‘Cheer Incorporated’: New Lawsuit Alleges Widespread Abuse, Systemic Failure In Georgia

by JENN WOOD

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A lawsuit filed in Georgia this week has thrust the nation’s competitive-cheer industry back under a harsh spotlight — one FITSNews has kept burning since the 2022 suicide of Scott Foster, founder of the Greenville, S.C.-based Rockstar Cheer empire.

The complaint (.pdf), filed in Gwinnett County, accused coach Charles Archibald Moore III, multiple metro-Atlanta gyms, and the Walton County School District of enabling the sexual abuse of a minor athlete. It also named the same national power players long at the center of the Cheer Incorporated saga — Varsity Spirit, Varsity Brands, Bain Capital, the U.S. All Star Federation (USASF) and the USA Federation of Sport Cheering (a.k.a. USA Cheer) — alleging they created and sustained a system that prioritized profit and control over athlete safety.

News of the lawsuit was first reported by Daniel Libit of Sportico. Libit is a journalist who has spent years chronicling the inner workings of the cheer economy, from Varsity’s monopoly grip on the sport to the industry’s repeated failure to police itself.

Libit’s latest reporting revealed that this Georgia filing broadens the scope of the scandal FITSNews has been tracking for more than three years — moving it beyond private gyms and into public-school programs subsidized by taxpayers.

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A FAMILIAR PATTERN

If the accusations sound familiar, they should. This case is the latest in a string of federal and state filings linked to the Cheer Incorporated scandal — a web of abuse allegations that began unraveling after Foster’s 2022 suicide.

At the time, FITSNews revealed Foster was under multi-jurisdictional investigation for alleged sexual misconduct with minors. His death sparked a cascade of lawsuits and criminal inquiries that ultimately exposed how deeply Varsity-affiliated gyms and their governing bodies had failed to protect children in their care.

In the months that followed, attorneys led by the Columbia-based Strom Law Firm filed federal cases in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio, each revealing new layers of alleged corruption, exploitation, and cover-ups within the cheer industry. Those suits accused Varsity, USASF, and USA Cheer of operating a “criminal enterprise” under the federal RICO Act — one that enriched investors and executives while shielding predatory coaches from accountability.

With this Georgia filing, that pattern appears to have reached the public-school level — extending the Cheer Incorporated saga beyond private gyms and into taxpayer-funded athletic programs.

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RELATED | A ‘FACTORY OF ABUSE’

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A NEW ALLEGATION, THE SAME SYSTEM

According to the complaint filed in the State Court of Gwinnett County, the alleged abuse began in 2022 and continued until February 26, 2024, when the minor athlete — identified only as Jane Doe — made her outcry. During that time, the lawsuit alleged Doe was “sexually abused, raped, drugged, harassed, violated, pornographically filmed, and molested” by Moore, who was her cheer coach.

Moore — who worked across multiple metro Atlanta gyms and also coached for Walnut Grove High School — is currently in custody at the Gwinnett County Detention Center, according to the complaint. But attorneys argue that his actions were enabled by a network of negligence stretching from local gym owners to national governing bodies that allegedly ignored warning signs and failed to enforce mandatory reporting laws.

The lawsuit asserts that Varsity Brands, USASF, and USA Cheer — the same corporate entities at the heart of previous Cheer Incorporated coverage — once again “failed to enforce rules, regulations, compliance requirements, and disciplinary actions” against a credentialed coach accused of sexual misconduct. These organizations, the filing claims, not only sanctioned the gyms where Moore worked, but “certified him as a coach,” allowing him access to hundreds of minor athletes across the state.

At the local level, the complaint names Cheer & Dance Atlanta, Atlanta Jayhawks Grayson, and Star Athletics Atlanta — all USASF-certified gyms — as defendants for their alleged negligent hiring, retention, and supervision of Moore. It also names multiple Walton County School District (WCSD) officials — including the superintendent, athletic director, and several board members — for what the plaintiffs describe as a systemic failure to protect students and a violation of Georgia’s mandatory reporting laws.

The complaint goes further, invoking federal statutes under the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 and alleging a civil RICO conspiracy — the same racketeering framework used in the prior South Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio filings. It accuses the corporate defendants of “creating and propagating a system of young-athlete abuse against innocent victims” that generated billions in profit while silencing complaints and concealing criminal conduct within the sport’s governing structure.

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RELATED | AMENDED FEDERAL LAWSUIT DETAILS ALLEGED CONSPIRACY

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VARSITY’S GRIP ON THE INDUSTRY

Much like the earlier Cheer Incorporated suits, the Georgia filing lays out a detailed history of how Varsity’s empire — and its private equity owner Bain Capital — consolidated near-total control over the competitive cheer economy. It claims Varsity used that dominance to dictate which gyms could compete, where athletes could train, and which coaches were allowed to remain certified — effectively creating a “pipeline of young athletes” vulnerable to exploitation under the guise of elite training and national exposure.

In one particularly damning section, the complaint alleged that USASF and USA Cheer — both non-profits created and financially backed by Varsity — “actively concealed the abuse” taking place in affiliated gyms and “failed to notify law enforcement” even after receiving reports of misconduct. This alleged pattern of concealment echoes what FITSNews documented in the South Carolina and Tennessee lawsuits: internal “ineligibility lists” and SafeSport protocols that appeared more performative than protective.

The Georgia case suggests the same cycle of negligence FITSNews first uncovered after the 2022 death of Rockstar Cheer founder Scott Foster — the event that ignited the Cheer Incorporated investigation. What began as a localized tragedy in Greenville has now expanded across multiple states, multiple gyms, and multiple court systems — all pointing to the same unregulated, profit-driven structure that continues to place children in harm’s way.

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RELATED | CHEER INCORPORATED: THE BIGGER PICTURE

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A PROFITABLE PIPELINE

Beyond the horrifying individual allegations against Moore, the Georgia complaint lays bare what plaintiffs describe as a corporate architecture of abuse — a business model that allegedly monetized access to young athletes while minimizing oversight.

According to the filing, the “system overall is designed to disassociate the athletes from their families, and foster closeness with the Defendant Varsity Brand Collective sponsored gyms, coaches, and gym owners.” This deliberate separation, the lawsuit alleges, was not accidental but strategic — intended “to perpetuate their scheme to create an unending pipeline of new athletes, coaches, and gym owners,” per the filing.

Attorneys argue that Varsity Brands — along with USASF and USA Cheer, both entities it helped create and continues to control — relied on that pipeline to maintain a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream. The complaint describes a sprawling, vertically integrated structure: gyms paying membership and certification fees, parents paying for uniforms and competitions, and athletes paying the ultimate price for what the filing calls “systemic grooming disguised as elite training.”

That control, plaintiffs say, extended to the most trivial aspects of the sport. “Defendant Varsity Brands, through Defendants USASF and USA Cheer, can and do enforce bans of athletes, coaches, and teams in competitions for minor rule infractions like the size of hairbows and the use of glitter,” the complaint states. “However, these Defendants have repeatedly failed to enforce suspensions or bans of coaches, choreographers, and music producers who are known to have committed child sexual abuse.”

The filing further accuses USASF, the governing body touted as cheerleading’s safety regulator, of moving at a “painfully glacial pace” to protect the children in its ranks. “Defendant USASF has been excruciatingly slow to develop policies and procedures for keeping athletes safe from sexual abuse in an industry rife with it,” attorneys wrote — a line that echoes years of criticism from victims’ advocates who have long described the organization’s “unified ineligibility list” as more public relations than protection.

The complaint portrays a for-profit ecosystem where safety was subordinate to revenue — one that prized compliance with branding and competition rules over meaningful safeguards against predators.

Varsity pushed back against that portrayal in a statement to Libit, saying it “categorically rejects any claim that it enabled such behavior.”

“Athlete safety guides everything we do, and we remain committed to providing a safe, positive environment for all participants,” the company’s statement continued. “We stand with survivors in their pursuit of justice and are outraged that predators allegedly exploited cheerleading programs to harm children.”

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RELATED | CHEER INCORPORATED SCANDAL: SETTLEMENTS REACHED

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A SCANDAL THAT REFUSES TO FADE

The Georgia filing arrives nearly a year and a half after a federal judge in South Carolina formally dismissed the original Cheer Incorporated lawsuits — cases that once threatened to expose, in open court, the inner workings of an industry built on secrecy and self-protection.

As FITSNews reported in April 2024, senior U.S. district court judge Henry M. Herlong, Jr. dismissed the federal Rockstar Cheer case after the parties reached a series of sealed settlements — agreements with Varsity, USASF, and Rockstar founder Scott Foster’s estate that were quietly enforced within sixty days of his April 9, 2024 order.

Those settlements, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, included seven-figure payments divided among nearly three dozen victims — categorized into “tiers” based on the extent and timing of their abuse. As with the previous confidential agreements reached with Varsity, the terms were never made public, and victims were left without a transparent accounting of how justice was measured, or by whom.

Herlong’s decision effectively ended the first wave of civil litigation — the same set of cases that launched the Cheer Incorporated series in 2022 — but the allegations have never truly gone away. If anything, this new Georgia complaint proves that the same corporate structure and cultural conditions that allegedly enabled Scott Foster’s abuses in Greenville remain intact – just repackaged and relocated.

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THE NEXT CHAPTER

From Greenville to Gwinnett, the names have changed but the themes have not. The alleged grooming, the lack of oversight, and the intertwining of public and private institutions all point to a systemic failure that settlements alone cannot erase.

As Libit continues to document at the national level — and as FITSNews has chronicled from the inside of South Carolina courtrooms — the industry’s profit engine remains fully operational, even as its credibility erodes. The Georgia case signals that while civil accountability may have been bought in one courtroom, criminal accountability and cultural reckoning may still be ahead.

And just as we did when the first whistleblowers came forward in 2022, this outlet will remain on the story — from local filings and criminal proceedings to the ongoing national investigations still unfolding behind closed doors.

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THE COMPLAINT…

(Gwinnett County)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.

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