Mom on reality show admits to sex with boy

Andrea Clevenger, left, walks beside her attorney, Erin Cassinelli, on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, at the Pulaski County Courthouse after her hearing Thursday.
Andrea Clevenger, left, walks beside her attorney, Erin Cassinelli, on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, at the Pulaski County Courthouse after her hearing Thursday.

The 34-year-old Sherwood woman once featured on a reality TV show about competitive cheerleading accepted a 10-year prison sentence Thursday for having sex with a boy in an arrangement that requires her to keep away from the 13-year-old for at least 20 years.

Andrea Michelle Clevenger, represented by attorney Erin Cassinelli, pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual assault and engaging a child in sexually explicit conduct in a six-minute hearing before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Palmer. The charges together carried a maximum of 50 years in prison.

Clevenger, a twice-married mother of three, also promised to abide by a court order forbidding her from having any contact with the boy.

Deputy prosecutor Kelly Ward said Clevenger had sex with the 13-year-old boy, a friend of her oldest daughter's, in November after getting the teen to take photographs of his penis and text them to her.

Questioned by the judge about the accusations, Clevenger admitted they were true.

Her 10-year sentence will require her to serve 21/2 years before she can qualify for parole, and her prison time will be followed by a second 10-year sentence that will be suspended on the condition that she continues to keep away from the teen once she's been released.

Clevenger must also register as a sex offender, a designation that will require her to keep law enforcement informed about where she's living, working and whether she's attending school. The designation regulates her opportunities for interacting with children, including where she can live and work. She'll be screened by a division of the state prisons program that will assess her risk of offending in the future and assign her a risk level that will determine whether she will be listed on the public sex-offender registry.

Neither the boy nor his parents attended the hearing, Clevenger's second circuit court appearance since her January arrest.

She had been charged with rape -- a Class Y felony that carries a minimum of 10 years in prison and a possible life sentence -- but prosecutors reduced the charge to the Class A felony sexual assault count in exchange for her guilty plea.

The difference in the charges is that rape, Arkansas Code 5-14-103, involves sexual intercourse with children who are under the age of 14 and unable by law to consent to the act under any circumstances.

First-degree sexual assault in this case, Arkansas Code 5-14-124, criminalizes sexual intercourse between a victim who is younger than 21 and a perpetrator who is in a position of trust or authority over the victim and uses that position to engage in intercourse.

The crimes carry different parole eligibility, with defendants convicted of rape required to serve 70 percent of their prison sentence before qualifying for early release. First-degree sexual assault convictions require the defendant to serve at least a fourth of their sentence to be paroled.

According to the arrest affidavit, Sherwood police were alerted to what Clevenger was doing on Nov. 27 through the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline, and detective Frank Spence met with the boy and his parents two days later.

The boy told Spence he had intercourse and oral sex with Clevenger at her request on a couch in her home, and that she had twice performed oral sex on him in October in her car.

He told the investigator that Clevenger had sent him sexually explicit photographs, some of other people, but that his father had deleted the images when the man discovered what was going on, the affidavit states.

The boy told a friend about Clevenger and later used a friend's phone to contact her and tell her that his parents had learned what she'd done.

Clevenger initially agreed to speak with the detective, but then hired a lawyer and declined to be interviewed. The teen's mother told police that Clevenger texted her with an apology for unspecified behavior and promised to enter a rehabilitation program, then followed that with a phone call in which the women spoke at length.

In that conversation, the boy's mother said Clevenger admitted what she'd done but told the woman her son "doesn't act 13," according to the affidavit.

Using specialized software, police were able to recover 32 pictures the boy said Clevenger had sent him; some of the photographs she had said were of her genitals. Eighteen of the photographs were of bare breasts. The boy told the detective that he had, at Clevenger's request, exchanged photographs of his genitals for explicit pictures from her, according to the affidavit.

At the time of her arrest, Clevenger and her oldest daughter, a 13-year-old child of her first marriage, were featured on the TLC channel reality show Cheer Perfection, which focused on a group of young girls participating in competitive cheerleading and training at the Cheer Time Revolution gym in Sherwood.

The show began in December 2012 and produced 18 hour-long episodes, the last of which was broadcast in February.

After Clevenger's arrest in January, TLC announced the show had been canceled, saying the decision had been made months earlier, and that it would not broadcast repeats. The show is available for purchase on Amazon.

Metro on 08/08/2014

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