GREENVILLE, S.C. (Legal Newsline) - One of the many defendants caught up in litigation over sexual abuse at a South Carolina cheerleading gym has won dismissal.
South Carolina federal judge Henry Herlong ruled June 23 to grant the motion to dismiss of USA Cheer, a governing body alleged to have failed to expose and correct abuse at Scott Foster's Rockstar Cheer. Seven women and two men say they were sexually abused by coaches there, and Foster killed himself when the allegations came to light last year.
Days earlier, Herlong allowed claims against another governing body - Varsity Spirit - to continue. But USA Cheer's argument was more persuasive, Herlong found.
Plaintiffs alleged USA Cheer violated the Child Abuse Victims' Rights Act of 1986 and the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by failing to ensure participants in its events like Rockstar weren't abusing cheerleaders.
In response, USA Cheer submitted an affidavit detailing its lack of contacts with South Carolina but Herlong said litigating the CAVRA and RICO claims in his court posed no problem to it.
However, they could not prove compensable injuries, Herlong said.
"(E)ven if Plaintiffs had incurred concrete losses from being unable to continue cheerleading, those losses could not confer RICO standing as they would be derivative of non-compensable personal injuries- that is, those stemming from the alleged sexual abuse Plaintiffs suffered," he wrote.
"RICO's 'injury to business or property' requirement excludes from its reach not only personal injuries, but also 'pecuniary losses occurring therefrom.'"
Herlong also rejected claims USA Cheer was part of an "association-in-fact enterprise."
"In short, without nonconclusory allegations that USA Cheer shared a common purpose with the perpetrators of the alleged abuse, Plaintiffs have failed to allege a RICO enterprise," he wrote.
Foster shot himself on Aug. 22, having learned of an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security of allegations he was sexually abusing underage athletes, the suit says.
The complaint includes allegations Foster sent pictures of his penis to a 16-year-old boy who later felt obligated to perform oral sex on Foster. The rest of the allegations can be read here.
The account of one plaintiff reads:
"When the team arrived at the hotel the night before the competition, Plaintiff Jane Doe 3 recalls that multiple people stayed in a single room per Defendant Scott Foster’s arrangement.
"One such person assigned to stay in Plaintiff Jane Doe 3’s room was an adult coach who climbed into bed with Plaintiff Jane Doe 3 and groped and fondled her, and digitally penetrated her. She was 16 years old at the time.
"Thereafter Defendant Scott Foster arranged for Plaintiff Jane Doe 3 to receive a private lesson from the same coach. Instead of training, however, the other coach took Plaintiff Jane Doe 3 to his apartment, where he gave her alcohol and marijuana, before transporting Plaintiff Jane Doe 3 to a secondary location, where he raped her."