be adopted by eight years of supervised launch, described Harris as “each victimiser and sufferer”, saying he was sexually assaulted himself when he was a baby.
They wrote: “The trauma he skilled as a baby normalised his skewed model of what he understood to be applicable relationships. Nobody was there to face up for him when he was sexually assaulted as a minor. He’s grateful that’s not the case for his victims on this case, to whom he’s profoundly remorseful.”
Federal prosecutors acknowledged the actor’s traumatic childhood was a mitigating consider his crimes, however stated “whereas Harris’s childhood was very troublesome, it was not a clean examine to commit intercourse offenses towards minors”.
Harris stays in custody at a federal detention facility.
He was was arrested in September 2020 on a cost of manufacturing of kid pornography. Prosecutors alleged on the time that he solicited movies and pictures from two 14-year-old brothers.
In response to a grievance, federal prosecutors stated that Harris admitted to repeatedly asking a minor teen for pornographic movies and pictures between December 2018 and March 2020.
Then in December of that yr, he was indicted on extra fees alleging misconduct in Illinois, Florida and Texas. In response to the indictment, Harris allegedly solicited intercourse from minors at cheerleading competitions and satisfied teenage boys to ship him obscene images and movies of themselves.
Harris admitted to FBI brokers to asking a teenage boy to ship him lewd images of himself, and to requesting little one pornography on Snapchat from not less than 10 to fifteen others he knew to be minors, in keeping with the indictment.
Cheer was an enormous success when it was launched in January 2020 and Harris turned wildly well-liked for his upbeat perspective and his encouraging “mat discuss”. He even interviewed celebrities on the pink carpet on the Academy Awards for The Ellen DeGeneres Present.
The docuseries follows the aggressive cheerleading squad from Navarro School in Corsicana, Texas.
