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    Lawsuit Over Naked Baby on Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ Is Revived

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    The suit about the 1991 album had been dismissed because of the statute of limitations. But an appeals court ruled that it could proceed, noting that the album had been reissued in 2021.A federal appeals court ruled against the grunge rock group Nirvana on Thursday, reviving a lawsuit about the band’s use of a naked baby on the cover of its 1991 album “Nevermind.”A district court judge had dismissed Spencer Elden’s lawsuit that said he was a victim of child sexual abuse imagery, ruling that the complaint had not been filed within the 10-year statute of limitations. But a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision, finding that “each republication” of an image “may constitute a new personal injury.”The appeals court noted that Mr. Elden’s 2021 complaint says Nirvana has reproduced the album cover within the past 10 years, including the band’s September 2021 rerelease of “Nevermind.”“The question whether the ‘Nevermind’ album cover meets the definition of child pornography is not at issue in this appeal,” the court wrote in a footnote.The case will now return to the district court.A lawyer for Mr. Elden did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bert H. Deixler, a lawyer for Nirvana, said in a statement that the opinion was a “procedural setback.”“We will defend this meritless case with vigor and expect to prevail,” Mr. Deixler said.Mr. Elden was 4 months old when he was photographed in 1991 by a family friend at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, Calif. His parents were paid $200 for the picture, which was later altered to show the baby chasing a dollar, dangling from a fishhook.In the decades that followed, Mr. Elden seemed to celebrate his appearance on the classic album cover, recreating the moment — though not in the nude — for several of the album’s anniversaries.But in the lawsuit, Mr. Elden said he had suffered “permanent harm” because of his association with the album, including emotional distress and a “lifelong loss of income-earning capacity.”The lawsuit did not detail the losses but said that Nirvana, the producers of the album and others had all profited at Mr. Elden’s expense.Lawyers for Nirvana argued that Mr. Elden had benefited financially from the album cover by re-enacting the photograph for a fee and making public appearances parodying the image. They have also denied that the picture in question was an example of child sexual abuse imagery, noting that the photograph is present in the homes of millions of Americans.Maria Cramer More

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      R. Kelly Sentenced to 20 Years for Child Sex Crimes

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      The singer will serve most of the sentence in federal prison at the same time as a 30-year term for racketeering and sex trafficking.CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced R. Kelly to 20 years in prison for child sex crimes, after a jury found that he had produced three videos of himself sexually abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter.In a victory for the defense, the judge ruled that all but one year of the prison sentence would be served at the same time as a previous 30-year sentence that Mr. Kelly received after a jury in Brooklyn convicted him of racketeering and sex trafficking charges.The jury in Chicago convicted Mr. Kelly of six of the 13 charges brought against him in connection with sexual abuse during the 1990s, including counts of coercing three minors into sexual activity and three of producing sex tapes involving a minor. He was acquitted of a charge that he had attempted to obstruct an earlier investigation into his abuse of the goddaughter, and two other counts of enticing minors to have sex.Federal prosecutors had argued that Mr. Kelly, 56, deserved 25 years in prison on top of his earlier sentence, citing the singer’s “lack of remorse” as a reason he would pose a danger to society if released.“The only way to ensure he will not reoffend is to impose a sentence that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life,” Jeannice Williams Appenteng, one of the prosecutors, said in court on Thursday.A lawyer for Mr. Kelly, Jennifer Bonjean, argued that her client was “likely to die in prison either way,” but that if he did not, he would not pose a threat in old age.Judge Harry D. Leinenweber agreed, saying in court that he did not think Mr. Kelly would be likely to commit the same kind of crimes in his 80s. The judge acknowledged that he would have dealt a heftier sentence if the Chicago trial had come first.As in the trial, Mr. Kelly remained mostly silent during the sentencing hearing, declining to speak on his own behalf. Taking into account a possible early release because of good behavior, Mr. Kelly could walk out of prison in his late 70s.The ruling caps a lengthy legal battle in Chicago, where Mr. Kelly was once widely viewed with pride as a product of the city’s South Side. In 2008, he was acquitted on charges of producing child sexual abuse imagery of his goddaughter, with some jurors telling reporters that they had been influenced by the lack of testimony from the young woman. She had denied to a grand jury that she was the person in an infamous tape that prosecutors said showed Mr. Kelly sexually abusing and urinating on her.But in last year’s federal trial, which followed a resurgence of scrutiny over Mr. Kelly’s treatment of girls and young women in response to the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” the woman took the stand, identifying herself as the underage girl being abused in three videos, snippets of which were shown to the jury.In Thursday’s hearing, a lawyer for the woman — identified in court as Jane — read a statement about how the repeated sexual abuse affected her life, asking that Mr. Kelly be put in jail for “as long as the law allows.”“I’ll never be able to unsee the child pornography,” she said in the statement, which was read by her lawyer, Christopher Brown. “No amount of therapy will make me normal.”Ms. Bonjean, who said she was appealing the convictions in both Brooklyn and Chicago, had lobbied for the minimum 10-year prison sentence, arguing that Mr. Kelly had suffered his own history of sexual abuse as a child and that he had intellectual disabilities that “shed some light on why he engaged in inappropriate relationships.”The additional sentence reduces the chance that Mr. Kelly would get out of prison even if his defense team wins its appeal of the Brooklyn conviction. He still faces sex crimes charges in Minnesota, which have been on hold during the federal trials. State prosecutors in Illinois recently dropped sexual abuse charges against him, citing the previous convictions.Judge Leinenweber also ordered Mr. Kelly to pay one of the sexual abuse victims $42,000 in restitution for therapy bills, denying it to the goddaughter and the third woman whose account led to a conviction. The woman who was ordered to receive the money — referred to in court as Pauline — had testified that Mr. Kelly sexually abused her repeatedly when she was a teenager, sometimes at the same time as the goddaughter.The third woman, referred to as Nia during the trial, addressed Mr. Kelly directly in the courtroom on Thursday, recounting how she met him as a “star-struck teenager” asking for an autograph in a mall but ended up “completely damaged” after the sexual abuse.“I’m not a vengeful or hateful person,” the woman said in court, “but I highly suggest you spend your time in prison reflecting.” More

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      Gary Glitter Is Released From Prison After Serving Half of His Sentence

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      The disgraced former glam rock singer was found guilty in 2015 of sexually abusing three young girls in the 1970s. He had been given a 16-year sentence.LONDON — The former glam rock singer Gary Glitter has been released from prison after serving half of a 16-year sentence for sexually abusing three young girls decades ago, Britain’s Ministry of Justice said on Friday.The singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, will serve the remainder of his sentence under probation, a common arrangement in Britain.Mr. Gadd will be fitted with a GPS tag and will face other restrictions, the ministry said in a statement. “If the offender breaches these conditions at any point, they can go back behind bars,” it noted.The 78-year-old former star rose to fame in the 1970s after a string of hits, including “Rock and Roll Part 2,” which has been widely featured in films and at sporting events in the United States.Mr. Gadd was arrested in 2012 as part of an inquiry set up to investigate accusations of sexual abuse against Jimmy Savile, a longtime BBC host.That arrest led to Mr. Gadd’s conviction on one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 12. During his 2015 trial, prosecutors described how he had abused his access to young fans as he became an international star in the 1970s.In his sentencing remarks, Judge Alistair McCreath said that he had found no evidence that Mr. Gadd had done anything to atone for his crimes and that, after reading statements from the three victims from the 1970s, it was “clear that in their different ways, they were all profoundly affected by your abuse of them. You did all of them real and lasting damage.”Before his 2015 conviction, Mr. Gadd had been convicted in separate cases of sexually abusing minors and possession of child pornography.In the late 1990s, he served two months in jail after admitting to possessing 4,000 images of child pornography. In 2006, he was sentenced to three years in prison in Vietnam for molesting two underage girls at a seaside villa he was renting.In 2019, the music label that owns “Rock and Roll Part 2” said that Mr. Gadd would not receive any royalties from the use of his song in “Joker,” one of the year’s top-grossing films.The British government enacted a law last year that required criminals serving sentences for violent or sexual offenses to spend longer in prison, with the automatic release point occurring two-thirds through their sentences, not halfway. More

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      Nirvana Wins Lawsuit Over Naked Baby on ‘Nevermind’ Album Cover

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      Spencer Elden, who was pictured as a baby on the cover of “Nevermind,” argued in his lawsuit that the grunge rock group had engaged in “child pornography.”A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a man who, as a baby, had graced the cover of Nirvana’s seminal album, “Nevermind,” and argued 30 years later that the iconic photo of him drifting naked in a pool had been a form of sexual exploitation.The man, Spencer Elden, 31, accused Nirvana in his complaint of engaging in child pornography after it used a photo of him for the cover of “Nevermind,” the 1991 album that catapulted the Seattle grunge rock band to international fame.The judge, Fernando M. Olguin, wrote in his eight-page ruling that because Mr. Elden had learned about the album cover more than 10 years ago, he had waited too long to file his lawsuit, making his claims untimely.The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against the estate of Kurt Cobain; the musician’s former bandmates, David Grohl and Krist Novoselic; and Mr. Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, among other parties. Bert H. Deixler, a lawyer for the defendants, said in a statement that they were “pleased this meritless case has been brought to a swift conclusion.”Robert Y. Lewis, one of Mr. Elden’s lawyers, did not respond to an email seeking comment on Sunday.The dismissal came after Judge Olguin dismissed the case in January for another reason: Mr. Elden’s lawyers had missed a deadline to respond to a motion for dismissal by the lawyers for Nirvana.Judge Olguin had allowed Mr. Elden’s lawyers to file a second amended complaint to address “the alleged defects” in the defendants’ motion to dismiss.But the dismissal on Friday appeared to end the legal back-and-forth.Mr. Elden, an artist living in Los Angeles County, has gone to therapy for years to work through how the album cover affected him, his lawyers have said, arguing that his privacy had been invaded, according to court records.He had been seeking $150,000 from each of the 15 people and companies named in the complaint.The photo of Mr. Elden, who was then four months old, was picked from among dozens of pictures of babies by the photographer Kirk Weddle. Mr. Cobain envisioned the album cover showing a baby underwater.Mr. Weddle paid Mr. Elden’s parents $200 for the picture, which was later altered to show the baby chasing a dollar bill, dangling from a fishhook.In the years that followed, Mr. Elden’s opinion about the photo changed. Initially, he appeared to celebrate his part in the classic cover, recreating the moment for the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries, though not naked.“It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember,” he said in 2016 in an interview with The New York Post, in which he posed holding the album cover at 25.He also expressed anger at the people who still talked about it, telling GQ Australia that he was not comfortable with people seeing him naked. “I didn’t really have a choice,” he said.In their motion to dismiss, lawyers for Nirvana said that in 2003, when Mr. Elden was 12 years old, he acknowledged in an interview that he would probably always be known as the baby on the album cover.According to the lawyers, he said at the time, “I’m probably gonna get some money from it.” More

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      Woman Testifies R. Kelly Sexually Abused Her on Video When She Was 14

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      The woman testified at the singer’s federal trial in Chicago that she had been persuaded not to testify against him at his 2008 state trial, which ended in his acquittal.CHICAGO — In 2008, a jury in Chicago declared the singer R. Kelly not guilty of producing child sexual abuse imagery after seeing a videotape that prosecutors said showed the R&B singer engaging in sex acts with an underage girl. The defense team had argued that the identities of the people in the tape were in question, and several jurors said the lack of testimony from the victim was a significant barrier to convicting Mr. Kelly.But on Thursday, the woman at the center of the 2008 trial took the stand, identifying herself and Mr. Kelly as the people in the infamous video, saying that they had sex “hundreds” of times when she was underage, and explaining how two decades ago he had persuaded her to deny their relationship to law enforcement officials.“I was extremely scared that my parents would find out,” she said, adding that she was afraid of what would happen to Mr. Kelly.Mr. Kelly has been trailed by accusations of abusing young women and underage girls for more than two decades but had long avoided criminal punishment — until last year, when he was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he was convicted in federal court in Brooklyn of racketeering and sex trafficking charges.Before that, the 2008 trial was the closest Mr. Kelly had gotten to being held accountable.The woman at the center of that trial, now 37, took the stand at the Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in downtown Chicago, where she said that she had been repeatedly sexually abused as a teenager by Mr. Kelly and testified that it was in fact her at age 14 appearing in the videotape, which at one point shows Mr. Kelly urinating on her.Testifying under a pseudonym for more than four hours on Thursday, the woman told the court that in 2002, after law enforcement officials had obtained the tape, Mr. Kelly sent her and her parents out of the country to make them inaccessible to investigators. He then urged her to deny to a grand jury that it was her on the tape and paid for a lawyer to accompany her, she said. She testified that she had falsely told the grand jury that it was not her on the videotape and that she was not sexually involved with Mr. Kelly. She said that she gave Mr. Kelly’s lawyers a necklace of hers that could be seen on the videotape.As the woman spoke, Mr. Kelly — who is facing charges of coercing minors into sex, receiving child sexual abuse videos and conspiring to obstruct justice — remained impassive.The woman told the jury that she was 13 years old when she was first introduced to Mr. Kelly by her aunt, a protégée of Mr. Kelly’s who goes by the stage name Sparkle. Mr. Kelly, who became the woman’s godfather, started speaking sexually with her over the phone, she said, then started abusing her physically. She testified that Mr. Kelly would sexually assault her at various locations, including his home, the recording studio and his tour bus.The tape surfaced after a journalist for The Chicago Sun-Times who had reported on the accusations against Mr. Kelly, Jim DeRogatis, received it in the mail from an anonymous sender, and turned it over to law enforcement. Mr. Kelly was charged in 2002 with producing child pornography, and he stood trial in 2008 but was acquitted.The woman testified that around the time of the trial, she was living with Mr. Kelly in his mansion, and that after he was acquitted, he began physically abusing her and controlling her ability to leave. He later helped her move into her own place and get a car, she said.A lawyer for Mr. Kelly, Jennifer Bonjean, who is expected to cross-examine the woman on Friday, sought to undermine her testimony in opening arguments, telling the jury that she has an immunity deal with prosecutors. The woman affirmed that in exchange for her testimony, prosecutors had granted her immunity from prosecution for perjury related to the false grand jury testimony in 2002.Prosecutors say that they now have more evidence of the woman’s abuse than the state prosecutors had 14 years ago. The 2008 trial focused on one video, but the current trial centers on four videos that prosecutors say show Mr. Kelly sexually abusing the woman. Those videos are the basis for charges against Mr. Kelly related to producing child pornography, as well as the ones related to receiving child pornography.According to the federal indictment, Mr. Kelly and his associates realized in 2001 that videotapes of him sexually abusing the woman were missing, and as a result, they began a multiyear effort to recover the tapes, paying one person hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to regain possession of them.Charges against two of Mr. Kelly’s associates, Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown, who are standing trial at the same time as Mr. Kelly, relate to accusations that they had tried to find the missing tapes. Both men pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers have argued that they were carrying out their jobs, unaware that Mr. Kelly was abusing children.Later on in the trial, four other women are also expected to testify that Mr. Kelly sexually abused them when they were girls. More

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      R. Kelly Stands Trial in Chicago: What to Know

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      The musician faces charges of sex crimes and of working to obstruct an earlier investigation that resulted in his acquittal in a 2008 criminal trial.R. Kelly, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for racketeering and sex trafficking earlier this year, will stand trial again starting this week, beginning the next chapter of prosecutors’ efforts to hold him criminally responsible for allegations of sexual abuse dating back more than three decades.The trial is in Chicago, the city Mr. Kelly long called home, and where he faced his first criminal trial in 2008.This time, federal prosecutors are seeking to hold Mr. Kelly and his associates accountable for working to stymie the earlier trial, in which a jury acquitted Mr. Kelly of producing child sexual abuse imagery. They are accusing Mr. Kelly and a former employee who is also on trial, Derrel McDavid, of arranging hush money payments and seeking to conceal evidence that would have aided prosecutors when they were investigating the singer in the early 2000s.Mr. Kelly, 55, will face charges that he coerced five minors into sex acts, and several charges related to producing child sexual abuse imagery. He and Mr. McDavid also face charges of receiving child sexual abuse imagery, during what prosecutors have described as a scheme to recover missing tapes of Mr. Kelly having sex with minors.A third man — another former employee of Mr. Kelly’s, Milton Brown — is facing a related charge. All three men have pleaded not guilty.The trial will be an emotional moment for many in Chicago who have witnessed Mr. Kelly’s rise from a child of the city to a pop and R&B star, then his fall after he was accused of luring underage girls into his orbit.“Chicago has always struggled with this because he is local and we tend to go up for our locals,” said Mikki Kendall, a writer who grew up in the city and recalled, in the Lifetime documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly,” seeing the adult singer approaching teenage girls at a local McDonald’s. “There are people who are going to be very upset and will again try to insist that the girls are at fault, and there are going to be people — and I am one of them — who are going to say 59,000 times: He is a grown man preying on very young women and children.”The first public disclosure of abuse allegations came in a 1996 lawsuit, and a steady drip of legal claims and articles followed over the next two decades. The renewed effort to prosecute Mr. Kelly came in 2019, after the Lifetime documentary broadcast accounts of women who described being abused and controlled by him, oftentimes when they were teenagers.One year ago, Mr. Kelly stood trial in New York, where a jury found him guilty of leading a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex. He started serving his 30-year prison term in Brooklyn before he was transferred to a federal prison in Chicago for the current trial.What happened in the 2008 trial?The 2008 trial was a result of a 2002 grand jury indictment of Mr. Kelly on 21 counts of child pornography, which were later reduced to 14. The case took years to go to a jury. During that time, the singer debuted some of the biggest hits of his career, including “Ignition” and “Step in the Name of Love.”The trial revolved around a 27-minute tape that prosecutors said showed Mr. Kelly having a sex with a teenage girl and urinating on her. The case hinged on whether the jury was convinced that the people in the tape were who the prosecutors said they were. Mr. Kelly and the young woman denied they were the ones on the tape, and neither testified in the trial.A jury found Mr. Kelly not guilty on all charges, and after the verdict was released, jurors said the young woman’s refusal to testify was a significant barrier to convicting him.How is that relevant to the current trial?A portion of the trial will focus on charges that Mr. Kelly and his associate, Mr. McDavid, conspired to obstruct the previous federal investigation by paying off people with knowledge of Mr. Kelly’s abuse and seeking to suppress evidence.Prosecutors accuse Mr. Kelly of persuading the minor in the tape to deny to a grand jury in the early 2000s that she had a sexual relationship with Mr. Kelly and that it was her in the 27-minute video. According to the federal indictment, Mr. Kelly and Mr. McDavid arranged payments and bought gifts for the minor and her parents over a roughly 15-year period to prevent them from speaking to law enforcement about the abuse.These hush money payments were part of a broader effort, prosecutors say, to hide evidence of Mr. Kelly’s sexual abuse from investigators.In 2001, after state officials started investigating whether Mr. Kelly had been abusing the child at the center of the 2008 trial, Mr. Kelly and his associates realized that several videotapes of the singer sexually abusing minors had gone missing, according to the indictment in the case. After that realization, Mr. Kelly and Mr. McDavid started a multiyear effort to have those videos returned, paying an unnamed person hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover them, the indictment said.Around the time of the first trial in Chicago, prosecutors say, the person that Mr. Kelly and Mr. McDavid hired to find the missing videos planned a news conference about the existence of footage of Mr. Kelly having sex with minors. According to the indictment, Mr. Kelly, Mr. McDavid and others paid the person $170,000 to cancel it.The charges of receiving child sexual abuse imagery relate to the effort to recover several missing videos of Mr. Kelly engaging in sex acts with the person at the center of the 2008 trial.Who is expected to testify?Prosecutors have not revealed exactly who they will call to testify, but court papers suggest that they now have the cooperation of the woman whose testimony in 2008 was a missing piece of evidence in their case, as well as her mother.The indictment also suggests that prosecutors have the cooperation of four other people who say that Mr. Kelly coerced them into sex when they were underage, between 1996 and 2001.​​Judge Harry D. Leinenweber, who will preside over the case, recently ruled that any accusers called to testify will be able to do so using pseudonyms.A lawyer representing Mr. Kelly, Jennifer Bonjean, did not respond to requests for comment on the case. Mr. Kelly did not testify in the trial in Brooklyn.In a tweet last week, Ms. Bonjean wrote that it would be difficult to find 12 jurors who would be fair “given the media war on my client.”“The government starts with an incredible advantage but we are going to fight like hell to get a jury that will follow the law,” she wrote.How does the trial in Chicago differ from the one in Brooklyn?The trials are likely to be similar in that the centerpiece of the prosecutors’ case is testimony from people who say Mr. Kelly recruited them for sex, but the legal approaches are different.In Brooklyn, Mr. Kelly was convicted of one count of racketeering based on allegations that he was the ringleader of a criminal enterprise that had carried out acts of bribery, kidnapping and forced labor. He was also convicted of eight counts of violating the Mann Act, a sex trafficking statute.In the trial starting this week, which is in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the charges are just as complex. Mr. Kelly faces five counts of coercing a minor into criminal sexual activity; four counts of doing so for the purpose of producing a video of the conduct; two counts of receiving child pornography; one count of conspiring to receive child pornography; and one count of conspiring to obstruct a federal investigation.One part of Mr. Kelly’s history that is not likely to be addressed is his illegal marriage to the singer Aaliyah when she was 15 and Mr. Kelly was 27. The marriage was central to the case against Mr. Kelly in Brooklyn, where a witness testified that Mr. Kelly sexually abused Aaliyah when she was only 13 or 14 years old. (Aaliyah died in a 2001 plane crash.)Mr. Kelly’s legal team asked the judge in the Chicago trial to exclude evidence related to the marriage, and prosecutors responded that they did not intend to introduce evidence on the subject.Is R. Kelly facing any other criminal charges?Yes. Mr. Kelly still faces sex crime charges in Illinois and Minnesota. After the federal trial in Chicago, those charges will be dealt with next. More

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      Jerry Harris Sentenced to 12 Years for Sex Crimes Involving Minors

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      Mr. Harris, who shot to reality-TV fame in the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” had pleaded guilty to federal charges related to soliciting child sexual abuse imagery and illegal sexual conduct with a minor.A judge in Chicago sentenced Jerry Harris, the Navarro College cheerleader who became a breakout star of the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” to 12 years in prison on Wednesday on guilty pleas to two of seven federal charges related to sex crimes involving minors in February.Mr. Harris, 22, had reached a plea deal in February in which prosecutors agreed that after sentencing on the two counts — the charges that he persuaded a 17-year-old to send him sexually explicit photos for money and traveled to Florida “for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a 15-year-old — they would ask that the remaining charges be dropped. He had initially pleaded not guilty to all seven charges in December 2020.Mr. Harris’s plea agreement noted that sentencing guidelines “may recommend 50 years in prison” for the offenses, though Judge Manish S. Shah had noted that he might decide differently. Judge Shah also ordered Mr. Harris to serve eight years of court-supervised release following his prison term.A lawyer for Mr. Harris, Todd Pugh, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.In a memo filed before the hearing, prosecutors had asked Judge Shah to sentence Mr. Harris to 15 years in prison, arguing that Mr. Harris took advantage of “his status as a competitive cheerleader, his social media persona, and eventually his celebrity and money, to persuade and entice his young victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct for him or with him.”Mr. Harris’s lawyers had requested a six-year prison term, to be followed by eight years of supervised release, arguing that Mr. Harris had himself been sexually abused as a child in the world of competitive cheerleading and therefore had a “skewed version of what he understood to be appropriate relationships.”The sentencing caps a case that began nearly two years ago in September 2020, when Mr. Harris was arrested and charged with production of child pornography, months after the release of “Cheer,” which follows a national champion cheerleading team from a small-town Texas community college.Around the same time, he was sued by teenage twin brothers who said he had sent sexually explicit messages to them, requested nude photos and solicited sex from them. (Mr. Harris befriended the boys when they were 13 and he was 19, USA Today reported.)In a voluntary interview with the authorities in 2020, Mr. Harris acknowledged that he had exchanged sexually explicit photos on Snapchat with at least 10 to 15 people he knew were minors and had sex with a 15-year-old at a cheerleading competition in 2019, according to a criminal complaint.After federal agents interviewed other minors who said they had had relationships with Mr. Harris, they filed additional felony charges against him. The charges that Mr. Harris did not plead guilty to as part of the agreement include four counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of enticement. The seven charges involve five minor boys.Mr. Harris has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago since his arrest. More

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      Josh Duggar Is Sentenced to 12 Years for Downloading Images of Child Sex Abuse

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      Mr. Duggar, 34, a former star of the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” was convicted in December after he tried to covertly download graphic images to his computer in Arkansas.Josh Duggar, a onetime star of the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” about a large family guided by conservative Christian values, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison on Wednesday for downloading child sexual abuse imagery.The sentencing, in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville, Ark., concluded Mr. Duggar’s downfall from the eldest sibling on one of the most popular cable reality shows to a convicted criminal, capping a reversal that began with his arrest in April 2021.Prosecutors said that, in May 2019, Mr. Duggar installed a password-protected partition on the hard drive of his desktop computer at his used-car lot in Springdale, Ark., to avoid software that detects explicit images of children.Mr. Duggar, 34, who is married with seven children, downloaded around 600 photographs and seven videos of violent child sexual abuse, according to a sentencing memorandum filed this month by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas.He was caught after a Little Rock police detective found an I.P. address that had been sharing child sexual abuse material, according to a memorandum opinion filed by Judge Timothy L. Brooks in August 2021. The detective sent the information to an agent from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who later tracked the I.P. address to Mr. Duggar, Judge Brooks wrote.A jury deliberated for two days before finding Mr. Duggar guilty in December of one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.Prosecutors had asked for a 20-year sentence while Mr. Duggar’s lawyers asked for five years. He was sentenced to 12 years and seven months.On Wednesday, Judge Brooks vacated the charge of child pornography possession, one of Mr. Duggar’s lawyers, Justin K. Gelfand, said.Mr. Gelfand added that he and the rest of Mr. Duggar’s defense team were grateful that the judge had dismissed the charge. “We look forward to continuing the fight on appeal,” he said in a statement after the sentencing.The U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately respond to emails or phone calls on Wednesday.On Tuesday, Judge Brooks denied a request that Mr. Duggar’s lawyers filed in January asking that he be acquitted or receive a new trial. The lawyers argued that, among other things, the prosecutors had not disclosed certain evidence in a timely manner.From 2008 to 2015, Mr. Duggar and his siblings starred with their parents in “19 Kids and Counting,” a reality show following the family’s life in Arkansas. TLC canceled the show after In Touch Weekly reported on a 2006 police report that said Mr. Duggar had molested several girls when he was a teenager.Representatives for Discovery, the company that owns TLC, did not immediately return emails or phone calls on Wednesday.Mr. Duggar was not charged in connection with those earlier allegations, for which the statute of limitations had passed. Mr. Duggar’s parents told Fox News in 2015 that four of the five girls he molested were his sisters.His parents said they had sent him to counseling and had him talk to the police.He apologized at the time in a statement to People magazine, saying, “As a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry.”Mr. Duggar also resigned from his position as the director of the lobbying arm of the conservative Family Research Council. More

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      Jerry Harris of ‘Cheer’ Pleads Guilty to Sex Crimes Involving Minors

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      Mr. Harris, of the Netflix show “Cheer,” reached an agreement with prosecutors requiring that he plead guilty to two of seven federal charges.Jerry Harris, who shot to reality-TV fame in the Netflix show “Cheer,” pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal charges related to soliciting child sexual abuse imagery and illegal sexual conduct with a minor, reversing his earlier plea.Over a year ago, Mr. Harris, 22, pleaded not guilty to the seven felony charges brought against him in Chicago. But in a remote hearing on Thursday, he told Judge Manish S. Shah that he reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and was pleading guilty to two of those counts, which involved charges that he persuaded a 17-year-old to send him sexually explicit photos for money and traveled to Florida “for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a 15-year-old.The plea agreement stipulates that after sentencing on the two counts, prosecutors would ask for the remaining charges to be dropped, Judge Shah said at the hearing.Mr. Harris’s lawyers released a statement saying that Mr. Harris wanted to “take responsibility for his actions and publicly convey his remorse for the harm he has caused the victims.”Mr. Harris, whose enthusiastic encouragement of his teammates made him into a viral star after the debut of “Cheer,” had himself been sexually abused as a child in the world of competitive cheerleading, the statement said.“There being no safe harbor to discuss his exploitation, Jerry instead masked his trauma and put on the bright face and infectious smile that the world came to know,” the statement said. “As we now know, Jerry became an offender himself as an older teenager.”Kelly Guzman, a prosecutor in the case, said at the hearing that one of the counts to which Mr. Harris entered a guilty plea was for receiving and attempting to receive child pornography. In the summer of 2020, she said, Mr. Harris repeatedly requested that a 17-year-old send him sexually explicit photos and videos, in exchange for a total of about $3,000.The other count involved Mr. Harris traveling from Texas to Florida with the intent of engaging in illegal sexual conduct with a 15-year-old, Ms. Guzman said. Mr. Harris directed the teenager to meet him in a public bathroom in Orlando, Fla., where he sexually assaulted him, the prosecutor said.Mr. Harris said he understood the nature of the charges and possible prison time before entering his guilty plea.Mr. Harris was arrested and charged with production of child pornography in September 2020, months after the release of “Cheer,” which follows a national champion cheerleading team from a small-town Texas community college.Around the same time, he was sued by teenage twin brothers who said he sent sexually explicit messages to them, requested nude photos and solicited sex from them. (Mr. Harris befriended the boys when they were 13 and he was 19, USA Today reported.)In a voluntary interview with the authorities in 2020, Mr. Harris acknowledged that he had exchanged sexually explicit photos on Snapchat with at least 10 to 15 people he knew were minors and had sex with a 15-year-old at a cheerleading competition in 2019, according to a criminal complaint.After federal agents interviewed other minors who said they had had relationships with Mr. Harris, they filed additional felony charges against him. The charges that Mr. Harris did not plead guilty to on Thursday include four counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of enticement. The seven charges involve five minor boys.Mr. Harris has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago since his arrest.One episode of the second season of “Cheer,” which was released last month, centers on the case against Mr. Harris and includes interviews with the teenage plaintiffs, Mr. Harris’s former cheerleading teammates and the team’s coach, Monica Aldama, about the charges.Mr. Harris will be sentenced on June 28. The plea agreement noted that sentencing guidelines “may recommend 50 years in prison” for the offenses, Judge Shah said, adding that he may decide differently.The statement from Mr. Harris’s lawyers said he has been participating in therapy in prison and “will spend the rest of his life making amends for what he has done.”Robert Chiarito More