The Other McCain

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Reality TV Mom Gets 10 Years in Prison

Posted on | August 16, 2014 | 32 Comments

Andrea Clevenger with daughter Kylie (left); going to prison (right).

Did you ever watch reality TV and think, “These twisted freaks need to be in jail”? I mean, the entire cast of Jersey Shore, for example, or the parents of Honey Boo-Boo, or the “Real Housewives” or that evil sadist Abby Lee from Dance Moms — so-called “reality” shows offer up a sociopathic smorgasbord of exhibitionist weirdos who get paid to parade their neuroses in front of the cameras for the entertainment of America’s cable-TV audience. If somehow, by the modern miracle of satellite communications, the Lifetime network is accessible in the remote mountain regions of Pakistan where fugitive al-Qaeda terrorists are still hiding out, you can understand some of their Islamic rage: “Who is this hateful Abby Lee woman? Death to the infidels!”

For 16 episodes from July 2012 until its cancellation in October 2013, the TLC series Cheer Perfection featured the training and competitions of youth cheerleading teams from Cheer Time Revolution, based in Sherwood, Arkansas. It was, to some extent, a spin-off of TLC’s creepy pageant show, Toddlers & Tiaras, because some of the families from T&T were also on Cheer Perfection. Hyping the pilot episode, ABC’s Juju Chang reported for Good Morning America:

In Sherwood, Ark., where cheerleaders are like royalty, Alisha Dunlap is the queen bee.
TLC’s new reality-TV show, “Cheer Perfection,” depicts the competitive world of cheerleading, and shows that the cheerleaders’ mothers are just as competitive as their daughters and are unapologetic about living vicariously through them.
The show takes viewers behind the scenes of a sport that is not for the faint of heart. And Dunlap, the co-owner and coach of Cheer Time Revolution in Sherwood, is tough.
“If you fall again, I’m going to replace you,” she tells daughter Cambry, a cheerleader.
Asked whether she could be viewed as being too hard on the cheerleaders, Dunlap said, “These kids know me so well. It doesn’t even bother them. … I think they like to get me excited. They know I care.”

“They know I care.” Yeah, and 15 years from now when that girl is on Prozac and going through an ugly custody battle with her abusive ex-husband, I’m sure you’ll be there for her, right? When the show got picked up for its first eight-episode season in December 2012, New York Daily News critic David Hinckley was brutal:

Watching children get abused to satisfy the performance fantasies of adults got old several reality shows ago.
But it sells, so here’s the latest, an eight-episode look at a cheerleading program for preteen girls.

How is it that cheerleading, an extracurricular activity that began as simple rah-rah squads for school football teams, has metamorphosed into this high-pressure all-or-nothing cutthroat competition? Don’t get me wrong: I’m all in favor of anything that gets kids off the videogame console and engaged in vigorous exercise, but why indoctrinate girls in this Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest mentality? One could criticize this phenomenon from either a feminist or a traditionalist perspective, politically. More importantly, however, one could criticize it from a psychiatric perspective. Parents who maniacally push their kids into this stuff are clearly crazy, and they’re making their kids crazy, too. Which brings us to the disturbing story of Andrea Clevenger:

Andrea Clevenger, a mom who was on the TLC cheerleading show, “Cheer Perfection,” pleaded guilty [Aug. 7] to having sex with a 13-year-old boy.
She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Clevenger acknowledged in court that she had sex in her home and in a car with the teenage boy, who knew her own daughter. She also admitted sending him sexually explicit photos.
The 34-year-old mom, who is from the Little Rock, Arkansas suburb Sherwood, will have to register as a sex offender . . .
Clevenger received two 10-year prison sentences — one for sexual assault, another for engaging a child in sexually explicit conduct — but will serve them concurrently.

 The boy was reportedly a friend of Clevenger’s daughter Kylie, who was one of the cheerleaders featured on “Cheer Perfection,” and I’m sure all the kids in Kylie’s school were entertained when police released to the media her mom’s arrest affidavit:

I, Detective Frank Spence of the Sherwood Police Department, do attest the following statement is true and known to me through investigation.
At approximately 9:22 a.m., on November 27, 2013, I received a referral from the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline regarding a juvenile victim, a 13-year-old white male, having disclosed being raped by Andrea M. Clevenger (white/female/DOB 05/21/1980), at her residence, in Sherwood, Arkansas. . . .
The juvenile victim said he was at the home when Clevenger began making advances toward him. The juvenile victim said Clevenger instructed him to sit on the couch in the common area of her residence and remove his pants, and he complied. The juvenile victim told me after he removed his pants at her direction, she got “on top” of him, put his penis in her vagina and engaged in sexual intercourse with him. The juvenile victim related she also told him to relay when he was close to ejaculation and when he did so, she removed his penis from her vagina and placed it in her mouth, where he ejaculated. He also told me she engaged him in oral sex by putting his penis in her mouth on two separate occasions, both times in mid to late October of 2013, while parked in her vehicle in an area unfamiliar to him. In addition, he said she sent him multiple multimedia messages depicting sexual explicit conduct . . . and sent him pictures, depicting herself without clothing. . . .
While the victim’s mother wrote her statement, I published to the victim the images extracted from his telephone and he identified thirty-two (32) images as those he received from Clevenger. . . . Of those images, eighteen (18) depicted bare breasts, seven (7) depicted breasts in a bra or corset, and six (6) depicted a bare vagina.

Any psychologist would say that this kind of depraved behavior between a 34-year-old mother and her daughter’s 13-year-old friend is symptomatic of an extremely selfish, narcissistic and irresponsible personality. Leaving aside any question of why a grown woman would be sexually attracted to pubescent boys, we must ask why Clevenger would act on that deviant urge, heedless of the potential consequences for the boy, for herself, and especially for her own daughter. Kylie Clevenger is surely now traumatized twice over: First, by the devastating knowledge that her mother is a pervert, and second, by the predictable cruelty of her peers. We shudder to imagine what taunts her schoolmates now hurl at this poor girl because of her mother’s infamous criminal conduct.

As the ABC News report said, however, we’re talking about a mother who was “unapologetic about living vicariously through” her daughter, and any Freudian would have a field day psychoanalyzing the implications of Andrea Clevenger’s heinous perversity.

Maybe TLC should produce a new “reality” series about female sex offenders. Call it Creepy Criminal Cougar Moms.

(Hat-tip: Interested Participant.)

ADDENDUM: If you want to understand the cultural impact of media on young people, please permit me to recommend Neil Postman’s 1994 book, The Disappearance of Childhood.

 

Category: Crime, Sex

Comments

32 Responses to “Reality TV Mom Gets 10 Years in Prison”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 16th, 2014 @ 11:31 am

    This has to be increasing the frequency (as opposed to past under reporting).

    Of course in the past there was no adolescence (at least how it is now). Kids worked for their parents/or did an apprenticeship and then either got married or were emancipated by 21.

    And we went from the post war adolescence (of high school and maybe college) to one that extends into their thirties and beyond. What could go wrong with that…well things like this.

  2. Wombat_socho
    August 16th, 2014 @ 12:02 pm

    Dinesh D’Souza, call your office.

  3. joethefatman
    August 16th, 2014 @ 12:38 pm

    Looks like her daughter Kylie will be looking for a new name and school. At least I would.

  4. PlainOldTruth
    August 16th, 2014 @ 1:12 pm

    Ho, Ho, Ho. — Cheers!

  5. PlainOldTruth
    August 16th, 2014 @ 1:16 pm

    And find out if Bill Clinton is there with a cigar in his ….

  6. Jean Valjean
    August 16th, 2014 @ 1:51 pm

    “Andrea Clevenger, a mom who was on the TLC cheerleading show, “Cheer
    Perfection,” pleaded guilty [Aug. 7] to having sex with a 13-year-old
    boy.”

    This statement is what bothers me about the media. When they write about males who are victims of rape by women they almost always say he was in a sexual relationship or the woman was convicted of having sex with a minor.

    Of course, when it’s a male perpetrator then it’s always “rape” or “sodomy” or other scary words.

    Only the police report mentions the word rape and this article wouldn’t even have that if the author wasn’t copy and pasting.

    There is growing evidence that women sexually abuse children as often or more than men. In fact, 60 to 80 percent of male who rape report having been sexually abused by a woman in the past.

    Is sexual abuse perpetrated by women causing a large percentage of rape against women later on? The evidence seems to lead that way. Yet, we still can’t hold women equally accountable the way we hold men.

    This woman here got a 10 year reduction on a 20 year sentence. Why? Because we don’t hold women accountable for their actions the way we do men.

  7. Memnos
    August 16th, 2014 @ 2:07 pm

    there has been Solid evidence that women are as “bad”(human) as men, ake a guess whos hijacked the discussion on domestic violence, rape, pedophilia and violence
    women aren’t usually the direct approach takers in violence either, they do proxy violence(poison, gullible men) or are passive aggressive
    “This woman here got a 10 year reduction on a 20 year sentence. Why?
    Because we don’t hold women accountable for their actions the way we do
    men.” is say that’s pretty much it, considering some women get even less (sometimes for worse things) i was kinda surprised that she got 10 years

  8. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 16th, 2014 @ 2:08 pm

    Yeah.

    BTW, this Realty Mom just got a dose of reality. She is a convicted felon and sex offender.

  9. Shinobi Theninja
    August 16th, 2014 @ 2:30 pm

    So the author feels bad for the daughter who will get teased and taunted buuuut not for the young boy who was sexually molested, raped, etc etc? How typical. Still, nice to see justice is paying attention to the law and not the gender for once. Though I’m sure that if the genders were swapped the man would be put away for two ten year sentences to be carried out separately PLUS some extra time for the pictures. Who knows.

  10. Paul Jackson
    August 16th, 2014 @ 2:41 pm

    At least she received a long sentence for this. Normally women get a slap on the wrist

  11. mackykam
    August 16th, 2014 @ 3:49 pm

    What’s the point of teaching kids sex-ed if they don’t do any homework? One would think he’d get extra credit for this. He could have brought in the pictures for Show & Tell, or maybe do a Diorama, or lead a class discussion on the pros and cons of vaginal versus oral sex….

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 16th, 2014 @ 3:55 pm

    Your point is dry enough for a really good martini. I think I may need two.

  13. mackykam
    August 16th, 2014 @ 4:01 pm

    With a twist?

  14. Reality TV Mom Gets 10 Years in Prison | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    August 16th, 2014 @ 4:37 pm

    […] Reality TV Mom Gets 10 Years in Prison. […]

  15. TPH
    August 16th, 2014 @ 6:44 pm

    That 10 years will get changed to 5 years with good behavior. If a man committed a rape of a 13 year old girl he would get 20+ years with no parole.

  16. Tracheal
    August 16th, 2014 @ 8:01 pm

    The boy’s rape is “entertaining” and the only real “traumatized” victim here is the perp’s daughter. Any wonder why the rape of boys by filthy older women is never really taken seriously? Imagine the horrified outrage had the sexes been reversed here.

  17. TheSharpful
    August 16th, 2014 @ 10:45 pm

    13 year old boy gets raped, and this article is about how the daughter of the rapist is going to be embarrassed in school…

    So, the author is a feminist… what’s new?

  18. Chipsternga
    August 16th, 2014 @ 11:11 pm

    A stiff dick has no conscience.

  19. RS
    August 17th, 2014 @ 1:45 am

    There are really two stories here. The obvious one is the rape/sexual assault; That part is perhaps bigger than it would be because the perp is a reality TV star.

    The second story is parents who, for whatever misbegotten reason, push their kids to excel in what should be fun kid/adolescent activities to the point where the kids have the equivalent of 40 hour/week jobs when they’re 13 or 14. When I was a teenager, there were no such things as “select” teams which played a given sport year round. Now they start at age 10 or so in most team sports. Even football has year round training. Adults have screwed up fun by organizing it to the point where it no longer bears any resemblance to “games.”

    What connects the two is the fact that there seems to be an unbelievable willingness of parents to turn their children over to other adults for substantial periods of time without other supervision or proper vetting, merely because they hold some hope that the kid will get a college scholarship or, hell, even make the H.S. varsity team. Then we wonder when coaches take advantage of kids, even though the coaches spend more “quality time” with the kids than the parents.

  20. DeadMessenger
    August 17th, 2014 @ 3:08 am

    That poor, poor kid. It’s one thing when one’s kids are morons. All kids are morons, so no big. But when your parent is the moron, it’s a sad, sad day. New name and school is the least of this kid’s problems.

  21. DeadMessenger
    August 17th, 2014 @ 3:12 am

    Oh come on. I know it was hundreds of years ago, but I remember when I was that age. The girl would get “your Mom is a pervert freak”, while the boy would get “dude, you got laid!” Of course, as adults, we recognize that the boy was of course sexually molested, and yes, that it probably will have an adverse effect on his sexuality later, but kids would see things in a somewhat different light.

  22. Paul Johnson
    August 17th, 2014 @ 3:12 am

    And who we would be feeling sorry for.

  23. Paul Johnson
    August 17th, 2014 @ 3:18 am

    That’s not reversing the sexes, that’s switching the roles. In a situation where an adult man screwed his son’s young female friend, that boy WOULD be ridiculed for his dad being a pervert.

    But that’s not the point. The point is not how the minor child of the adult in the story is going to be treated, it’s those adverse affects (not to mention the act itself) to the victim that are the real trauma.

  24. DeadMessenger
    August 17th, 2014 @ 3:19 am

    You are totally, absolutely on point. When I had younger kids, they played softball and I was the team coach. You know, due to having been a softball player and all. But also having been a kid at one time, and all, I made the practices fun by changing stuff up, such as having the kids at bat, then running around the bases backward, starting at third base, and by drawing faces on the softball, then having the kids just shout out which face (the happy or the sad) was showing when they were up at bat (great training for keeping an eye on the ball, btw), play like a pirate practice, and so on. The parents went batshit crazy, that I wasn’t properly training their kids to be the 5 – 7 year old softball stars that the parents envisioned. Upshot? The kids LOVED me as a coach. The parents hated me. Guess who was not a coach the following year?

  25. DeadMessenger
    August 17th, 2014 @ 3:38 am

    Of course it is. But as I said, that’s not how children are going to see it.

  26. nadadhimmi
    August 17th, 2014 @ 6:16 am

    Mohammedans find it offensive that an adult rapes a 13 year old? Why? Are they upset that, unlike ole mohammed himself, the adult lost out on 4 years of sex?

  27. Chas C-Q
    August 17th, 2014 @ 8:02 am

    Granted that dancing is not war, Abby Lee is an evil sadist to the same degree and for the same reason that R. Lee Ermy is. And none of those girls is a draftee, either – though several of them are obviously pawns in their own mothers’ psychodrama.

    The ones you see on Lee’s show are not just in a class, they’re her exhibition team — career track. And like a DI, Abby Lee wants to be the worst thing that ever happens to them.

  28. RS
    August 17th, 2014 @ 8:31 am

    My experience is that all the select team stuff does nothing to enhance the skills/playing ability for about 95% of the participants. My daughter played soccer. Her HS freshman year she was a starter. One of the dads, whose daughter was on three–I say that again: three–select soccer teams and who’d spent thousands of dollars and countless hours sitting on bleachers watching girls soccer for 10 years asked me about my daughter’s “select” experience. I replied, “None. She’s played rec leagues for fun off and on for a few years.” He was extremely pissed off, because his kid was on the bench and frankly, wasn’t very good. My feeling is that kids need to a) have fun and b) get a variety of extracurricular experiences. Anything else becomes tedious and job. At that point, childhood is lost.

  29. LeviDocker
    August 17th, 2014 @ 8:31 am

    This has been known. As sure as the sun rises in the morning, behind every messed up man there’s a messed up woman.

  30. LeviDocker
    August 17th, 2014 @ 8:40 am

    This. (With the exception of some olympic sports) Professional sports people have known for years that wearing kids down when their young does not a professional athlete make. Orioles’ manager Buck Showalter has said in interviews that he’s very skeptical of travelball kids and that they come to the MLB system worn out. Best to let the kids diversify their athletic activity during youth and then spend their college years getting the 10000 hours they need to be experts.

  31. Women Need to be Taught Not to Rape | clever nicknames
    August 17th, 2014 @ 10:59 am

    […] and this. […]

  32. writeby
    August 17th, 2014 @ 7:25 pm

    “…heedless of the potential consequences for … herself, and especially for her own daughter [whom she ought selfishly love as a selfish value].”

    The cause is staring in this author’s face, written there by his own hand:

    “Any psychologist [moralist; ethicist, priest, politician or teacher] would say that this kind of depraved behavior between a 34-year-old mother and her daughter’s 13-year-old friend is symptomatic of an extremely
    _selfish_ … personality.”

    If it’s selfish to act on whim and unselfish to sacrifice* one’s self (one’s rationality)–one’s mind, i.e., one’s judgment, honesty, integrity and *values*, where then lies moral behavior?

    *”sac·ri·fice (s²k“r…-fºs”) n. … Relinquishment
    of something at less than its presumed value.” Surrender of a greater value for a lesser value.

    What a convoluted mental map must be most people’s minds when it comes to right, wrong and moral standard.

    “The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values
    produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who     have never outgrown the
    primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot [or sexual gratification] of the moment” (_The Virtue of Selfishness_; “The Objectivist Ethics,” 31; Ayn Rand).

    http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selfishness.html