5.18.24: LT w/ Michelle Peterson on grooming laws. Fighting for justice for our children. Working le
Summary
➡ A mother discovered suspicious text messages between her son and his baseball coach, leading her to suspect inappropriate behavior. Despite her son and the coach denying any wrongdoing, she decided to report the situation to the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). However, the investigation was delayed and she faced challenges in retrieving deleted messages from her son’s phone. Eventually, she was advised by a Secret Service agent to persist with her concerns, emphasizing the importance of protecting her son and potentially other children.
➡ A mother recounts her struggle with the state’s attorney’s office to get justice for her son, who was victimized by a teacher. Despite having evidence in the form of text messages and a confession from the teacher, the case was delayed for years. The mother had to fight to get the case moving, threatening to involve the media and constantly pushing the state’s attorney. She advises parents to monitor their children’s phone activity to prevent such incidents and recommends using an app called Bark for this purpose.
➡ The text discusses the dangers of messaging within apps and the importance of monitoring children’s online activities. It also tells the story of a legal case involving a teacher who was accused of grooming a minor for illicit activities. The case was significant as it led to the first grooming conviction in the United States, which is now used as a precedent in other cases. The text ends with a call to action for stricter grooming laws to protect children from potential predators.
➡ The speaker is a physical therapist who uses her free time to raise awareness about child grooming and advocate for laws against it. She has traveled to different states to speak about the issue and has started a fund to support her efforts. She has recently been working with people in Wisconsin to establish a grooming law, following a case where a teacher was fired for grooming a student but couldn’t be charged due to lack of legislation. The speaker emphasizes the importance of protecting children, the need for counseling for victims and their families, and the power of parental instinct.
➡ The speaker is a mother who is fighting against inappropriate content in schools and the normalization of pedophilia. She was given a website by the America Project to help her cause. She believes that the system is set up against parents and is controlled by evil forces. She asks for prayers and support in her fight to protect children.
Transcript
He just wanted, like I said, he wanted to go away. And I sent him to bed one night and I said, you know, this isn’t about you anymore. This is about the three kids that live across the street and the four that live down the street. What if something happens to one of them? And how do you face their parents knowing you could have stopped it. That’s right, folks. As you know, we are under attack. Our children are being groomed at young ages. And Michelle Peterson had enough. It was happening in her family, and she is making waves across our country, making changes.
She’s an american mother, tired of being the silent majority, fierce defender of God given rights, christian values and children. And she, with her son, was an unfortunate victim of grooming by a high school teacher. And she fought for justice for her son and other children. She brought the first to date only grooming conviction in the United States. And she’s working on model legislation for all 50 states to get a grooming law in place. You don’t want to miss this interview. It is absolutely amazing. So we have Michelle Peterson here with us today. You guys understand a little bit about what we’re going to get into.
It’s going to be very difficult at some times. I believe you guys can go and below this video, michellepeterson.org dot. If you’re listening in on the podcast, it’s the same thing. You just go below the podcast. You’ll see the link, click on that at any time during this video and afterwards to just catch up with all that is going on that we’re going to discuss here today. And I wanted to, before we start this interview, basically show a video clip of, basically a synopsis of what Michelle has gone through. In a few minutes, NBC five investigates.
Imagine discovering that your teenager has been receiving thousands of text messages from a teacher, many sexually explicit, dozens in the middle of the night. You might believe your child would tell you if this happened, but as NBC Five’s Phil Rogers discovered, that’s not always the case. The story unfolded here in Morris, southwest of Chicago, as middle America as it comes. He wanted to make a sex video. Put it straight out there. Andrew Kozick says he had begun texting Stefan Bolegno, a teacher here at Morris High School, because he was having trouble on the baseball team. But before long, he says, Bolegno was offering him money for oral sex.
It started off at 500 and then 1000 and then $1500. But Andrew never told anyone and no one knew until his mother heard him talking to Bolegno on the phone. He has no business calling you at 11:00 at night. That’s completely inappropriate. When she learned the two had been communicating by text message, Andrew’s mother went to her computer and logged into the family’s account. She found thousands of messages. I was just sick because I knew in my heart, like, this isn’t just regular text messaging. The family went to police, who searched Andrew’s phone and found nearly 6000 messages between the two.
But only about a 10th of those could be recovered. And indeed, they are troubling. We can’t read some of the more graphic messages, but among the more benign, the teacher writes, when does the kissing begin? Icky, the student says. How about if we just go at it and not video it? The teacher declares. And on another occasion, when you’re 18, we can give each other everything. Sometimes males to bond with. Males are crude. Redmond Wiguel is Bolegno’s lawyer. He insists the teacher was only trying to help Andrew through a bullying incident on the baseball team. You say that these text messages do not indicate criminal activity.
They certainly indicate stupidity. For a teacher to be sending these messages, absolutely. Wiggle says he and his client concede bad judgment, but they point to the thousands of other texts no one read, as well as huge gaps in the transcripts. There’s a stupid intent, but there was not an evil intent to have sex with this young man. I don’t care what context you put it in. When you offer somebody money for sex, that’s solicitation. So why didn’t Andrew tell someone? Records show at one point he even told a DCFS investigator the teacher’s messages had not crossed the line.
Why’d you talk? I didn’t want to lose his job. I didn’t want to get in trouble. Molegna was found guilty of indecent solicitation of a minor and unlawful grooming. He is to be sentenced next month. I want him to have to register as a sex offender. The jail time would just be icing on the cake. Michelle Peterson says she and her son wanted to talk to us to stress the importance of reporting incidents like this. 18 of these texts were after midnight, 15 after 03:00 a.m. The Grundy county state’s attorney says he believes it’s a cautionary tale about giving children digital technology this Christmas without firm guidelines on how it will be used.
There we go. Sums up exactly what we’re going to be talking about today, Michelle. Must have been horrifying to have to deal with this, and you’re going to have to rehash for all of us how this all played out and what’s going on today, but very, very sickening. And I just wanted to say something before I get into this. One of the things I noticed about the media, because I am a media guy and I was trying, it made me realize that this guy, whoever did this report, they led into the lawyer and said this was just something that was stupid.
Right. So he’s basically letting the lawyer and the people that are listening know in their mind, they’re trying to get the folks to think that it wasn’t that big of a deal, that. So the media was even playing into this, in my opinion. And then, of course, they asked, well, why didn’t he tell someone as if they think that they’re the experts, the media? So in my opinion, not only is that lawyer who’s defending that sick person involved, the media didn’t really help you either, other than getting the information out. They seem to be covering for him.
So I just wanted to throw that in there. Yeah, it’s interesting, though, that you picked up on that. But I have to say that that reporter was the only one of five that I called at the time that called me back and wanted to actually do the story, but he actually asked questions that other people did ask at the time. And so maybe it was just a question that he felt that others would have. I’m not sure. But it does lead you to believe that, you know, they’re questioning whether this is actually a real thing or not as well.
Yeah, but you got the report out and it’s allowed us to have a conversation piece about it, and it’s, I believe, helped you out in getting information to the public. And I want to make sure that folks understand as we go through this, that all that you’re going to share is you’re doing this, the support of everything that happened with the background in your son and more with a lot of folks where you’re gaining support so you can create laws. Because I assumed before we had this interview that there’s already these laws in place and that these guys all get in trouble and they’re put away.
But that’s the whole foundation of this, of you getting involved and what happened with your son is to make sure that folks are aware. There’s really not very many laws in place in very many states to deal with situations like this when somebody does text our kids and wants to do something with them. Very sad. So if you can get into that background of what happened with your son, appreciate that. So back in 2010, my son was 15, going on 16. He had reached out to his baseball coach because having a bullying incident on the baseball team, and this coach continued to text him, felt more and more bold, was able to continue to text him.
I had no idea that this was going on. I would typically check my son’s phone three or four times a week. I look through his phone and I encourage all parents to do this because those are your phones, they’re not through kids phones. And I would look at his text messages, his emails, what apps he had on there. And I never saw one of over 6000 messages. And then in October of that year, I overheard a conversation late at night and he sounded pretty annoyed and said, I don’t know, how often do you want me to call you? You know that I’m busy.
I’m taking classes in college and working a couple jobs. And then I heard him say, I’ll meet you in your classroom tomorrow to pick up those paintballs. And my heart just sunk. I knocked on the door, said, who you talking to? He told me. I said, you need to hang up the phone. It’s completely inappropriate that he’s calling you this late at night. And again, this was a baseball coach and this was in October, so he had no reason to be calling him. And I went down to the computer, immediately looked up the phone number he was talking to and looked and saw that there were thousands of messages between the two phone numbers.
Now, you can’t see the verbiage. It’s just like your cell phone bill. Now all you can see the phone numbers back and forth. So I had gone to the principal the next morning and said, I think we have a problem. Told him what was going on. He met with the teacher and my son individually. And I met with him later that day. He said, they’re both denying any wrongdoing. And I asked him if he was going to open up a DCFS investigation with the Department of Children and Family Services, as he’s a mandatory reporter. And he said, I actually have nothing to go on at this point because they’re both denying any wrongdoing.
He goes, but you’re Andrew’s mom. You can do whatever you want. If you want to open up a DCFS investigation, you can do that. If they need a place to meet, they can meet here at the high school. He encouraged me, through what he was saying at least four different times in that conversation, to open up an investigation. Can I ask you what DCFS means real quick? Yep. It’s the department of Children and Family Services. Okay. And some people might know it as CPS children protective services across the country, but they’re supposed to be there to protect our children.
And I left there, went straight to a local church and talked to the pastor because, you know, this is somebody’s life, and you don’t know if what you’re actually seeing or what you feel is actually the right thing. And he said, you know, this isn’t for you to decide. He said, you need to turn this in and let them do an investigation. So I even waited another full week, and before I actually contacted dcFs, now they’re supposed to be without. In with, you know, in to meet with you within 24 hours of them getting notified. And six days later, we still hadn’t been notified.
So I contacted the local office, and the person who had our case file was on vacation, so it was sitting on their desk. So I contacted the actual director for Illinois for Department of Children Family Services, because the local office said they couldn’t get anybody there and for another few days. And when she looked up, she actually answered the phone, looked up our case. I could hear it typing away. And she said, you know, they should have been out there a week ago. And I sent her seeing. She said, someone will be there today, and if they’re not, I want you to call me back.
So I get a call from the local office. They said that they’ll be, you know, they can come out the next morning. They couldn’t free somebody up that day, which worked fine for me. I’m a physical therapist. I had patients scheduled, so that worked fine. So the next, I called the. The DCFS director back and just let her know what was going on. Got a voicemail, and I got a call ten minutes later. Saying that DCFS was on the way to the school, so she must have called them to tell them to come out. So they didn’t wait for me to get there, which I couldn’t even give my son fair warning that they were coming.
And they had him in a room with one of the investigators as well as one of the counselors from school. And he was walking out as I was walking in, he was extremely upset with me. Now, you have to understand, he’s 16 years old and he just wants this to go away. I think he thought once I found out that it would just stop. And, you know, I had conversations with him and I said, you know, this isn’t really about just you anymore. This is about the next kid. And went in, met with that DCFS investigator.
She made me feel stupid for calling her. So that’s the other thing is I want parents to know that they need to stay on this with these investigators. And I told her, I said, I know this isn’t the worst thing that you’ve ever dealt with, but this is the worst thing that I’m dealing with right now. And you should never make somebody feel bad for calling you. So at this point, we have nothing to go on. So even though I would check my son’s phone, I never saw one of over 6000 messages, because as soon as they would come in, he would delete them.
Oh, so I couldn’t even see them. He couldn’t go back and reflect on them either. And then I started digging. I do a lot of research, Lt and I started researching to see if I could find somebody who could pull these messages off the phone. And I called a local detective and I told him I found somebody who could do this because that’s what his job was, was pulling deleted messages off of computers, cell phones, tablets. And at the time when I did that, I let my son have his phone for the weekend. And at the end of the weekend, I said, I need your phone.
I said, and this was about four months or so after the initial contact where I found out that something was probably happening. When I told my son that I needed his phone, his face just went green. And I said, is there something you need to tell me? And he said, I can’t tell you. And he said, I’ll talk to the principal tomorrow and to the detective because I can’t tell you. So we went and met with the principal the next day, and he was in there for about 3 hours with the principal and the detective. And the principal came out and said that he would be opening up their own DCFS investigation at this point, that my.
My thoughts and my gut feeling were spot on. And he told me what you saw in that video where, you know, he was offered money, right, for lewd activities. He wanted to make a video with him. He would also refer to his body part as my little guy may ever gonna get to see the little guy. Right. And the principal said, you know, andrew would really like to talk to you at home and tell you what’s going on, but I’ll be here later if you have any questions. And I went back there, and Andrew told me everything except for the money.
So the principal filled me in on that. Now, they ended up putting them. Putting them on paid administrative leave because of, you know, their union laws and rules that they have. Oh, yeah. But they didn’t indict him. Even at this point. They didn’t charge him with anything. Our detective asked for subpoena for his cell phone and for his computer, and that got denied by our state’s attorney. Now, this all hinged on text messages and technology, but they denied a subpoena for the cell phone. So our cell phone goes to this guy who’s going to try to get these messages off the phone.
He can’t get them off the phone because at and t had just done an upgrade. And they don’t have to help these local jurisdictions with anything without a subpoena or a court order. And that also got denied. So they took the phone down to the state police. They had my son’s phone for about four or five months. Okay. Couldn’t get the message off the phone, so we’re stuck and kind of a holding pattern. And so I had a friend at the time whose husband was a secret Service agent tell her what’s going on. They got me introduced to one of their other friends who was a secret service agent and was on a pedophile task force.
And he told me, he’s like, michelle, they just want you to go away. This is too much work for one kid. A lot of paperwork, he said, but you need to stay in their face and go in there every day, let them know that you’re not going anywhere. He said, I’m going to give you two business cards. You keep one, you give one to the state’s attorney, and tell them if they don’t have the messages off that phone within seven days, you’re going to turn it over to the feds, and I’ll have those messages off of there in 15 minutes.
Oh, wow. Yeah. And so I did that and they actually had the messages back then within three days, which, like you’re thinking, leads me to believe they’ve had the messages the whole time. So I ended up going and meeting with two assistant state’s attorneys, with my husband, my husband, my current husband, and my husband at the time was not my son’s father, so, stepdad. So we’re meeting with the state’s attorneys, and they told me, you know, there’s just too many gaps in the transcripts. We don’t think we have enough to go on, you know? And there’s a stack of papers sitting in front of them.
It’s about almost two inches thick. I said, those messages? And he said, yes. I said, can I see them? And they both looked at each other like they weren’t expecting that question. And I said, listen. I said, it’s my property, and I’m gonna leave with it here today and with the cell phone if you’re not gonna do anything about this, right? So they let me read the messages, and I started reading through them now. Again, we’re almost a year into this, and I had been pretty compliant, did everything they asked me to do, and I start reading these messages, and everything that we talked about was in there, and tears are just dripping from my face.
And I pushed the messages back very slowly, and I lost it. Like, you have got to be kidding me. And I slammed my hands on the table, and we’re in a conference room in the middle of a courthouse. And they looked, like. At me, like, they were just in complete shock. I said, I looked at the older gentleman like, you have grandkids that go to this school. You’re okay with this? And the younger guy said, you have young kids that will be going to the school. You’re okay with this guy teaching your children? And I was.
I was yelling, though. I mean, I don’t remember yelling so loud in my entire life. And my husband was kicking me another table, and, like, you kick me one more time, I’m kicking you out that door. And, yeah, yeah. They didn’t know what to do with me, I don’t think, at that point. And the older gentleman said, you know, if there’s just one other kid or somebody who could corroborate this story, I’m like, because one’s not enough. So that secret Service agent wasn’t wrong, right? So one was enough. It said, what does he have to do, sodomize my child before you’re gonna do anything? And they looked at me like they were just completely shocked that I would even say that.
I asked if I could meet with the actual state’s attorney. And they said that he was busy right then. So I called back at 08:00 the next morning, and I think it was like 08:01 and told them who I was, wanted to meet with him. They said he was busy that day, didn’t have time to meet with me. So that’s fine. I’m going to come in and pick up all of my stuff, and I’m going to take it to the Illinois state’s attorney. Okay. And he called me back 15 minutes later, met with me that afternoon, and I had printed off an article where it said that he had come back to our county to protect the children, the children and families of Grundy county.
So I printed that off. I met with him, and he said he wasn’t really familiar with my case at that time. And I’m like, this is the county seat. You went to the same high school, and you don’t know what’s going on with this case. And I set the article down. I said, how about we start doing this? And that’s kind of set off a little bit of a tumultuous relationship between the two of us because I was kind of holding his feet to the fire. And so at that point, I mean, nothing was happening, wasn’t going forward, nothing was going on.
And a few months later, the principal calls me and I went down to the school and he said, listen, I’ve been trying to get them to come and get his personnel file. He’s like, there’s stuff in there they’re going to want to see. So I go back down to the state’s attorney’s office and I tell him that. And he’s like, what could possibly be in there that we would need? And I said, what skin is it off of your back? And can you just get it? So he gets a subpoena for the personnel file, but the school, because they knew that I was having trouble with things moving forward.
Their attorneys wouldn’t release the file until I signed off on it because they use the HIPAA law because my son’s a minor and his name is all over this. I, as the parent, would have to sign off on it before they could release it to someone else. So I went in and read in there, and the teacher asked him, or the principal was in there in this meeting with the teacher, the union rep and the superintendent of the school, and he asked him flat out, did you ever offer Andrew money, you know, for these lewd activities? Did you ever want to make a video? Did you refer to his body part as my little guy? And he said, he put his head down, shook his head in affirmation, and said, yes.
So I’m like, we got him, right? So I go down to the state’s attorney’s office and I tell him what was in there, and then I signed off on it. He said, why did they have you sign off on it? I said, because of the HIpaa law. He said, well, they didn’t have to do that. And I said, well, honestly, I said, I think they did that because they knew I was having so much trouble down here with you that if I didn’t see what was in there before it got in your hands, I would have never known.
So I’m going to tell you right now, if he’s not indicted in the next seven days, I’m going to have every major news station on your front lawn. So he waited the full seven days, and then he indicted him, of course. Yeah. So then we go status hearing after status hearing. These are monthly hearings just to give you updates on what they’re doing, which was essentially not a whole lot. And so we’re a good. So that started in 2010, 2012. We’re still going into status hearings, and in January of 2013, we elected in a new state’s attorney.
Okay. And I’m going to back up a little bit because I want parents to understand my son is very, very smart. He. I would have thought he would have told me everything, right, or anything. I was a single parent for a long time, until he was ten years old, from four to ten. And I took him everywhere with me. We had so much trust between us. We had a bond that I thought could never be broken. And he was so embarrassed that he. He felt he couldn’t tell me about this, right? And he was going down to the nurse’s office, resting heart rate of 120, didn’t want to go to school.
He wasn’t sleeping well. I couldn’t get him up in the morning. He was isolated, would just stay in his room. And these were things that were completely out of character. So those are things that I think parents need to watch for if they suspect anything is going on with their children. Right. And something that I wish I would have done is if I would have taken his phone at night, I would have seen these messages coming in in the middle of the night. These kids don’t need their phones after nine, you know, 09:00 p.m. When they’re going to bed.
So take your kids phones at night. I know that’s going to be a problem for a lot of these kids, but that’s your phone. They’re not paying for it. So take their phones. And now they actually have some more technology where they have what’s called a bark app. B a r k, like a dog barks. You can put the app on your phone as a parent or a grandparent, and the app on your kid’s phone, and you can set it up so you can see all text messages going in or out. And you can also set up for certain keywords, so you can set up for body parts, cuss words, things like that.
So it’s only dollar 99, I think, for the entire year. You can. It’s unlimited on how many devices you can have on there, and you can also have an unlimited number of children on there as well. So my brother has this for his three kids, and they can control everything. It has gps on there. They can control the Wi Fi, so they can shut it down. They can control what apps they have on there. So you can shut down certain apps. It’s a phenomenal device. The one thing, though, that you need to be aware of is they are messaging kids within apps.
Like, there was one that was even messaging somebody in a Bible app. Right. So you really do need to keep still. Look at your kids phones, look at the messages on their phones within certain apps. Pinterest, the Bible app, Snapchat. They have messaging capabilities. So these folks can message them in those apps as well. And bark won’t pick up on those, I don’t think. Okay, so. So then we end up. We get a new state’s attorney in, in January of 2013. And our detective says, you know, there’s a case that you really need to start working on right away.
It’s been hanging out there for. For two years. So he meets with us and he says, you know, there’s just. It’s been so long. I think we’re gonna have to take a plea deal on this because there’s gaps in the transcript. They’re gonna say that you can’t remember what happened. And this would have meant that the teacher would still be able to teach. He wouldn’t have had to register as a sex offender, and he would probably have to pay a minimal fine. So essentially a slap on the hand. So we go to court in August of 2013, and he’s going to take a plea deal.
And by the grace of God, he ends up saying he wants to take this to trial, and he ends up saying, he wants to take it to trial with a bench trial and not a jury trial. He ticked off the judge so bad, that judge lit into him and his attorney for dragging this out. We could have gone to court that summer. Now, at this point, my son is 19. He was in college, and he was going to school out of state. So he’s like, we could have gone to trial this summer. Now we got to bring this young man back from school, fly him back here in the middle of his school year.
And the next day, we meet with the new state’s attorney, and his first assist, and his first assist says, hey, there’s a new law in place in Illinois that came into law just last month. So July of 2013. Now, this is where God’s hand was all over it, because had we gone to court even two months earlier, we would have never had a grooming law in place in Illinois. And now I want to explain what grooming is. So you have regular grooming, like, you groom your kids to be good, moral citizens. You groom people to be CEO’s.
This is unlawful grooming, whereby somebody gains the trust of another person. And in this case, it’s somebody who’s in a position of authority, gaining the trust of a child, or even the community or the school or the parents. You gain that trust so you can pull them in, and then you. In order to do something nefarious to them. So that’s what this is as far as unlawful grooming. Okay, we go to court in October of 2013, and we get solicitation of a minor as a charge, and then also unlawful grooming. Now, this is the very first, and unfortunately, to date, the only grooming conviction in the United States.
So, yeah, it was. It was difficult to get. There’s no other case that says precedent for it, and they weren’t even sure if it was going to happen or not. So now you fast forward to January of 2023, and I meet a sex trafficking investigator, and her name is Amy Coelho, and she’s out of Texas. She’s also a paralegal. And she was telling me about some cases that she was just working on. One of them was done in November of 2022, and it was a case that she had worked on for ten years. It was called the Lalose del Mundo case, and it was a trafficking cult within a church.
So the women in the church would prepare the kids in the church for the men in the church, and they busted 123 different sex trafficking cells between Mexico and California. And then she told me about another case with one of the Larry Nassar gymnasts out of Michigan state was one of their clients. So in my head, I’m like, well, I’m gonna tell her about my measly little case, right? And five days before this, I was laying in bed asking God if anything I’m doing is making a difference. Because I’m doing whatever they’re telling all of us to do, right? I’m going to school board meetings, town council meetings, and going to county meetings.
Everything we’re trying to do, trying to protect these kids. And you get three minutes to do this at a school board meeting. And just the week before, I felt like such a buffoon. I was trying to put too much into the three minutes, and I was laying in bed crying. And literally five days later, God says, here, let me show you how great I am. And he puts Amy Coelho in front of me. Okay, Amy, about our case. Go into the details like I did with you. And she grabs my arm and gets tears in her eyes.
And she said, I need to get a picture of you and send it to my team. And I’m so confused, like, what are you talking about? She said, we use your case for every trafficking case that we bust. Because we have to prove the grooming in order to prove the trafficking. And you have the only grooming conviction in the United States. The only grooming conviction. I was a hot mess. We were both crying. And she said, you have to understand, we get an envelope, we don’t even resend your. We don’t know your son’s name because he was a minor.
All we have are his initials. We don’t know any of the story behind the case. We watched it in real time, waiting for it to come through so we could use it. So we have your case, and we use it for every case that we have. And she said, what we need to do now is get a law put in place where somebody charged with grooming cannot take a plea deal. And so that’s what we embarked on. And I had met her at the reawaken last year in Nashville. And that’s one thing, too. I need to, like, just give a shout out to Clay Clark and General Flynn for doing those events.
I mean, without that, I would have never known about this. So, God, again, working through all of that and giving me my why and why I’m in this whole fight. So he introduces me to a paralegal in Florida. Her name is Allie Hopper. And she and her dad, who’s an attorney, we’re working with some reps in Florida. And that’s Amy right there. And so we were working with the reps in Florida and got a grooming bill put in place. And Governor DeSantis signed that bill into law about five weeks ago. And then I was also working with another representative out of Iowa named Mark Thompson.
And the grooming bill there passed the House and the Senate unanimously was signed into law on May 1. Oh, wow. We had to get a grooming law actually put in place first. So that’s what we did in those two states. And then there was another mom named Susan Cobb, whose daughter was groomed and molested by a gymnastics coach in Georgia. She had been working on a grooming law for three years, and she was able to get that passed in Georgia this year. So through all of the work that we’ve done, we’ve now connected. And so she is joining our fight as well.
So there are four of us working on this currently. And what we’re looking for and how you’re audience can help is if they have a personal connection with a state rep or senator who could sponsor this bill for the next session. We want to work with them over the summer. They wouldn’t have to put anything into place. We have everything for them already written. We have a skeleton bill if they want to go off of that. And I’m willing to go and testify anywhere I need to to give that personal connection as to why this is so important.
And the one gut punch for me that Amy told me is she said, had this guy, this is what gets me every time. Had this teacher gotten his hands on your son, he probably would have trafficked him. And it might not have been across state lines, but it could have been within his own little subgroup. Right? Right. We found out later that he actually went and bailed out another guy who had molested some kids under the age of ten who was a soccer coach in the same town. This teacher was the one that went and bailed him out.
That guy currently is doing prison time, thankfully. Right. But the point of this grooming law is to stop these guys from and gals from touching these kids, you know, and stopping them from molesting them before it even starts. Right. The grooming laws about. Can I ask you a question real quick? So if they go to your website, they would, they click on contact and they get in touch with you to. And that’s how they would help out. And then also you have a donate button. Yes. Like you would need some help. And I just want folks to know, and I asked you earlier, I guess you’re doing this full time, and you told me, no, I work full time.
I’m a physical therapist, and I have used almost all of my vacation time the last three years doing all of this stuff and going to different states and speaking and these speaking events and just trying to bring awareness to all of this and all of my own resources to pay for everything. So, yeah, I started doing a fund, and I have three people that oversee the account, so everything goes through a little bit of a board. So people know what it’s being used for. Yep. But, yeah, I could certainly use some help with that because, you know, I traveled to Florida and spoke there in support of the bill there.
And just most recently, there was a case in Wisconsin, in Kenosha county, where in the Kenosha school district, there was a teacher that was texting a child and grooming them. And I’d been trying to get in touch with somebody in Wisconsin to get a grooming law in place last session. Couldn’t get anybody to call me back. Then when this happened, I contacted the news reporter who did that story and the three moms that were on the news story that she had done with me. They have all since reached out, and we are now connecting, and I’m going to be helping them, and Allie as well, trying to help them get a law put in place in Wisconsin.
Had they had that in place, they could have charged that guy with grooming. And as it stands now, all they could do is fire him. So he’s been fired, but he’s not. They can’t charge him with anything. There’s nothing to charge him with. My goodness. You know, I’ll mention this without getting to detail, but I. We talked before the show. I used to work in a particular area where I watched stuff like this happen, where folks that are possibly grooming our children, they’re simply moved around from school to school. I actually watched that happen, and it just irked me because I couldn’t do anything about it, is what I assumed.
And I just felt you feel helpless, and you just don’t know who to reach out to when you’re working and you’re watching this happen. I can imagine if you’re actually involved in this and you’re doing all you can to make these people wake up. What hurts me the most about your story is the folks that are supposed to enforce the law and do their job. They’re trying to cover everything up. I just don’t understand that. Why won’t you do your job? What are you scared of? And number one, number two, why don’t we have these laws already in place throughout the entire United States of America? And then I mentioned, also one of the big things for me was I mentioned this before about President Trump when he came out and said he wanted to get rid of the National Education association.
When you mentioned these, these unions, it seems like there’s so much protection for criminals rather than taking the criminals away and protecting our children. Yeah, it seems like everything’s upside down. Is that correct? For those three years, I felt like, is anybody, like, coming to our defense with any of this? You know, and, you know, you mentioned President Trump. I mean, he is the only president to sign laws into place to protect children and people who are being trafficked. So he wrote nine laws into place. Two of them are executive orders. Half of those laws came from, from democrats.
So that’s the other thing I want to stress is this is not a partisan issue. You know, this. This is a human rights issue, and we should be taking care of our kids. We all have children. Yep. And we should be protecting them no matter the cost. One of the executive orders he put into place was executive order 13818. And that’s where you can actually seize the assets of those who have been charged with trafficking and convicted of trafficking, and they use those assets then to help the victims. I mean, what an amazing law that is.
So this was the other thing I asked Amy. I said, so, Amy, if we have the only grooming conviction in the United States, could they have possibly used this with the Glenn Maxwell Jeffrey Epstein trials? And she said, Michelle, I’d have to look at the case. She goes, but I don’t know what else they would have used. So to even think that we would have had a hand in taking down one of the most prolific pedophiles of our time is just overwhelming and so surreal, I can’t even tell you. You know, and getting my son to come forward, I mean, that wasn’t easy.
He, he just wanted, like I said, he wanted to go away. And I sent him to bed one night and I said, you know, this isn’t about you anymore. This is about the three kids that live across the street and the four that live down the street. What if something happens to one of them? And how do you face their parents knowing you could have stopped it. That’s right. You know, so I think that alone was a lesson for him to know that, you know, this world is sometimes not, not a good world to live in, but there are good people, and most people are inherently good.
We know that but God put that in our laps for a reason. And I said, you need to. You need to do this and use it for good. Andrew sent him to bed that night, and I was up all night because you just don’t know. Like, I was concerned that he might hurt himself. Right. Having conversations with a 16 year old about suicide, you know, and not just him, but if the teacher should happen to do something to himself, that that’s not on him either. That’s right. And I think one of the other lessons is, if something like this happens to you or your family, you need to get counseling.
That doesn’t mean that you’re weak. That just means that you need help to walk through it. And the parents, the family, you also need to get counseling because we were groomed as well. This is. The other thing is, I played softball in college, so I was coaching softball at the same high school where this guy was coaching. And not only that, I was doing home health, physical therapy. I was in his home treating a family member at the time that he started texting my son. So I think he thought I was too busy, that I had no idea what was going on in my son’s life.
And he, I think, knew that I knew him on a personal level and that I would never, ever think anything. That never even crossed my mind. As soon as I overheard that conversation, I knew immediately what was going on. So parents, especially moms, you have that gut instinct. Go with your gut. And, you know, you’d always rather err on the side of caution, right? That’s right. And always fight for your kids. Never give up. Amy told me. She said most parents would give up, Michelle, with what you fought, fought through. So you keep getting told no, and you kept pushing further and kept pushing further and finding another avenue and finding her out.
That’s right. Yeah. Thinking as you’re. As you’re sharing all of this about, you know, it wasn’t just the fight for your son, and then you had to deal with the school. Well, then you have to be a mom and deal with, you know, come on, son, we’ve got to do this. And let me work you through this, you know, part. And then you’re dealing with this guy that you have to look at and deal with on that level. And then next thing you know, you’re getting a call from folks in other states that are dealing with issues.
And so I’m just looking at you, Michelle, as a. As a hero, because you could have just said, you know what, my son only, I’m done. I’m going back to my job, and, you know, I’m just going to forget about all this. But instead, you’ve got Michellepeterson.org dot. You’re putting yourself out there for the entire world to see. And it seems like, like you said, the heavenly father has put all of this together. So guess what? Now you’re going to be basically helping out not just your son, but look at the hundreds and hundreds of kids that are going to be protected because of this, right? Absolutely amazing.
It’s unbelievable, you know, and at one point, my son, because this is hard for him, and this comes back up again, you know, it triggers him a little bit. And he at one point said to me, mom, you know, he’s gonna be 30 this summer. And he said to me, he’s like, you know, you. We already won our fight. You already fought for me. He’s like, you don’t have to keep doing this. And I just looked at him with a smirk on my face, and I said, okay, satan. I said, because what better way would Satan love to have me stop protecting other kids than to use the person I love the most in this world to do it? And, you know, it’s just the whole thing is so unbelievable.
And this website was actually gifted to me by the America project after they heard me speak in Florida. They’re like, what do you need? I’m like, I don’t know. And I said, I’m just a mom. I’m just trying to help as many people as I can. And then I thought about it. I said, people ask me for a website. I don’t have a website. And so they. They gifted me a website, and I’ve since met some other women, and they’re helping me tweak the website, and they’re taking care of it for me. So God has been so good through this whole thing.
And, you know, one day I have to stand in front of him, and if I don’t do what was put on my heart, then what? Right? Yeah. Sorry. It’s okay. Michelle. Yeah. Hearts are heavy with all of this, but at the same time, we’re thankful that you’re here. I really appreciate the scriptures that you have on your site. Luke 17 two. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Yep. Our own savior was especially loving of children, and he had a stark warning for those that wanted to hurt, that want to hurt our children.
And I often think about that scripture. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. And I’ve watched it throughout my entire life. I’ve watched it through other lives where it seems like at the very end where there’s no other place to go through all the prayer, he comes in right at the right time and just all the sudden things start to fall into place. And you realize, like you said earlier, the timing was so perfect. Yep. And so that proves once again that he does care for our children. He wants these groomers to stop. We’ve been exposed for now many years of what these schools have been doing with the books that they put in front of our children at the kindergarten because they are already trying to get these children to start thinking about things that are so evil so that they can groom them, so that when they do get to the stage of 1011, 1213 years old, they’ll think that there’s nothing wrong with what these teachers are asking them to do.
Right. They’re trying to normalize it and desensitize these kids to all of that. That’s right. I mean, I often wonder what would happen if a parent were to actually file a police report based on some of those things. I know here in Illinois they put a law into place that’s, you know, part of the education system so they can’t go after them. So it’s just disgusting what’s going on. And, you know, we’re fighting here in Illinois, too. I mean, our governor, his family is, you know, tied to the World Economic Forum. They want to normalize pedophilia.
They’re calling it age gap, love and minor attracted people. And, you know, his, his cousin who owns Hyatt hotels, the CEO, I mean, he’s on Jeffrey Epstein’s black book or he’s in the black book on page 45 and are 13 different phone numbers. Yep. This is what we’re dealing with. I mean. Yep. An entire system, I believe was set up by the enemy. Number one, to make sure that we think that we’re electing these officials, which we’re not. So they’re going in. So these lawmakers are going in. The lawmakers are making sure that they’re changing the laws to what they want because they’re evil so they can protect all their buddies.
And then what do they do? They go in the schools and they think the parents aren’t going to say anything. But if they do scream and yell, we’ll make them look like the fools by using our media because they’re all part of us. Right. The next thing you know, it’s one huge system of basically set up to make us feel like we’re helpless and we can’t do anything. And I just think over and over again when they, we find out the numbers of people compared to Peterson and what she’s done to protect her son through all of the roadblocks, through the just the constant barrage of folks doubting her and trying to stop her from fighting for her son.
And now, you know, and you’ve used her to be set up for so many others that are hurting or not understanding what’s going on with their own children in these systems that you’re well aware are being controlled by the enemy. And we just ask that you continue to just fill Michelle up with the Holy Spirit, bring her in contact with so many folks that she would just be overwhelmed by your love and by the love of the people that would shout out and protect the children that you love and that you dearly, dearly want to protect on this earth.
You’re an amazing God. And we just again give you all the thanks and glory for her and we ask for continued protection around her life and all that she’s involved in. Please guide her in the right directions each moment of every day. We ask all this in the name of our savior Christ. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Michelle, again, folks. Michelle Peterson.org in the description box below, I encourage you to reach out to her, pray for her, and let’s get some updates on this too as you go through. Okay, Michelle, sounds good.
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