The Sherwood police announced today that a rape charge had been filed against Andrea Clevenger, 34, of Sherwood for having sex with a 13-year-old boy.

Clevenger is one of the moms featured on TLC’s “Cheer Perfection,” a reality TV show about a team of young competitive cheerleaders at Cheer Time Revolution in Sherwood.

She has been charged with one count of rape, a Y felony, and one count of engaging children in sexually explicit conduct for use in a visual or print medium, a B felony. Warrants were issued in the case Monday and she surrendered with her attorney in district court this morning. She was released on her own recognizance, but was ordered to wear an ankle bracelet for electronic monitoring of her whereabouts.


It recounts multiple incidents of sex between Clevenger and the boy and also said she sent him sexually explicit images by phone of herself and others. The boy’s parents discovered the relationship and that led to the report to authorities, the affidavit said.

Evidence includes a statement from the victim’s mother that Clevenger had admitted the relationship to her, apologized and vowed to seek rehabilitation. She reportedly told the boy’s mother that he “doesn’t act 13.” The affidavit on transmission of photographs essentially parallels the allegations in the affidavit seeking the rape charge.


The police said the police got a complaint Nov. 27 from the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline relative to an alleged sexual assault. Authorities said the victim is a friend of Clevenger’s daughter.

“Cheer Perfection” debuted on Dec. 19, 2012 for an eight-episode run and TLC announced in February 2013 it had ordered eight more episodes, according to a Wikipedia entry. The most recent season ended in October, but the show continues in TLC rotation and you can find Clevenger in several of the videos on the show website. There’s drama among the parents as well as the participants in the activity.

TV review David Hinckley of the New York Daily News wrote: “TLC’s ‘Cheer Perfection’ is a sad look at the mental games adults play in their drive to get daughters to succeed.”

He added:


The producers don’t even pretend to focus on the girls, however. They focus on the parents, a not very endearing bunch whose ongoing mental games with each other and whose drive to push their daughters creates the drama TV cares about.

Robert Bell wrote about the show for our Rock Candy blog in 2012 after ABC News did a feature on the program. He called it “a harrowing glimpse into the nightmarish hell-scape that is the children’s competitive cheer-leading.”