Cheerleader, 17, abused by choreographers, according to new Ohio lawsuit

A pair of competitive cheerleading choreographers have been accused of sexually abusing a teenage athlete in a lawsuit filed in Ohio federal court.

It’s the eighth lawsuit filed by the Strom Law Firm of Columbia against cheerleading coaches and the sport’s governing bodies since August.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, alleges that Brandon Hale and Taji Davis coerced a 17-year-old athlete into having sex with them while they were on a contract to choreograph routines at the victim’s gym.

Although the athlete reported the abuse to law enforcement and the United States All Star Federation, competitive cheer’s main accreditation organization that oversees athlete safety, no action was taken against either Hale or Davis, according to the lawsuit.

In the pattern of their past lawsuits, the Strom Law Firm allege that what happened to Doe was the product of a vast culture of abuse in competitive cheerleading. Varsity Brands, the leading producer of cheer apparel and competitions, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, has rejected the latest allegation that they enabled abuse.

The victim, identified as John Doe 1, first met Hale and Davis in 2014 when he was 15 and their company ShowPro was hired to provide choreography to a gym in Avondale, Ohio, where Doe trained at the time. Davis and Hale were both “credentialed” USASF coaches at the time of the incident, according to the lawsuit.

In 2021, USA Today reported that Hale was taken into custody in Tulum, Mexico, after he livestreamed the aftermath of a “violent confrontation” in which he allegedly “pushed his boyfriend off of a third-floor walkway.”

In 2016, Hale and Davis began messagin Doe using an app. That summer, while the two were in Ohio for work, they “pressed” Doe to come to their hotel room even though they knew he was a minor athlete in USASF, the lawsuit alleges.

Doe “was hesitant and initially refused.” When he gave in and went to the hotel, Davis and Hale offered him liquor and then “commenced to have sex” with Doe, according to the lawsuit. Davis was 24 and Hale was 25 at the time of the incident.

In 2020, Doe made anonymous complaints about Hale and Davis to cheerleading gyms in California and North Carolina. Shortly after, he was contacted by representatives from USASF who initiated an investigation while Davis and Hale were placed on the organization’s suspended list, according to the lawsuit.

In an email to a police department in Ohio quoted in the lawsuit, Amy Clark, a USASF vice president wrote, “at a minimum, we have an alleged perpetrator, who used his position of power and age difference to “encourage” a 17 year old to come to his hotel room. At worse [sic], we have an alleged perpetrator who has demonstrated his modus operandus [sic], and may have done the same thing to additional minor athletes in our sport.”

Ohio law enforcement said that they were unable to press charges because the age of consent in Ohio is 16.

On November 19, Davis and Hale were removed from the suspended list. In a follow-up call with USASF’s counsel, Doe was told that the two men denied abusing him and that the organization’s investigator had been unable to make a determination “one way or the other,” the USASF’s counsel said, according to a transcription of the conversation included with the lawsuit.

“It’s really what we call a draw,” the counsel said.

An expanding web of lawsuits

To date, the Columbia-based law firm has filed eight lawsuits representing 20 plaintiffs in six different jurisdictions.

The lawsuits allege that the gyms and various Varsity Brand-affiliated companies formed a conspiracy that put profits over safety and disregarded complaints that coaches and other adults were abusing the young athletes.

As in their other lawsuits, the Strom Law Firm has also named the U.S. All Star Federation and Varsity Brands, the leading cheerleading merchandizer and competition organizer. Also named is Varsity’s founder, Jeff Webb, and its current owners, the Boston-based private equity firms Bain Capital and Charlesbank.

Varsity has recently fired back against these allegations, calling them “sham lawsuits” and accusing the Strom Law Firm of being “self-aggrandizing.”

Vasity’s lawyer, Thomas Clare of the Clare Locke Firm, has demanded evidence of the claim repeated across many lawsuits that Varsity was a “central player” promoting access to minors at events where they were abused.

In a statement provided to The State, a representative for Varsity Brands flatly rejected “any accusation that Varsity Spirit enabled such unthinkable behavior.”

“The Strom Law firm continues to make unfounded allegations against Varsity without providing a shred of evidence... Varsity stands with the survivors and their pursuit of justice. We are outraged that predators took advantage of cheerleading programs to abuse innocent children,” the Varsity Brands representative said.

Doe is being represented by Columbia attorney Bakari Sellers, along with Jessica Fickling and Alexandra Benevento. They are also being represented in Ohio by Charles Cooper, Rex Elliott and Chelsea Weaver of the Cooper Elliott law firm.

Sellers, a former South Carolina lawmaker, has brought many of the cheerleading sex abuse lawsuits that multiplied since the death of prominent coach Scott Foster in August.

Foster, the founder and owner of Rockstar Cheer in Greenville, killed himself after it was revealed that he was under investigation by the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Since Foster’s death, multiple lawsuits have been filed alleging a culture of rampant sex abuse at the gym.

Rockstar Cheer in Greenville has since closed.