Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Harris - one of the stars of the Netflix cheerleading series Cheer - has been arrested and charged with producing child sex images. Harris was arrested on Thursday morning and later appeared in court in Chicago; he did not enter a plea. He will remain in jail until at least Monday after a judge ordered him to return for a detention hearing on Monday morning. If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison.
The US attorney's office said the 21-year-old allegedly enticed an underage boy to produce sexually explicit videos and photos of himself from December 2018 to March 2020 and a criminal complaint says that the victim informed Mr Harris during their initial online encounter that he was 13 years old.
The arrest comes three days after twin boys filed a lawsuit alleging he sent them sexually explicit photos of himself and cornered one of them in a bathroom and begged for oral sex. A spokesperson told CNN following the lawsuit that ‘we categorically dispute the claims’ and ‘are confident that when the investigation is completed the true facts will be revealed’.
But court documents say Harris admitted during an interview with law enforcement officials to receiving explicit images from one of the minors and ‘at least between 10 to 15 other individuals he knew were minors’.
Officials say investigations are ongoing and have called for anyone with more information to come forward. Netflix in a statement said: ‘Like everyone we are shocked by this news. Any abuse of minors is a terrible crime and we respect the legal process.’
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