Ex-Ravens cheerleader sentenced to weekends in custody

Ex-Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck must spend every other weekend in a Delaware work-release detention center for nearly two years, a judge decided in sentencing her for having raped a 15-year-old in Bethany Beach last summer.

Shattuck, 48, spoke through heaving sobs as she apologized for committing the sexual offense. The Baltimore socialite and onetime NFL cheerleader pleaded guilty in June to one count of fourth-degree rape, an offense with a maximum sentence of 15 years but no mandatory minimum.

"I was the adult, and I'm sorry," Shattuck said through tears before she was sentenced. "I never should have had the conversation with someone else's son and I'm sorry ... I will spend the rest of my life making this right."

Shattuck was arrested in November on charges of third-degree rape, unlawful sexual contact and giving alcohol to minors; a plea deal later reduced the charge to a less serious rape offense. Police said she performed oral sex on the boy over Labor Day weekend at a Bethany Beach summer home.

Shattuck, according to court records, had connected with the boy over social media earlier that year. The boy was friends with and the same age as her teenage son. Over the summer, police said in affidavits, Shattuck and the boy exchanged sexualized texts and emails, and occasionally met in parked cars.

The mother and father of the victim asked Superior Court Judge E. Scott Bradley to sentence Shattuck to more than just probation time.

"What she did to my son is heinous. The fact that she paraded her pedophilia in front of her own son is even more disturbing," the mother said. "Any adult who rapes a child deserves to be in prison. Please hold her accountable."

The victim's father, who also spoke to the court, said he was the one who dropped the boy off at the home Shattuck, her children and some of their other friends were staying in that night. Shattuck assured him, he said, that the children wouldn't have any drugs or alcohol – that they'd all be safe with her.

"We were a half a mile away," the father said ruefully. "Never did it enter my mind what was happening."

Deputy Attorney General John Donahue pressed Bradley for a sentence of more than just probation, noting the guidelines called for a sentence between zero and 22 months. "This is a classic case of grooming behavior," Donahue said. "This was not a momentary lapse in judgment." The law, he said, makes no distinction between adult men and adult women who sexually abuse minor children.

Bradley sentenced Shattuck to two years of level 3 probation, and said she must report to a violation of probation center every other weekend, starting in September, until she has spent 48 weekends there. He also ordered her to pay $10,650 in restitution to the victim's family. Shattuck must register in Delaware as a Tier II sex offender, and except for her own three children, she cannot have contact with people younger than 18.

"The competing interests in this case have been very difficult to weigh," Bradley said, noting both the victim's pain – the boy's father said the family considered moving away from Maryland to avoid scrutiny and embarrassment – and Shattuck's long fall from a privileged perch in society after her arrest.

Eugene Maurer, Shattuck's attorney, said his client's life had been upended in the period leading up to the crime by a close relative's drug addiction and Shattuck's former husband, Mayo A. Shattuck III, leaving her for a younger woman.

Maurer also told the judge the text messages between Shattuck and the boy before Labor Day 2014 made them seem mutually interested in each other.

"When you read the text messages, it almost looks like there's a romantic relationship going on between two adults," he said. But by now, Maurer said, Shattuck "has fully accepted responsibility for her actions and has demonstrated appropriate remorse."

Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.