Everything Monica Aldama, ‘Cheer’ Season 2 Cast Said About Jerry Harris’ Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Credit: Greg Endries/Bravo

Everything Monica Aldama, ‘Cheer’ Season 2 Cast Said About Jerry Harris' Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Cheer season 2 didn’t shy away from Jerry Harris or the sexual misconduct allegations made against the former reality show fan favorite. “I can’t even wrap my head around how I should feel. This has been a tough year,” head coach Monica Aldama began in the season 2 premiere, which started streaming on Netflix on Wednesday, January 12. “But then there are moments that are so wonderful. These little moments of success that keep you coming back, just the little things that add up. … I keep putting one foot in front of the other, every single day. I don’t have a choice.” The first four episodes of the second installment of Cheer followed the 2019-2020 Navarro and Trinity Valley Community College teams as they prepared for the NCA & NDA Collegiate Cheer & Dance Championship. Filmed months before he was taken into custody in September 2020, Jerry is still part of the team. “I wasn’t a big fan of where I was at, so I decided to get in contact with Monica, see if there are any openings and now, I’m back for my third year,” he explained in the first episode. “My favorite thing from the past two weeks was getting to work the red carpet and interview celebrities. … I guess I have a career now.” [jwplayer WptrWDg2-zhNYySv2] In the second episode, Jerry is shown joking with his costars and friends about being “America’s sweetheart” as fans approach him to do “mat talk,” which he was known for after season 1. “Now I have, like, an agent booking me all different types of opportunities and just so many doors opening for me,” he said before recording Cameos for fans. He continued his season 1 role in the group as the optimistic one on the team. “I bring a positive attitude to, like, everything I do,” he said in episode three. “That’s something we’ve been lacking a little bit over the past year. And to me, that’s the only challenging thing about the team, currently.” At the end of the fourth episode, however, the squads learned that the April 2020 NCA championship was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Five months later, Jerry was arrested on production of child pornography charges, and he has been held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago ever since. While a trial date hasn’t been set, he has a status hearing — coincidentally — set for Wednesday. In December 2020, he pleaded not guilty to seven felony charges — four counts of sexual exploitation of children, one count of enticement, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of travel with the intent to engage in an illicit sexual contact with a minor. Sam and Charlie, underage twin brothers who have accused Jerry of sexual harassment, spoke out in the fifth episode, simply titled “Jerry.” “One day in December 2018, this was my first cheer season, he messaged me on his private Instagram account, like, basically just saying, ‘Hey’ and he asked how old I was, and I told him I was 13,” Charlie claimed, noting he “knew of” Jerry because of his success in the cheerleader world. “And then after that, right off the bat, he asked me, ‘Can I have butt pics or can you send butt pics?’” Charlie told the cameras that he sent him the photo because he was “blindsided by [Jerry’s] notoriety at the time,” explaining, “I was kind of starstruck, and I didn’t want him to not like me or to not be friends with me.” After a couple of months, Charlie alleged that the Cheer star would make him “feel bad about myself” if he didn’t answer his messages or his text “tone” changed. When Charlie met Jerry in person for the first time at a competition, he claimed Jerry “cornered him” in the bathroom stall and was “continually pleading with me to have sex with him.” Following the incident, Sam claimed that Jerry started messaging him too. The brothers explained that they were “scared” to tell their mother because she would report Jerry and the twins didn’t want to “lose [their] cheer friends.” Their mom ultimately discovered an alleged message from Jerry apologizing for what he’s “done in the past” and said they shouldn’t be friends on Snapchat anymore. She subsequently discovered a video from the waist down of a man — allegedly Jerry — masturbating on her son’s phone. The family decided to take legal action after they saw Jerry be recognized by President Joe Biden. Jerry faces a mandatory minimum 15-year sentence. Scroll through for everything the cast said about Jerry on season 2:

Credit: Greg Endries/Bravo

How Monica Aldama Found Out

“I was on the stage at Dancing With the Stars in dress rehearsal for our very first live show. The executive producer came up to me and showed me her phone and asked me if I had seen the headline in the news that day,“ the coach recalled about the news breaking.

Monica called the moment an “out of body experience,” explaining, “I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was already terrified. I did the show and then I went back to my trailer. I didn’t even want to look at my phone because I was scared. I didn’t want to hear anymore because I was in such a vulnerable position at the time with what I was going through, and I just couldn’t take the weight of all it. … I didn’t want to read it.”

The former cheerleader revealed that she held a “team meeting” via Zoom that night, which felt like a “funeral” as she’s “never seen the kids cry so hard.”

Credit: Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

Gabi Butler Won’t Turn Her Back on Him

“I was here, in my room, when I got the call about Jerry,” the social media influencer told Netflix cameras through tears. “And immediately my heart completely sank. I honestly thought I was living in a bad dream. I literally could not wrap my head around any of that. I felt like someone had, like, died. … I completely broke down. I was, like, screaming, like, screaming and crying at the same time. I remember Maddy [Brum] came out of her apartment and she just hugged me.”

Gabi also noted that she doesn’t “condone” what Jerry was accused of. “But it’s literally like your family. How are you gonna just hate your family?” she asked. “So I feel like people expect me to be like, ‘Well you should hate him and you should never speak to him again,’ but the thing is, I can’t. Like, I cannot, and I won’t. I can’t turn my back on him because he was there for me when I needed it.”

Credit: Greg Endries/Bravo

La'Darius Marshall Reacts

“I was scrolling through Twitter, and I see Jerry. [I thought], ‘This ain’t true. This can’t be true.’ I started crying,” he recalled. “And I called Gabi and she is bawling.”

Later in the episode, La'Darius said, “I would have snatched him up if I ever would have known about any of this stuff. I feel like it would have been worse than him going to jail. I don’t care how famous you are, I don’t care how much money you got, how much people, how much love — that don’t give you the right to do stuff like this. Especially when one of your best friends you know went through something like that.”

Credit: Courtesy Jerry Harris/Instagram

Maddy Brum Speaks Out

“We all thought we knew every little piece of him when we didn’t. And losing that person is a lot on people,” the athlete said. “It’s a lot on everyone.”

Credit: Courtesy Jerry Harris/Instagram

James Thomas on His Best Friend’s Alleged Actions

“I feel like I just sunk — very deep,” the tumbler said. “I kind of just sunk into a hole and cried. And cried and cried and cried and cried. And then I called my mom, and I was just talking to her, asking her like, ‘How?’ … I don’t understand, like, I was just there. He never said anything about this stuff to me and I could’ve helped, stopped or guided him somewhere else. I just kept asking myself questions.”

After hearing the news reports about Charlie and Sam, tumbler Christian Trahan asked James if there were any signs or stories from Jerry’s childhood that could have “triggered” his actions.

“No,” James said, detailing his instant friendship and connection with Jerry. “I had so many questions, but I couldn’t ask him those questions because by the time we found out, he was like, already, gone. And it just blows my mind, like, I didn’t notice or see anything. … It really blindsided me, like, big.”

Credit: Courtesy Jerry Harris/Instagram

Monica Is Conflicted

James implied that the team wasn’t thrilled that Monica wasn’t in Texas amid the scandal as she was filming DWTS. “We [had] seen her on the phone. She was crying with us, but I don’t know,” he said when asked how the coach was handling the situation. “She was probably shocked and stunned and didn’t know what to say just like us, but honestly, I have no idea because she wasn’t here with us.”

Monica admitted that she “cried herself to sleep” after wrapping DWTS. “I was really struggling mentally because I love Jerry like my own child, but I have all these emotions that are fighting each other,” she explained. “And then I tested positive for COVID, and I felt like I couldn’t move.”

She also revealed that Jerry contacted her via a letter. “It was hard to read. I can’t even, like, process it right now,” she said. “My head’s battling the ‘he did wrong’ versus ‘this person I know,’ you know what I mean? And I can’t wrap my head around what I need to even think and how I should feel, which is why I haven’t written him back because I don’t know what I would say. I want to be supportive, yet I’m so disappointed. … And his letter was so optimistic. Like, there was not one negative thing in this letter. He said he hopes to one day be a motivational speaker. You know, there are people who are great motivational speakers who did horrible things, and they came full circle and now they’re great motivational speakers. … I just was really caught off guard at the hope he had for the future.”

Credit: Michael Rozman/Warner Bros.

Monica's Point of View as a Parent

During an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in January 2022, Monica addressed the "shocking" allegations against Jerry. “It was devastating for everyone," she said at the time. "As a parent, I was just heartbroken for those affected.”