The son of a well-known cheerleading coach from the Netflix series Cheer was recently arrested in Texas on felony child pornography charges.
William Austin Aldama, 27, was allegedly found in possession of child sex abuse material featuring children as young as 2 years old.
Aldama was booked in Navarro County Jail on January 17 on 10 counts of possession with intent to promote child pornography but has since been released on a personal recognizance bond, per The Dallas Morning News. If found guilty, he could be convicted of a third-degree felony, which is punishable by significant jail time — up to 10 years — and fines.
The grand jury indictment filed against Aldama claims that he was found with digital video files of children engaged in sex acts featuring minors under the age of 10.
His legal representatives, Heather Barbieri and Kerri Donica, released a statement calling the charges “an egregious attempt to distort the truth” due to the celebrity status of his mother, retired cheerleading coach at Navarro College, Monica Aldama.
“Let us be absolutely clear — Austin is innocent. The charges against him lack legal merit, and we are confident that the facts, which will prove his innocence, will come to light during the legal proceedings,” they said, according to NBC News.
This is not the first time Cheer has been associated with child pornography allegations. Cheerleading coach Jerry Harris, 24, ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of child pornography and one count of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct in February 2022. He was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison a few months later, as previously covered in The Dallas Express.
An alarming number of criminal cases involving child sex abuse and child pornography have come to light in Texas this past year, many involving educators, coaches, and other school staff, as reported in The Dallas Express.
In Dallas, a total of 26 sex crimes have already been logged in 2024 as of January 23, according to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard. The vast majority of these and last year’s victims — totaling 751 — were black or Hispanic. They also had a median age of 16, with the youngest being 3.
Although trying hard to curb crime, the Dallas Police Department has faced a longstanding staffing shortage, with only 3,000 officers in its ranks despite a City report calling for 4,000. The department was recently budgeted $654 million by the Dallas City Council — significantly less than municipal leaders in other high-crime cities, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, have spent on their police forces.
