A former Santa Clarita Valley youth basketball coach charged with 15 sex crimes, including six counts of committing a lewd act upon a child, pleaded no contest in court Wednesday to nine charges pertaining to nine victims.
Jeremy Andre Haggerty, 34, appeared Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court where he entered his plea.
“He pleaded no contest to six counts of committing a lewd act upon a child and three counts of sexual battery,” said Greg Risling, spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Haggerty was initially scheduled to appear in court for a procedural pretrial hearing, his third court appearance since he was arraigned on sex charges in February.
Following a daylong preliminary hearing held in mid-February, Haggerty was held to answer to the 14 criminal charges filed against him. A 15th charge was later added.
During the preliminary hearing, the prosecution presented evidence in the case and the defense responded; the judge determined there was enough evidence to merit a trial.
Haggerty faced eight counts of sexual battery, six counts of lewd act upon a child and one count of possession of child pornography, according to the amended complaint.
Sgt. Brian Hudson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Special Victims Unit said at a news conference in September that detectives identified victims “going back as far as 2008.”
Haggerty was arrested on the morning of Sept. 13, 2018, by detectives assigned to the Special Victims Unit.
He was accused of having sexually assaulted nine victims over the course of nearly a decade, who ranged in age between 14 and 17 years old.
At the time of his arrest, Haggerty was living in Orange County and working at a school there.
Haggerty coached at several local schools in the Santa Clarita Valley, but at the time of his arrest, detectives said they had found no evidence the alleged incidents occurred on a local school campus, and all of the alleged incidents reportedly took place in one-on-one training sessions involving the coach and the player-victim.
Haggerty briefly coached at Trinity Classical Academy, and was an assistant coach at West Ranch High School for the 2012-2013 season. He spent almost eight years, on and off, at Canyon High School as an assistant coach.
661-287-5527
On Twitter @jamesarthurholt
