On July 6, local time, Jerry Harris, an American college student who became popular two years ago because of the Netflix documentary "Cheer" (Cheer), was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a Chicago court for coercing children to send pornographic images and Video and seduction of minors for sex.

Jerry Harris

Jerry Harris was born in Chicago on July 14, 1999, and attended Navarro College, a two-year Texas Community University. Although it is only a community college established in 1946, Navarro has a very strong sports atmosphere. The school baseball team nicknamed "Bulldog" often achieves good results, and even the school cheerleader also named "Bulldog". He has also achieved good results in various cheerleading championships in the United States.
Cheerleading was originally a non-governmental fan organization that originated from American football games. Since then, it has gradually developed towards specialization and specialization, combining the characteristics of gymnastics and acrobatics. Since the middle of the last century, the United States has launched nationwide cheerleading competitions. The green leaves outside the venue also became the focus of the audience. All along, there are cheerleading-related activities in various colleges and undergraduate colleges across the United States, and cheerleading stars can get as much attention as sports stars on campus.
In this context, including the American TV series "Glee" and the films "But I'm a Cheerleader" (1999), "Bring It On" (2000), "Spice Girls Robbing the Bank" (Sugar & Spice, 2001), "Spice Girl Bodyguard" (Man of the House, 2005), "Cheering Camp" (Fired Up, 2009), Hollywood is also quite keen to shoot such subjects.
The Netflix documentary "Cheering Team", which was launched in January 2020, has been filmed for two seasons and 15 episodes, tracking the experience of the "Bulldogs" cheerleading team of Navarro College participating in the National Cheerleading Competition. It has a high praise of 97% on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes". degree, and won multiple awards at the 2020 Emmy Awards. "Cheerleading" mainly focuses on the stories of coach Monica and the five cheerleaders in the team. Among the five young people, Jerry Harris is especially popular with the audience for his positive personality and unfortunate life experience. Love, almost overnight, became a grassroots star that is well-known to American audiences.

Documentary "Cheerleading" poster

When Jerry Harris was 16, his mother died of lung cancer. To support him in continuing his studies, family and friends opened accounts on crowdfunding platforms and raised thousands of dollars. After successfully enrolling in Navarro College, he was very devoted to cheerleading activities in middle school, and naturally became a member of the "Bulldog", but for various reasons, most of the time he can only watch on the sidelines and cannot enter the first team to play. sports. Even so, the optimistic Jerry Harris never gave up. He cheered for his teammates in his own way and spared no effort. This attitude of participation quickly made him the most popular character in the entire documentary.

Jerry Harris on 'The Ellen Show'

After two years of college, Jerry Harris received a $10,000 scholarship from the University of Louisville, and the reopened crowdfunding platform campaign also raised $60,000 in donations in just a few months. He also appeared on the well-known TV show "The Ellen Show" with his coach and several friends, and host Ellen DeGeneres even invited him as a guest reporter for the show at the 2020 Oscars red carpet ceremony On the spot, I interviewed many celebrities in the film and television industry. In June 2020, Biden, who was running for president of the United States at the time, made an online video connection with Jerry Harris in order to win more votes from young African Americans. How popular was the latter at that time? This is evident. Unexpectedly, the seemingly brilliant future soon came to an abrupt end.

Jerry Harris, left, interviews Brad Pitt as a guest reporter on the 2020 Oscars red carpet.

Just three months after connecting with Biden, on September 17, 2020, the FBI suddenly arrested Jerry Harris on charges of inducing a minor to have sex. It is said that during his university studies in 2019, he contacted a pair of 13-year-old twin brothers through the Internet, asked the other party to send them ambiguous pictures, and proposed to have sex with them offline. Shortly after, the case was formally heard in federal court in Chicago. Harris admitted that he had sex with a 15-year-old boy and also instigated more than a dozen minors to send him obscene pictures on online chat software. Four other underage victims surfaced as the investigation deepened, bringing the total number of charges against Harris to nine.
Since then, due to the epidemic, the trial steps of the case have been slowed down, and the trial did not reopen until February this year. Harris pleaded guilty on the spot to two of the charges -- coercing a child to send pornographic images and videos, and inducing a minor to have sex -- and was sentenced to immediate detention without bail. As for the sentence, the defense lawyer, who originally insisted on the innocence of the client, implored the court to set the sentence at about six years, while the prosecution asked for a heavier sentence of 15 years in prison.
On July 6, Judge Manish Shah finally made his final sentence and decided to sentence him to 12 years in prison. He told Harris in court that the reason for this sentence was that "you The severity of these crimes, but also hope that your future will not be completely lost, and that one day you will be able to be a human again." Harris also apologized to the victims in court and defended himself by saying: "I am not a heinous person. Who am I and what is my purpose in life, I am still groping for it myself."