Wearing a black pants suit and delicate silver cross earrings, Molly Shattuck looked grim as she appeared in a Delaware courtroom Wednesday morning for a hearing in the criminal case stemming from allegations that she sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy.
The former Ravens cheerleader was twisting a tissue in her fingers and whispering to her attorneys, Eugene Maurer and Michelle N. Lipkowitz. She concentrated on a book of Christian motivational readings with headings such as, "Failure or stepping stone," and occasionally glanced at the reporters gathered in the courtroom.
Shattuck sat in the courtroom with Lipkowitz while Maurer met with prosecutors privately. When he returned to the courtroom, he said, "It's OK," to her. Shattuck flashed him a tight, half-smile.
"She looks thin," Maurer said of Shattuck outside the courtroom after the hearing. "It's stressful."
He also told reporters, "It's difficult. She's hanging in there."
He declined to say whether prosecutors had put forward a plea offer.
"The prosecutors and the defense are still talking and continue to talk as they do in all cases," he said.
Maurer also declined to say whether Shattuck continues to care for her children.
"I'd rather not talk about her personal life," he said.
A scrum of reporters descended on the tiny brick Sussex County Courthouse in downtown Georgetown, Del., about a half hour away from the state's resort towns. Courthouse workers seemed bemused by the crush of journalists hurrying through the building.
Shattuck and the boy, who was 15 at the time, "made out" in the back seat of her Cadillac Escalade in a middle school parking lot, according to the documents.
During the summer, he would slip away from a summer class at lunch time to meet with Shattuck, who would pick him up from the campus of the McDonogh School, where both he and her son are students, and take him to the parking lot of the nearby T. Rowe Price building.
The Baltimore Sun does not name alleged victims of sexual crimes.
At the end of the summer, Shattuck invited the boy to spend the night in a Bethany Beach rental property where she was staying with her three children and some of their friends. She assured the boy's father that there would not be any drinking, but, according to the documents, gave the boy wine.
Later in the evening, according to the documents, when the younger children were asleep, Shattuck took the older teens, including the alleged victim, to buy beer. Back at the house, she asked the alleged victim to accompany her as she walked her dog, then performed oral sex on him, according to the documents.
Then, after the teen had rejoined the others on a rooftop deck, Shattuck came up and said that he needed to go to bed, documents allege.
According to the documents, she then took him to her bedroom, stripped down to her underwear and performed oral sex on him. She asked if he wanted to have intercourse, but the boy decided to leave.
McDonogh School officials became aware of the incident a few weeks later and immediately contacted police; Shattuck was banned from campus.
Delaware State Police searched Shattuck's home in early October, seizing computers, cell phones and the "pink lace bra and underwear" that the victim said Shattuck wore during the encounter, according to documents.
The allegations stand in sharp contrast to Shattuck's carefully honed public persona as a fitness consultant, dedicated volunteer and devoted mother.
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Shattuck launched a lifestyle brand, web site and fitness video in recent years. In her 2013 book, "Vibrant Living," she extols practicing moderation and self-control and wrote that she says a blessing before each meal.
The Shattucks' divorce was finalized days after the indictment was unsealed.
According to filings in that case, the couple had been separated since at least June of 2013.
The couple wed in 1997, settled in an opulent North Baltimore estate and had three children.
In 2005, Molly Shattuck won a spot on the Ravens cheerleading squad, becoming the oldest NFL cheerleader in history.
This story will be updated.