Varsity Spirit hires defamation attorney in response to abuse allegations in competitive cheer
Varsity Spirit LLC has hired Thomas Clare with Clare Locke LLP as defamation counsel in response to snowballing lawsuits that allege sexual abuse at Rockstar Cheer was perpetuated by corporate entities of competitive cheerleading.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Bakari Sellers with Strom Law Firm, Clare said his firm, based in Virginia, was hired to investigate whether multiple lawsuits naming Varsity Spirit made “false and damaging allegations” and constitutes as “sham litigation.”
Varsity Spirit, a subsidy of Varsity Brands, is a for-profit organization that sells cheerleading apparel and organizes competitive all-star cheerleading competitions and events nationwide.
Both entities were named in multiple federal lawsuits filed by Sellars and Strom Law Firm against Rockstar Cheer in Greer and lawsuits against cheerleading gyms in Tennessee and North Carolina.
20221101 TClare Letter to BSellers by USA TODAY Network on Scribd
A total of 13 plaintiffs have accused the Rockstar Cheer’s deceased owner, Scott Foster, and other coaches of a range of misconduct, including rape, providing drugs and alcohol to athletes, groping and inappropriate touching, and the exchange of sexual images. Rockstar Cheer has since closed.
The lawsuits alleged a connection between sexual abuse at cheer gyms and Varsity’s monopoly within the sport. The lawsuits depict Varsity’s business model as inherently exploitative and subject to little accountability.
“This was a factory of abuse designed specifically to generate two things: a constant supply of underage victims for Scott Foster and his fellow predators and a billion-dollar revenue stream to Varsity Spirit, USASF and Bain Capital,” Sellers said after the first federal lawsuit was filed against Rockstar Cheer in September. “Instead of protecting these young men and women, they victimized them and cashed their checks.”
Clare requested that Sellers provide the firm with any information that his firm may have to support allegations of Varsity Spirit’s role in the abuse.
“The fact that brave men and women have come forward to make specific allegations of abuse against individual coaches, and others employed and supervised by gym owners, does not give you license to make blatantly false public claims about Varsity Spirit,” the letter said.
“If there were things that were happening in specific instances and gyms and individual people have legitimate complaints, we should get to the bottom of that, and those cases should be litigated," Clare said in an interview with The Greenville News. "But [Sellers] has gone way beyond that in his public statements and in his lawsuits and alleged that Varsity is actively promoting abuse and, indeed, using it as a business tool. If you're going to make those sorts of really serious allegations, you really have to have evidence to support it.”
Examples that Clare described as “blatantly false” in his letter included:
Varsity Spirit “went to great lengths to protect and enable predators and sexual abusers . . . [and] to hush, to silence and to intimidate the people that were victimized”;
Varsity Spirit, “instead of protecting these young men and women, . . . victimized them and cashed their checks.”
Varsity Spirit “created and fostered a system” that “not only allows an environment where physical, mental, and sexual abuse can run rampant, but encourages it.”
“We are committed to our clients and vigorously prosecuting these cases and take our responsibilities to the clients and the court very seriously,” Sellers said in a statement in response to Clare’s letter. “We hope this does not have the effect of chilling those who have suffered abuse from coming forward. We encourage survivors of sex abuse in the cheer industry to continue to speak their truth.”
Clare said they did not receive a "substantive response" to the letter from Sellars.
“The responsible thing for any lawyer to do is to follow the actual evidence. And if he doesn't have evidence against Varsity, which I respectfully submit, he does not, the responsible thing to do is to file claims against the individuals and gyms where there is evidence of direct involvement," Clare said. "And then, in the discovery process in those cases, evaluate the evidence to see whether other people or other entities were involved in abuse. If that’s the case, then you can amend the complaint and bring them in. That is actually following where the evidence goes, and that's what lawyers do all the time. That's the responsible and ethical thing to do. But Sellers has reversed the process. He just shot these broad, crazy allegations in the hope that evidence exists to support them.”
However, this is not the first time Varsity’s business model has been at the center of federal litigation.
Varsity Spirit was founded by Jeff Webb in 1974 and maintains a dominant role in the sport of cheer. The organization helped create the United States All-Star Federation in 2003, a nonprofit organization that governs all-star cheerleading and handles discipline in the sport.
Both Webb and USASF are also named in the lawsuits against Rockstar Cheer and the gyms in other states.
USASF requires athletes and coaches to become members to participate in sanctioned events, including Varsity Spirit-owned competitions.
Varsity has retained significant influence over USASF since the nonprofit’s founding by providing executive compensation and maintaining a presence on USASF’s board.
Past litigation has raised questions of whether Varsity’s financial interests could compromise USASF’s ability to effectively protect athlete safety. Three separate antitrust lawsuits and at least one sexual-abuse lawsuit unrelated to Rockstar have named Varsity Brands and Varsity Spirit as defendants.
Kathryn Casteel is an investigative reporter with The Greenville News and can be reached at KCasteel@gannett.com or on Twitter @kathryncasteel.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Varsity Spirit hires defamation attorney after abuse allegations