Parents cope with Ware Shoals scandal

Parents of ex-cheerleading coach speak of outgoing, family-oriented daughter

By ISHMAEL TATE

itate@thestate.com

GREENWOOD — The Jill Moore at the center of a high school student sex scandal in Ware Shoals is not the daughter Marcus and Janice Bishop know.

They know the girl who used to play church. Who loved to go to Sunday service so much that her parents thought she would follow her father’s path into the ministry.

They know the adult Jill, married mother of two preschoolers.

The Bishops have a hard time reconciling their Jill with the Jill Moore they’ve seen in the news. The one accused of providing minors alcohol and cigarettes. The one accused of arranging a motel tryst between high school students and a 21-year-old S.C. National Guardsman.

The Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office said Moore, 28, a guidance clerk and cheerleading coach at Ware Shoals High, took two cheerleaders, during school hours, to a motel, where they met two National Guardsmen for sex and drank vodka. Moore faces criminal charges for the alcohol and cigarettes. She has resigned her school position.

The school’s principal, Jane Blackwell, has been charged with obstruction of justice in an alleged cover-up. Both women have said they are innocent.

The sordid details of the allegations against Moore — an alleged affair with a National Guardsman and a sexual relationship with a male student —have been a strain on the close- knit Bishop family and Ware Shoals.

“We’re doing our best,” said Janice Bishop, who works for the Ware Shoals school district.

Moore’s father, who resigned his post as a Greenwood District 51 trustee after the charges against Moore became public, said simply: “We love her.”

The family members say they are leaning heavily on their faith as they try to cope with the scandal.

“There are prayers going up. And prayers are being answered,” Janice Bishop said.

But there’s an undercurrent of anger in Ware Shoals, too.

The town struggled to stay afloat after Riegel Mill closed in 1985, taking most of its good-paying jobs, locals said. Residents survived by leaning on each other.

True to form, many in the community are rallying around the Bishops. Yet some parents —like Roxie Propst, whose daughter is a varsity cheerleader but was not part of the allegations — are outraged.

Propst, 52, is worried that guilty people won’t be punished. Others in town think the situation has been blown out of proportion.

“We stayed together and close, but this, in a way, is destroying things, because you’re either on one side or the other,” Propst said.

Eighth Circuit Solicitor Jerry W. Peace said he has never seen a case in the four counties that his office serves blow up like the one in Ware Shoals.

“I know that, if I were a defense attorney, I would be making a motion for a change of venue based on the pretrial publicity,” he said.

MOORE’S EARLY YEARS

The Bishops want to talk about the outgoing and family-oriented Jill they know and love to balance what has been reported about their daughter. On the advice of Moore’s attorney, Townes Jones IV, they would not discuss the accusations against her.

Instead, they talked about Moore as the endearing child who charmed Marcus Bishop’s classmates when he began seminary studies at Wake Forest University in the early 1980s.

“She went everywhere with Marcus. She was just like everybody’s (child),” said Janice Bishop.

When her sister was born two years after her, Moore assumed the role of protective older sister.

“Of course, they were siblings; there were fights. They would throw hairbrushes,” her mother said with a laugh. “She could do that, but no one else could do that.”

The family moved to Ware Shoals, where Marcus Bishop was raised, when Moore was in fifth grade.

In elementary school, she played basketball and softball with the local recreation league. Moore was a cheerleader in junior high and high school.

In high school, Moore was the girl everyone wanted to be friends with, said her mother. She was a homecoming queen, Ms. Sophomore and Ms. Senior. She graduated in 1996 with honors. Shortly after that, the Bishops moved to Mauldin.

At then-North Greenville College, Moore majored in education and continued cheerleading. She left school after two years, her mother said. During college, she worked at two Greenville businesses and lived in Anderson.

The Bishops returned to Ware Shoals in 2000. That year, Moore married a man she met in college when they worked for a Greenville engineering firm. The Bishops declined to name him.

Moore’s bridal party, the Bishops said, included six bridesmaids, six groomsmen, a miniature bride, a miniature groom and a bell ringer. The couple were married in her father’s church.

“It was big for us,” Marcus Bishop said of the wedding.

Reunited in Ware Shoals, the Bishops get together regularly; the daughters live within miles of their parents. It’s not uncommon for Moore to stop by every day with her children, ages 4 and 2.

Until the birth of her son two years ago, Moore coordinated youth events at her father’s church, including mission trips around the country to rehabilitate houses for less fortunate people.

THE INVESTIGATION

Police paint a different picture of Moore.

On Jan. 18, the Ware Shoals Police Department charged Moore with transfer of beer to an underage person in relation to two offenses involving “inappropriate behavior” with students.

The Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office charged Moore with contributing to the delinquency of a minor in a separate but related incident.

No charges have been filed against Moore in connection with a football player’s statement to investigators that he had sex with her. Prior to Jan. 18, Moore had no criminal record, according to the State Law Enforcement Division.

Blackwell, the high school’s principal, was arrested Jan. 22 on charges of obstruction of justice.

Investigators allege she knew about Moore’s behavior. But police said Blackwell forbade cheerleaders to discuss the case with anyone. Notes found during a search of her office show that, in December 2006, Blackwell was keeping tabs on Moore’s “departures from campus with a cheerleader.”

Blackwell is on administrative leave while police continue their investigation, according to a statement from Greenwood 51 Superintendent Fay Sprouse, Blackwell’s cousin.

Moore admitted to having a sexual relationship with high school recruiter Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Fletcher, according to a Greenwood County incident report. Another guardsman, 21-year-old Sgt. Jeremy Pileggi, admitted to initiating a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old cheerleader he met through Moore.

A statement from the sheriff’s office said two cheerleaders accompanied Moore to the National Guard Armory, where she then had sex with Fletcher. On another occasion, Moore is accused of signing the girls out of school and taking them to a motel. Moore provided the teens with vodka before she and Fletcher went into another room to give the teens a chance to “hook up” with Pileggi, the statement said.

Pileggi and Fletcher have been suspended by the Guard. Pileggi does not face criminal charges because the cheerleader was 16. It is legal in South Carolina for a 16-year-old to have sex.

Propst said the allegations against Moore and the scandal in general stunned her and other parents.

“I thought she was a super-nice girl,” Propst said of Moore. “All the cheerleaders loved her. Her background coming from a preacher — I never dreamed something like this would happen.”

Reach Tate at (803) 771-8549.