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April 6, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
01:04:35
JESUS. GUNS. AND BABIES. w/ Michelle Peterson, A Parent's Fight for Groomers Legislation
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Hey everybody, welcome to Jesus Guns and Babies.
I'm your host, Dr.
Candice Taylor, and I have a really good show tonight.
You're going to love it.
We're going to start with a verse, and actually, it's Luke 17, 2, or Mark 9, 42.
I'm going to read from Mark 9, 42, but it's whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin.
It would be better for him to tie a great millstone around his neck.
it says hung around his neck and be thrown into the sea and they say that drowning is like the worst way to die so tying something around your neck and being thrown into the sea so you're held at the bottom and drowned is probably the worst death that could happen and that's what God put in his holy word if you mess with children's innocence and you cause them to fail that's how he feels about it so that is one of the verses that always comes to my mind
when I am working as a school counselor working in student services and what I do for my day job and I get sexual abuse disclosures or I hear about you know somebody that went crazy and beat the mess out of a child and abused a kid I think about this verse.
It always comes to my mind.
So I have a mama on the show tonight that had something horrific happen to her child.
And I think that you're going to be very interested in her story.
And so I'm going to show you a video.
And her name is Michelle Peterson.
And so we'll go to the video and then we'll have Michelle come on.
NBC5 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 NBC5'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 Kozik 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 $1,000 and then $1,500.
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 o'clock 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 6,000 messages between the two, but only about a tenth 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.
Reverend Wigel 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.
Wigel 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 kind of text 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 tell him that?
I didn't want to lose his job.
I didn't want to get in trouble.
Bolegno 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 3 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.
Welcome to Jesus, Guns, and Babies, Michelle.
I am so delighted to have you.
We've had the interview planned and kind of had some issues getting it together, so I'm so thankful you're finally on.
Yes, thank you, and thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
I know that a mutual friend was trying to connect us for a while, so I'm glad that we finally were able to connect.
So, thank you.
So, everybody just saw this news clip, and when I watched it, I know all of it's horrific, and then the part that made me want to come through the phone, because I was watching it on my phone, was when the attorney was like, You know, I mean, it doesn't mean it was illegal or criminal or whatever.
He was trying to use crude comments because men do that and it makes them feel more comfortable.
Right.
Right.
And I have two sons of my own, and I'm going to tell you, my sons are good boys, and I would not, I mean, no.
Just no.
Right.
Right.
Every time I watch it, even 10 years later, I sit there and watch it, and when it gets to that part, I find myself just shaking my head.
And same thing, I just want to go through the I don't understand how people can defend someone like this.
And then to not even acknowledge that through the actual text messages that this is what he was really trying to do with my son.
And to let your viewers know, I mean, I was looking at my son's phone all the time.
I would check his phone intermittently four or five times a week.
I mean, he was 15 going on 16 when this happened.
And never saw one of over 60 or 6,000 messages, right?
Never saw one message because as soon as they would come in, he'd delete it because he knew that I was, you know, looking at his phone.
So I'd look at the messages coming in and out.
I look at the apps that he had.
I'd look at his emails and never saw any of these messages coming through.
So I would have never found out about any of this had I not overheard a conversation.
I was hearing you say that.
I was thinking about it would make so much sense, especially as a teenager.
They're so stimulated with all the texting and the notifications from social media and all of that.
When he's deleting the messages, he's not able to go back and read what he's saying.
So it's like, however he proceeded at that moment, if it was like, well, I look up to him, he's trying to look out for my best interest, he's not able to go back because he was deleting the messages to see the pattern and the psychoticness of it and the grooming of it.
He wasn't able to go back and read it and had even his 15-year-old mind, if he was able to go back and read it, he would have been like, you know, this is kind of creepy.
But he couldn't do that because he's deleting it, trying to hide.
And so there's probably some good positive stuff being said along with the grooming.
And so, you know, and kids' brains, especially boys, they develop so much slower than girls.
But your frontal lobe or your brain where you make decisions doesn't fully develop till 25.
And so they just don't think about things like we do.
Right, not at all.
And the thing is, and just to give your viewers some context too, like there's good grooming, right?
You groom your kids to be good moral people.
You groom people to be CEOs and heads of companies.
But this is unlawful grooming whereby somebody is trying to gain the trust of another person to be able to do something nefarious to them.
So just to kind of Lay the groundwork for some of this and where all of this really stemmed from is that this teacher, somebody in a position of authority, took complete advantage of my son who was reaching out to him about a bullying incident on the baseball team.
And when people are grooming and they're good at it, they will convince not only the person that they're grooming, But the family, the community, the school where he worked, I mean, they all thought that he was this great teacher.
He'd volunteer for everything, right?
Because he wanted people to think that he was this wonderful teacher, which we all thought at the time.
And he wanted access to them personally outside the classroom.
Because then you get to know them socially and you get to see how active their parents are or who they're actually friends with and who is a vulnerable victim that they can prey on.
And so to me, when a new teacher moves in in any school system, and I talk to my friends all over the state of Georgia because I've campaigned everywhere, and whenever they start saying there's a new teacher and they're volunteering for everything and they're, you know, real chatty with the kids and trying to be their friend, I'm like red flag.
Right.
So like just watching this, if you're a new teacher, be careful because like that sucks you in.
You're not ready, especially at the high school level.
You're not ready yet to be in that kind of relationship.
Right, right.
And you know, I also coached softball at the same time.
So I'm a physical therapist by trade and played softball in college.
So that was my way of giving back.
So I was coaching softball at the same high school where this guy was coaching baseball and At the same time.
And not only that, but as a physical therapist, I was in his house treating a family member, doing home health physical therapy, when he started texting my son.
So I think he thought that I was, number one, too busy to pay attention to what was going on in my son's life.
And number two, that there was no way that I'd ever think that anything bad, you know, that he would be doing anything bad to my son.
And he was wrong on both accounts.
So my son and I have always been very close.
I was a single mom for a long time.
And I think that was the other thing, too.
I think he thought I was still single.
I'd been remarried for a long time.
I got remarried when my son was 10.
I don't think he had any idea.
But those are the people that these folks will prey on as well, are single-parent households.
Um, and the one thing too, my son at the time, he kept going down to the nurse and I'm like, me being me and being in healthcare, I'm like, send him back to class.
He's fine.
Right.
And so by the fourth or fifth time that he was doing, then the nurse called me who she's a friend as well.
And she said, listen, I had him laid down for a half hour and he still has a resting heart rate of 120.
So I'm like, okay.
So then I thought, okay, we have to go get him checked out.
Took him to a pediatric cardiologist.
Did that whole thing.
Everything checked out fine.
So again, in hindsight, looking back, we know that that's why he was having this resting heart rate of 120, right?
He wasn't sleeping.
I couldn't get him out to go to school in the morning.
He didn't want to go to school.
He'd hide out in his room all the time.
He wasn't wanting to do some of the normal things that he was doing.
He kept busy, though.
He was working a couple jobs.
He played baseball in the spring.
And then he was taking a class at college at the time, as well as a junior.
So he was pretty busy.
But again, had I not overheard the conversation in October, I would have never known.
And even to date, my son's going to be 30 this summer.
And he said that he would have never told me because he was too embarrassed and he wanted it to just go away.
So he thought once I knew that that would be the end of it.
But he, you know, underestimated me because I'm like, you know, he didn't need the money, right?
So he was offered money for sex.
This guy wanted to make a sex video with him.
So he didn't need the money.
And so I told my son, I said, well, about the next kid.
I said, what if that kid does need the money?
I said, what if something happens to the three boys that live across the street, or the four that live down the street, and you could have done something about it?
How do you face their parents?
And I sent him to bed with that message one night.
He came back down the next morning, and he said, I'm not doing this for you, and I'm not doing it for me.
I'm doing it for them.
And I said, okay.
So then it was game on after that because he really didn't want to do anything.
And here's the thing, Candace, is people don't realize, even though nothing, like he didn't touch my son, this was a huge, our house was so tumultuous at the time.
You know, and when I sent him to bed that night, I didn't sleep well that night because you worry about what he might do, right?
Is he going to hurt himself?
Is he...
You know, so I kept checking on him all night, and it was terrible.
I'm trying to have a conversation with a 16-year-old about suicide and, you know, that if that teacher should happen to take his own life over this, too, that that's not on him either.
You know, and what happened was I ended up in October.
So the messages started in May of 2010.
October of that year, my husband and I came home from a funeral out of state, and it was about 1030 at night.
And I knocked on my son's door to tell him goodnight.
And I opened the door.
Lights were off.
He was sleeping.
So I shut the door.
I start going about my business to get ready for work the next day.
And then I hear him talking in there.
And we live in a tri-level.
So like our bedrooms are right next to each other, you know, in the hallway.
So I'm walking back and forth doing stuff for work.
And I can hear him talking.
And then all of a sudden I hear him say, you know, really annoyed.
So I thought he had a new girlfriend.
He's like, I don't know how often you want me to call you.
He's like, you know that I'm busy and working two jobs.
I'm taking a class.
And then, you know, a little bit later, he would say, well, I'll just meet in your classroom tomorrow and pick up those paintballs.
And my heart just sunk.
And I knew.
I don't know why I knew, but I had a gut feeling, right?
So I knock on the door and I open the door and I said, hey, who are you talking to?
And he tells me he's talking to his coach.
This is October and he's a baseball coach.
So they're not even in season.
I'm like, why is he calling you at 11 o'clock at night in October?
I'm like, that's completely inappropriate.
And he said, well, he was coming home from watching the Sunday night football game with some friends and he was getting tired.
I'm like, again, why is he calling you?
Like, you need to hang up the phone.
So he hangs up the phone and I literally went straight down to the computer and looked up the phone number he was just talking to and the messages and saw thousands of messages between the two phone numbers.
Now there's no verbiage on the cell phone bill, right?
All you can see the messages back and forth.
And I went back for months, all the way back to May, just thousands and a bunch coming in in the middle of the night.
Yeah, it was horrible.
And like, so I printed, I started printing off a couple of the cell phone bills and I only got through like three weeks worth and it was a, the paper was like a quarter inch thick already.
So I, you know, went to the principal the next morning and, um, and again, he knew me not only as a parent, but as a coach.
And I said, I think we have a problem.
And so I started to tell him what happened, hand him the papers and his face just went white.
You could tell that he had a feeling too, right?
And then he said, you know, I just, he leaned back in his chair.
He goes, I just gave him a teacher's award two weeks ago.
Of course he did.
And then his head, you know, he starts thinking and he's like, you know, I'm thinking about maybe that there might've been a couple other kids that I can think of now.
Like he literally came out with that information and he's like, listen, I'm going to meet with each of them individually.
And I'll be here all day.
You're more than welcome to come back and I'll let you know what happens after that meeting.
So I go back and he said that they both denied that there was any wrongdoing.
And I said, so what happens here?
He's like, well, we're going to write him up for texting him, you know, and talking to him off hours and he shouldn't be doing that.
So they're writing him up for that.
And I said, well, are you going to contact DCFS and open up an investigation of any kind?
He said, well, actually I can't because your son's denying any wrongdoing.
He said, I have nothing really to go on.
He goes, but you're Andrew's mom.
You can do whatever you want.
He's like, if you want to open up a DCFS investigation, open one up.
He told me four times in different ways in that conversation to open up a DCFS investigation.
And he said, if they need some place to meet, they can meet here at the school.
We'll open up a conference room, whatever they need to do.
So they're like, okay.
So I go straight from there to the church in town.
And...
I went to go talk to a pastor, and I hadn't really been going to church here in my town.
Every time I would go into a church, I wasn't getting the message.
It didn't feel comfortable.
I felt like it was off.
But that was the first place I turned.
Before I called my parents, before I called my husband, I went straight to the pastor and told him the story, and he said, you need to open up a DCFS investigation, and this is their job.
So I still even waited another week, prayed about it, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.
Because this is somebody's life.
This is their career, you know, is what I'm really seeing the truth.
Girl, you are so nicer than me because, see, I would have been at his house beating him.
Like...
I know.
I would have lost my mind.
We're both lucky.
He's lucky and I'm lucky that I have a good head on my shoulders because, you know, I didn't want to tell you what was going through my head.
Yeah, I mean, like, don't ever come for my children.
Like, I've never broken the law, but I will do whatever it takes to protect my children.
Right.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I just, so I ended up calling DCFS a week later, and they're supposed to be out within 24 hours.
And six days later, they still weren't out.
So I called the local office, and they said that the person who has our file, she was on vacation.
I said, so you guys do nothing with those files when somebody's on vacation?
And then I ended up, because me being me, I called the director of the state for DCFS, told her what was going on.
She actually picked up the phone.
I could hear her typing.
And she said, you reported this six days ago.
They should have been out the next day.
I said, yes.
And so she said, they'll be out there today.
And if they're not, I want you to call me back.
So the office calls me back and they said, listen, we can't get somebody freed up today because it was in the afternoon.
We can't get anyone freed up today, but we can meet you first thing tomorrow at 8 a.m., which was fine because I had a caseload of patients to see.
It worked out better for me.
I could, you know, rearrange patients, whatever.
So I ended up leaving her a message and said they'll be out the next morning.
Well, about 10 minutes later, I get a call from the high school saying DCFS was on their way, which means she probably called them and said, you need to get out there.
And they didn't even wait for me to get there.
By the time I got there, they were already meeting with my son in an office with one of the counselors, which thankfully they had a counselor in there with them.
But I didn't get a chance to brief my son and say, hey, they're coming out to talk to you.
So he was ticked.
He was so mad.
He walked out of that office.
And if looks could kill Candace, I would not be here right now.
He was so mad at me because he had no heads up and he just wanted it to go away.
So I go in and meet with this lady.
She said, you know, I don't know why this was so imperative for us to come out today.
It just sounds like this is benign text messaging.
So I handed her the stack of papers with the messages of like three weeks worth.
I said, this is just three weeks worth and this has been going on since May.
And she goes, oh.
I'm like, yeah.
So I have a gut feeling that something is not right.
And she said, well, we can't do anything about a mother's gut feeling.
And I said, no, but you need to investigate this.
This is now your job to investigate.
And I said, let me tell you something.
I said, this might not be the worst thing that you've ever seen, but this is the worst thing I'm going through right now.
And I said, even as a therapist, I see a ton of total knees, right?
But when that person comes in with their total knee, that's the first one they've ever had.
So I don't treat them any differently than I did the very first one that I treated.
And I make sure that all of their questions are answered and I never make them feel stupid.
And I said, that's exactly what you did to me today.
And so...
We end up leaving there.
Investigation is opened up.
Nothing really happens.
They're still denying that there's any wrongdoing in these text messages.
Is this like Department of Family and Children's Services or is this like...
Yes.
Department of Children's...
What site was this in?
Illinois.
Because in Georgia, we have the Professional Standards Commission that gives us our teacher certificate.
And then we have the Department of Family and Children's Services that would also be involved.
So whenever we have an issue with an educator, you would actually have multiple issues.
One could be the school board could terminate, and then that would have to go up through the State Board of Education if they appealed it.
You would have a PSC complaint, which is Professional Standards Commission, and the Attorney General is the one that that would be appealed up to.
And then we have Department of Family and Shield Services, which would then go with local law enforcement to a criminal case.
So there's multiple venues.
So I'm not really trying to understand why they just wanted you to do a DFATS case and didn't want you to also do it on his teacher's certificate.
It's really confusing to me.
Because they had no proof that there was any wrongdoing yet.
It doesn't matter.
It's not their job to investigate that.
There's enough with that amount of text messaging.
And that staff, to me, that's enough that they should have gotten somebody else involved.
Well, with it being Illinois, it could be that the rules are different, right?
Right.
The rules could be different.
And, you know, they could have been somebody that- And because they live in Illinois.
Right, right.
Yeah, so what ended up happening, though, is then I started to try to find somebody who could get the messages off the phone.
So I started researching, and it takes me about a week or two, and I... And this was 10 years, this was how many years ago?
10 years ago.
So, yeah, the technology's changed now, it's way more advanced.
Right.
Right.
So I finally find a detective in Joliet, which is about 20 miles from where I live.
And there was a detective there that that's what he did.
He would pull deleted messages off electronics.
And so I let my son have his phone for the weekend.
And then Sunday night I talked to him.
I said, listen, I need your phone.
I said, because I found somebody who can get these messages off the phone.
And his face just went green.
And I said, is there something you need to tell me?
He's like, I can't tell you.
He said, I'll talk to the principal tomorrow and I'll talk to our detective.
And so he went to bed.
That was another sleepless night because I, again, didn't know what was going to happen that night.
So I didn't really sleep much, keeping an eye on him.
So had he been talking to him since the initial disclosure?
Correct.
Okay, I gotcha.
Right.
So we then go the next morning.
He's in with them for about three hours and the principal comes out.
He said, we'll be opening up our own DCFS investigation at this point.
He goes, you were spot on with what you were thinking.
And he knew, right?
He knew from the very beginning, but he needed it to come forward.
So they take the phone and they take it to, the detective takes it to the other detective in Joliet.
And so we're waiting, you know, month or two goes by and he can't get these messages off the phone.
iPhone had just done an upgrade and these cell services, they don't have to help anybody without a court order.
So no court order, they wouldn't subpoena, like they wouldn't even subpoena the teacher's cell phone.
So when our detective asked the state's attorney for a subpoena for the teacher's cell phone, that got denied.
For whatever reason.
Now this all hinged on text messages and they denied that, denied a subpoena for his computer.
So this is going on for months.
We know we don't get his phone back and we're probably, I don't know how long we are into this, but it's well into like six, seven months.
And I end up having a friend who Her husband was a Secret Service agent at the time, and I was telling her what was going on, and she said, Michelle, we need to get you hooked up with one of our friends who's on a pedophile task force with the Secret Service, because when they're not defending and protecting the president, they will line up with area jurisdictions and help them out.
So I go over to her house.
We have dinner.
He says, listen, they just want you to go away.
He goes, you need to stay in their face.
Let them know that you're an educated woman.
You're not going anywhere.
He goes, I'm going to give you two business cards.
You keep one for yourself, you give one to the state's attorney's office, and you tell them if they don't have the messages off that phone, you know, within the next week, you're going to turn it over to the feds.
He goes, I'll have it off of there in 15 minutes.
So, and in between, they had taken the phone from Joliet down to the Illinois State Police, And they had the phone for at least four or five months at this point.
So I do this.
I go the next day to the state's attorney, give them the card, the business card, and lo and behold, they have the messages back in three days, which leads me to believe that they were sitting on them the whole time.
And why?
They were trying to protect them?
I don't know.
I don't know if it was just too much work for just one kid.
I don't know if they wanted me to go away.
But I don't know.
I've done a lot of research the last few years during COVID. And I just wonder if...
It just makes you wonder if somebody on the inside might have been involved, right?
Like, you just don't know.
So...
And I have no proof of that.
I don't know.
I have no idea why they didn't want to do anything.
You know, like, one kid just wasn't enough, apparently.
And But the average pedophile has over 300 victims.
But again, had they gotten his phone or his computer, I bet they would have found a plethora of them.
Yeah, they gave him all the time in the world to clean up everything.
Yep, yep.
So we end up meeting, my husband and I, who is my son's stepfather, we meet with two assistant state's attorneys.
After they got the messages back.
And they said, you know, we just don't think we have enough to go on.
There's too many gaps in the transcripts.
And, you know, if there was some other kid that could corroborate the story or this happened to someone else that, you know, and I'm like, so I asked him, I said, so one's not enough.
And the messages were sitting in front of them.
It was a stack of messages like this thick.
I said, are those the messages?
And he said, yes.
I said, can I see them?
And they both kind of looked at each other like they weren't expecting that.
I said, listen, it's my property.
I'm going to leave with that today and the cell phone if you're doing nothing with it.
So they give me the messages to look through.
And I remember this like it was yesterday.
I was flipping through them very methodically and reading everything and tears are just dripping from my face because everything that was in that Clip that you watched where he offered him the money, wanted to make a sex video, and then he would refer to his penis as my little guy.
Am I ever going to get to see the little guy?
Like, all of this stuff is in these text messages.
And really, up until this point, they have seen a very calm, cooperative person.
And I pushed the messages back very slowly, and I slammed my hands on the table, and I was like, you have got to be kidding me.
And I was not a very Christian at the time, but I was like, you have got to be kidding me.
And they looked at each other like...
And I was yelling so loud.
We were in a conference room in the middle of the courthouse.
And the one guy said, what?
One kid's not enough?
I said, what does he have to do?
Sodomize my son before you're going to do anything to him?
I said, we got him before he touched him.
We need to stop him from doing this to anybody else.
You guys need to do your jobs, you know?
And my husband's kicking me under the table.
And I said, you kick me one more time.
I'm kicking you out that door.
Like, I was ballistic.
I would have been, too.
And I don't think they knew what to do with me.
Psychological damage?
Can be worse than physical.
In fact, there's research that shows domestic violence that kids witness.
They're not actually hit.
They witness it, right?
The trauma, it leaves holes in their brain.
So the psychological impact of the grooming and the talking and him feeling his uh-oh feeling and feeling sick to his stomach and embarrassment and all the things he felt because of this sicko.
That is more damaging than what would have happened had they had a physical contact.
That's what people don't get.
They don't understand how your mind works.
We make things worse in our mind than what they actually are when it happens.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
And then again, you know, with him taking advantage of not only him, but me and then the community, our family, everybody, you know, it was just awful.
And then, so the next day I said, I wanted to meet with the state's attorney who I hadn't talked to yet, you know, like a year into this.
And so they said, well, he's, he's busy.
So I called at 8.01 the next morning.
I said, listen, I said, if he's not able to meet with me today, I'm going to come and pick everything up and I'm going to take it to the Illinois state's attorney's office.
So he called me back 15 minutes later, said he could meet with me that afternoon, and I printed off an article where he said that he came back to our county to protect the children and families of Grundy County.
So I printed that off, and I go in to meet with him, and he said that he wasn't really fully aware of what was going on with our case.
I'm like, we're a year into this, you have no idea what's going on in our case.
This town is in the county seat.
So this happens in the high school of the county seat of the county that you're the state's attorney and you have no idea what's going on.
I said, but I've heard that about you, that you really have no idea what's going on in your county and that this happens with a lot of cases.
And so I set the article down.
I said, how about we start doing this?
You came back here to protect the children and families of Grundy County.
Let's start doing this.
And he looked at me like he wanted to rip my head off.
Like it was not a good situation from there on out.
And had several other meetings with him, and at one point I told him I felt like I was stuck with him as my attorney, because that's my only option at this point.
This was a district attorney, right?
Yeah, which they call the state attorney in our county.
Yep.
And then, so we go on.
So you were talking about even going to this, like to the attorney general kind of like over the whole state.
Okay.
Right.
And so he, nothing really happens.
He doesn't do anything.
Doesn't do subpoena anything else.
And we're just going status hearing after status hearing.
He's not been charged with anything.
Hasn't been arrested.
Hasn't been indicted.
Nothing's going on.
Now the school had put him on a paid administrative leave at this point and And he then wanted to resign when it was over like Christmas break of the, of, um, I think it was actually 2011.
He resigned.
So, um, he resigns and the school though, they wouldn't let him resign until they talked to me first.
Their attorney said, you need to clear this with the mom first, let her know exactly what's going on.
And so I'm like, no, get them out of here, get them off the payroll, you know?
So that's what they did.
And, um, Then the principal calls me after like a year and he said, Michelle, I've been telling them that they need to come down and get his personnel file because there's things in there they're going to want to see.
And they wouldn't subpoena the personnel file.
So I'll go down to the attorney's office.
I don't know.
Again, I go down there.
I said, listen, the principal called me and said, you know, he's been telling you that there's things in the personnel file you're going to want to see, but you won't go subpoena it.
And he said, what could possibly be in there that we would need?
I said, what skin is it off of your back?
Just get it.
So he does a subpoena for the personnel file and the attorneys for the school wouldn't release it to them until I came in to sign off on it.
So I go in there and they use the HIPAA law saying that because he was a minor and his name was all over this that I needed to approve it to be released first.
So I go in there and I start reading everything.
The principal had been a counselor before and he met with the superintendent, the teacher and the union rep and flat out asked him, did you ever offer Andrew money for oral sex?
Did you want to make a sex video?
Would you refer to his penis as my little guy?
And he said he put his head down, shook his head in affirmation and said yes.
I'm like, we got him, right?
So I sign off on it.
I go back down to the state's attorney's office that day.
And I said, listen, I said, this is what's in there.
And he's like, well, why'd they let you see it?
And I said, because of the HIPAA law.
He said, they didn't have to do that.
I said, honestly, they let me see it, I think, because they knew that I was having all kinds of trouble down here with you.
And I would never know what was in there unless they let me see it first.
You would have never told me.
I said, so I'm going to tell you what, if he's not arrested in the next seven days, I will have every major news station out here on your front lawn.
So he waited the full seven days before he indicted him.
And so he indicts him on solicitation of a minor.
And so, again, we go status hearing after status hearing after status hearing.
So tell me, Michelle, real quick.
This was, what was the timeline from the disclosure initially with your son until he was indicted?
So the disclosure initially was in October of 2010, and he was indicted in, I think, January or February of 2012.
Every year.
Okay.
Yep.
It might have been even longer than that.
I have to go back and look at my records, but it was a long time after.
So in the election of 2012, we end up voting in a new state's attorney.
I was going to say, tell me he's not still there because I'm going to personally make it my agenda to get rid of him.
No, he's not.
Actually, I think he is an attorney in Georgia somewhere.
I'll have to look that up.
Oh, please tell me.
Yeah.
So, but he, we ended up getting a new state's attorney.
And so in January of 2013, our detective goes to the new state's attorney and he says, listen, there's two cases out there that you need to work on right away.
This case has been hanging out there for two years.
And one of them, that was our case.
And so he meets with us.
He says, listen, he goes, I don't know If we're going to be able to do anything with this at this point, we might have to take a plea deal.
It's been two years, and they'll say that you can't remember exactly what happened.
There's gaps in the transcript.
They could question what's not in there that we can't read.
And so I was so angry.
I was like, okay, so we're gonna have to take a plea deal.
And which would have meant that he would have had to pay some fines and he'd still be able to teach.
He wouldn't have to register as a sex offender.
Why?
Why would you have to take a plea deal?
Why?
Because they didn't think they could win.
It's always about winning, right?
It's winning.
I know.
My husband just served on the grand jury and it's such a...
It's messed up.
Our...
It protects the criminals.
Yes, everything.
And it should, right?
You're guilty until proven, or you're innocent until proven guilty.
But still, I mean, like, it's just so wrong, you know?
So, Michelle, this is why I was telling my husband, we were talking about this, in fact, like two days ago, about how, you know, the law protects the criminal.
And I said, well, you think about it like this.
Our founding fathers, you know, they made the judicial system to be as least...
You have to really commit a crime to lose your freedom.
Your freedom is so important that they want to make sure you got to keep it.
We're not in, you know, we shouldn't be in a state where, you know, you do any little thing and they incarcerate you or they kill you and write you off.
But at the same time, crimes against children.
And when you have it in black and white print for solicitation, like, that's an open and closed case, and that should be, like, the standard set.
Like, if you...
Hurt children, you don't get out of it alive.
I'm sorry.
To me, it's molesting a child, raping a child, enticing a child is just as bad as murder.
I hold them the same.
We'll get into this later, but Florida just passed last year and Idaho this year that if anybody is guilty of raping a child under the age of 12, it's the death penalty.
I'm down with that.
I think that'll become the norm across the country.
Other states should fall in line here soon.
So we end up going out to all these status hearings and they make it look like I am just out to get this teacher, right?
That's what they try to make it look like.
Because I attended almost every single status hearing the entire two years and Honestly, Michelle, you didn't go blow his brains out.
So I'm pretty sure you're trying to do it the right way.
I'm telling you, this guy is so lucky that I have a good head on my shoulders and I did everything.
You have self-control.
That's the fruit of the spirit.
Yeah.
And so here's where it really gets good and where God was all over this from the very beginning.
So we go to court in August of 2013.
He's going to take a plea deal.
He ends up saying he wants to take it to trial.
We're all like, what?
So the judge, though, was so ticked off because he's like, you have dragged this family through all of this for two and a half years.
This young man was home from college, because my son's now 19 at the time.
He was home from college this whole summer.
We could have gone to trial this summer.
I'm surprised your son hasn't beat his tail, honestly, now that he's a man.
Right.
Well, and then he ended up, you know, he was going to school in New Jersey.
So we had to bring him back home in October when I went to trial.
And it was just, it was horrible.
But the judge was fantastic.
Like he, he was saying everything that I've wanted to say for two years.
And it was everything in me not to just get up and yell, thank you and praise Jesus.
Right.
And so, but he ends up, not only does he want to take it to trial, but he's opting for a bench trial and not a jury trial.
That only happens with God.
There's no other way that that happens.
So we meet with the state's attorney and his new first assist that he has.
So this guy comes in.
He's like, he's super smart.
He's going to handle this.
And we feel that we can get a conviction out of this with him.
Thank you.
Get out of the way, Kyle.
Right, so the first assist comes in and he says, listen, there's a new law that was just put in place in Illinois last month in July of 2013 of grooming.
He goes, everything in that law is everything that happened to your son, your family, and the community.
We're going to go after that law plus solicitation of a minor.
He said that's going to be very difficult to get because there's no precedent set.
So I'm like, okay, so we end up going to court and go to trial in October and We end up getting solicitation of a minor and the very first unlawful grooming conviction in the United States.
Wow.
Yeah.
And now you fast forward to January of last year and I went to a reawaken event in Nashville and I met a sex trafficking investigator there named Amy Coelho.
Yeah.
So Amy starts telling me about These trafficking cases that she's on.
Now, she's also a paralegal out of Texas.
And the last case that she just worked on had closed in November of 22.
And it was the La Luz de Mundo case out of California.
And this was a church cult.
And it's in 47 different countries.
And they busted 123 different sex trafficking cells between Mexico and California.
And then she starts to tell me about a Larry Nassar gymnast was one of their clients and a couple of other high profile cases that they're working on.
So I'm like, well, I'm going to tell her about my measles case in Illinois, right?
So I start to tell her.
And she's like, wait, are you from Illinois?
And I said, yes.
And she said, when was it?
I said 2013, 2014.
And she got tears in her eyes and she grabbed my arm.
She goes, I cannot believe I'm meeting you.
She goes, I need to get a picture with you and send it to my team.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
And she said, we use your case for every trafficking case 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.
Wow.
I was a hot mess.
Both of us were crying.
And she's like, I don't think you understand.
She goes, we get a case file.
We get an envelope with the case in there.
We have no idea what your son's name is because all we got are his initials because he's a minor.
We have no idea the backstory of any of this.
And she said, to hear how hard you fought for this, she goes, your tenacity and your son's willingness to come forward, she goes, you guys have saved thousands of lives.
I was a mess, like crying all over again.
And then she says, you know, what we really need to do because other people are being, are grooming these kids.
She goes, you have the only grooming conviction in 10 years.
So she said, what we need to do is get a law put in place where somebody who is charged with grooming cannot take a plea deal.
And so we thought that people were fleeing out, and that's why they weren't getting charged with grooming.
And what actually was happening is, and once we dug into this, is we found out that Illinois is the only state that has a grooming law.
So in all the other states, you go from zero to 60, right?
So you have to actually touch the child before anything happens to that predator instead of stopping them before they actually touch anybody.
So I was working with General Flynn and his sister Mary Flynn with America's Future.
They hooked me up with a paralegal in Florida and a couple other attorneys in Florida, and they were working with some representatives there.
We started working with them, and they have...
A grooming law will be coming into play here.
It should be going to DeSantis' desk here soon for him to sign into law.
But it passed, you know, the House and the Senate.
And I'm also working with another representative from Iowa through another friend of mine, Emily Peterson.
And she was like one of the original mama bears, right, with the reawakened tour.
And so this representative, Mark Thompson, is working on the grooming law there.
And it passed the House of Representatives 94 to 0.
And now it's sitting in the Senate waiting for a vote.
So hopefully after this session, we'll have a grooming law in place in Florida and in Iowa.
And then in Illinois, I'm working with my rep here, Jed Davis, and we're trying to amend the current grooming law so that somebody who is charged with grooming and or trafficking won't be able to take a plea deal.
And the other thing that we're working on is trying to change the sex offender registry.
Because I ended up seeing this guy working in a mall two years after this happened, and he was only like 60 feet from one of those children's play areas in the middle of the mall.
And I said, how is that even legal?
Like, they can't go within 500 feet of a school.
They can't go into a public park or a state park.
But he can work in this area like 60 feet from a children's play area.
But because this law was written back in the 70s, those places didn't exist.
So they're not in the current law.
So now you think of like a Chuck E. Cheese or Dave& Buster's Six Flags, Disney, Universal, right?
Where all these predators can hang out and go after these children.
So what we're trying to do is put into the sex offender registry that anybody who's on the registry cannot work in or go into any facility that caters all or in part to children.
So what did he get?
Like, what was his punishment?
So...
He got 30 days in jail.
He had to pay like a $2,000 or $2,400 fine.
He had to register as a sex offender for only 10 years.
So this is the 10th year.
But he could never teach again.
So that was my main goal was to make it so he couldn't teach again.
He actually got sentenced to 180 days in jail, but only had to serve the first 60, which then you get day for day good behavior.
So he only had to serve 30.
And then the other 120 days will only have to be served if he violated probation.
So that's what he ended up getting.
And in the meantime...
That wasn't nearly enough.
No.
And because it's still even to date affects my son with me talking about all this now again, you know, it's kind of triggering him a little bit.
So that's good and bad, bad that it's triggering him, but good that we now realize he still hasn't worked through everything yet.
So he's, you know, going to some more counseling now and working through that.
But you didn't see the school system or nothing like that.
No, I did not go after the school.
And here's the thing is I went to three different attorneys and all I wanted was You know, retribution for my time that I lost from work, and for the money that we spent on counseling, and then maybe a little bit of something for my son, you know, for everything that he had to go through.
I didn't want a lot.
And every attorney that I spoke to wanted to go after the school because they have deeper pockets.
I'm like, we wouldn't have won our case if the school wasn't on our side.
There's no way.
And if they were not negligent at all, then I wouldn't go after them.
And that's not the right thing to do.
Nope.
And I told every attorney, I'm like, I need to be able to sleep at night.
But they were just worried about making money, right?
They wanted to make money.
That's attorneys only want to make money.
Yeah.
Just like politicians.
Right.
I just wanted my money back for what we had put out, but whatever.
I don't care.
I mean, it wasn't really about the money.
It was about getting this guy away from these kids.
And so...
That's what we ended up doing.
And now what we're trying to do is get this law put in place where somebody charged with grooming can't take a plea deal, but then trying to get a grooming law in place in all 50 states.
So that's why I'm coming on different podcasts is to see if anybody in all these states can connect me with a state rep or a state senator who would be willing to sponsor this bill.
And not losing the fact of all the fight that went into it, right?
In that they will actually do something and know how this can affect these kids.
Because like you said, they don't have to touch them for that to affect them for a long time.
And the great thing is...
Did you hear about what happened in Georgia?
Which?
We have a grieving bill that got passed.
Really?
Like it got passed just like a few days ago.
So Susan Cobb, I don't know if you've ever met Susan, but I want to introduce you to her.
She's a dear friend of mine.
We met when I was campaigning for governor.
She lives near Atlanta.
I think she's actually more close to Athens, but she, her daughter, ended up committing suicide.
She was groomed by her gymnastics coach.
From a very young child.
Pedophiles have a very specific age that they are turned on by.
It's very sick and twisted, if you don't know that.
And so this particular man was turned on by this pre-adolescent, pre-puberty age.
And so once they got to look like a woman, he's not interested anymore.
And gymnasts, they develop slower because they have all the muscle tone and all of that.
So actually their bodies kind of look younger, longer.
I think that's probably why he targeted that group of girls to go work with.
Sick, twisted dude.
And so when she finds out about it, her daughter, and then he'd already kind of moved on from her daughter to another younger child, and her daughter was just devastated.
And so that's how she kind of found out about it.
And I don't want to mess her story up because I might not be telling it exactly right, but her daughter committed suicide.
And so it's horrible.
It is the worst thing ever.
And she's such a warrior.
And she's been trying to get a grooming bill passed for years.
And so it got passed.
House Bill 993 grooming bill passes the state Senate.
So they have passed House and the Senate.
It's going to make the act of grooming a minor for sex a felony.
It's passed the state Senate.
The bill is sponsored by blah, blah, blah.
Okay, let's see.
Final revision also passed Tuesday by the House and it passed 172 to 2.
It was almost unanimous.
And then it passed another with just three negatives.
The rest were For it.
And so, during testimony for the community, Powell said the bill was passed on an incident in Hart County in which an 11-year-old girl was groomed for years by her gymnastics coach at YMCA in Hartwell.
She told her mother to testify to Susan Cobb and detailed what her daughter went through for years at the hands of her alleged molester until the age of 20 when her daughter committed suicide after the suspect was released on bond.
So, it is now waiting on Governor Kemp's signature on his desk for a signature.
But I was going to tell you when it actually was passed this week.
But it's a huge, huge win.
Because like you're saying, we don't have...
That's awesome.
She was just...
And it's House Bill, what is it?
So, it's House Bill 993.
And I can text you the links to this and you can hear it.
It's House Bill 993, Crimes and Offenses, Grooming and Minor for Indecent Purposes.
Got it.
Thank you.
That's awesome.
So now we'll have Florida, Georgia, Illinois, and Iowa.
So I will connect you when we get off the show today.
I will connect the two of you, and it will be awesome.
No, is she in politics now?
She's not, but she has been lobbying for this and advocating.
I've been praying, like, prayer partner with her and helping and calling senators and House members and trying to get them to do it.
And, you know, I've been a school counselor most of my career.
I'm kind of, I work more administratively now, but I... I've just gotten sexual abuse disclosures all of my career, and it's discernment.
You know, I can feel when a child's being molested.
I can feel when a child's being raped.
I can just feel it, and it's a demonic spirit.
We don't fight against flesh and blood, and from the very beginning, Michelle, when you started talking, and you described the first interaction with you and the perpetrator, and, you know, you're doing your job, and he's like, at some point, what clicked in his head to go after your son?
Instantly, the Lord showed me that Demonic.
Like it was like his demons and then demons that were around you at the time that were trying to, because we always have good and evil trying to make us do things and influence us.
It's like, oh, you can go after her son.
She has a son.
Let's go after him.
And so it's just a connection.
Your timeline passed and it's like these demons just try to ruin our kids' lives, you know, ruin our lives.
What's interesting is we found out later.
So here was the gut punch for me.
So when I was talking to Amy, she said, had he gotten his hands on your son, he wouldn't have kept him for himself.
He would have trafficked him.
If even through their own little group, I'm like, never, ever in the last 10 years, I ever think trafficking, right?
I'm thinking that watching the video.
So I'm wondering, Either he's wanting the video because he's going to get off on it over and over and over again as a trophy.
Or if he did have, I did have the thought, like, does he have a group of them together that they share?
But, you know, a lot of times they don't.
They're very singular because they don't want to get caught.
And so they're very singular focused.
So it could have been just for his own sick enjoyment.
But it could have been that he was going to use it and share it and make more money off of it by selling it to, you know, his little group of perverts.
Well, what's interesting is, you know, Going through that whole system, I mean, that was all new for me, you know, like you, I don't get in trouble.
I don't go to the courthouse for any little thing, you know what I mean?
And so I didn't know they had such things as a victim liaison.
And so we had a victim liaison and she, I saw her about three years ago or two years ago, and it was at work and she She's like, Michelle, because we had our masks on, you know, because I work in the hospital.
So, and I said, yes.
And she said, how is your son doing?
And I told her, I'm like, well, you know, it's been rough.
It's up and down, you know, it still kind of bothers him.
He's been in and out of counseling a little bit.
And she said, I want you to tell him something.
And she said, we arrested and put in prison a soccer coach who was molesting two kids under the age of 10.
In the same town where this guy was.
And she said the person that came to bail him out was that teacher.
So she said, I'm sure that they have a group of them down there.
And so she's like, you let him know that he helped put a guy away for a little while, at least, and someone who can no longer teach.
And let him know that he made a difference.
While those things help, it's still his story and his journey.
What's interesting is there was this Netflix show, Cheer.
I don't know if you've heard of that show.
But there was a kid on there who ended up molesting two brothers at a cheer competition after he was messaging them, DMing them on social media.
And So somebody told my son to watch that episode.
And this was, I think, last spring when he watched it.
And he ended up reaching out to those boys' attorney on Facebook Messenger and asked her if she could get a letter to the two boys and to the boy's mom.
And he didn't tell me that he did this until later.
And it was literally the first time that I ever got a glimpse of how he felt about me at the time, because we never really talked about it other than trying to just get through it, you know?
And my son ended up going on to become a U.S. Marine.
He's been one.
He wanted to be a Marine since the time he was seven years old when 9-11 happened and he came out of high school.
He thought he was going to listen.
Like we haven't even got a trial yet.
And like you will fail miserably go to school and we can figure this out later.
And he ended up, you know, three years later, ended up going into the Marine Corps.
But there was part of this letter, if you don't mind, I was going to read it to you.
Oh, yeah.
He said, my reason for writing this letter is that I want to offer encouragement and knowledge of what lays ahead.
I do not want to sugarcoat it.
It will be tough.
It will be the toughest thing you ever do in your lives.
And I say that as someone who ended up becoming a United States Marine.
Bootcamp was not nearly as tough as the decision to come forward and face fear as you already have and as you will continue to do.
That being said, I do not want to discourage you from continuing this battle because it will be the most gratifying thing you will ever do in your lives as well.
You will not see this now, but you will realize this as you get older.
Lean on your mom for strength and encouragement and just know that she always has your best interests at heart, no matter what you may think.
While the abuse happened to you, the abuse happens to everyone that surrounds you as well.
No matter how far your friends and family are, they will always support you in this decision because it's the most selfless thing that you could possibly do for people you have never met.
And it took me at least four or five times of reading that before I could read it without crying.
But it gave me that little glimpse that he knew that I was in his corner.
And that's the one thing I want to tell parents, too, is, man, fight tooth and nail for your kids.
Don't ever give up on them.
A statistic that Amy gave me was she said that 79% of the kids whose parents fight for them in situations like this end up becoming productive members of society.
So...
Yeah, that's right.
It's healing.
When you feel like you're not alone.
But when somebody discloses to you and then nothing's done, they're like, why should I ever tell it again?
It doesn't work.
Telling it doesn't work.
And that's why I push so hard when we get sexual abuse disclosures to make sure...
That they're prosecuted.
Because you don't want that child to ever feel like they're alone.
That's when they commit suicide.
That's why that happened to Susan Cobb's daughter.
When he got out on bond and it was like, you're out.
You're not arrested.
And you did all this to me.
She couldn't handle the shame and all the emotions that you have from the trauma.
And she killed herself.
A beautiful girl had her whole life ahead of her.
And I know she's in heaven.
She loved Jesus.
And we'll all see her again, Jennifer.
She's...
I feel like I know her because I've talked to Susan so much about her.
But, you know, it's a waste.
And that's what they want.
The enemy always comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
If he can't kill you, he's going to steal from you.
And if he can't steal from you, he's going to destroy you.
He's going to try to do that any way he can.
And so I'm so thankful.
You're saying thank you for his service on behalf of all of us watching my show.
We just appreciate his service so much.
And is he married?
Does he have children?
Like, how is he...
No.
So he's actually living out in Virginia right now.
He ended up getting discharged with a 100% disability rating.
So he was actually out at the VA in the Virginia area going through some things there, trying to work through that.
But he's living with a couple of other Marines right now that he was in service with.
So he's doing that, but he also has a regular job at a military boarding school, so he's been doing that as well.
So just kind of focusing on himself.
I truly think he needs to fix himself before he tries to get in any relationship at this point, but he's working on it and he's getting there and he's such a good kid.
And I always said that this guy had the right kid.
He had the wrong family, you know, and the two other boys that he went after that we found out about later We're good to go.
To receive all the messages that come into your kid's phone and all the messages that they send out.
Now, that being said, if you don't want to get all the silly messages that they're receiving and sending as well, like, hey, your hair looks nice today, you can set up for certain keywords, body parts, cuss words, things like that.
So those messages get texted in or out.
It'll come to your phone.
The other thing I want to do is I would like to work with somebody, some sort of I'm a tech savvy person to see if we can make that work for any app that they're texting on as well.
So I found out that somebody was actually texting a girl through a Bible app on the messenger on there.
So they're getting more smart, right?
They're not just texting them through messaging and through regular text messaging or even through Social media DMs are going into certain apps and messaging that way.
Pinterest, they can go in and message each other, all of those sorts of things.
So we got to be more diligent on what we're doing with our kids.
And the other thing too, is parents take your phones from your kids at night.
Had I taken his phone when he went to bed at night, I would have seen these messages come in and I wouldn't have missed them.
Well, there's also, like, there's apps.
I was swatted after I ran for governor, and they use an app, a Call Now app, and they can take your geographic location and make it look like it's your house and make it look like it's you.
And so you're actually seeing kids that are doing twisted things, bullying and doing stuff and saying there's someone else, and they're sending a text now app to make it look like it's someone else when really it's them.
And, you know, that kind of behavior has caused kids to commit suicide.
It's happened over and over again.
And so it's just, you have to be vigilant with their phones.
And a lot of times teenagers, they want to handle it themselves.
They don't want to be told what to do.
They don't want you to freak out.
I have teenagers and my mom, my daughter will tell me, she's like, mama, you freak out about stuff.
And I'm like, yeah, because I'm protecting you.
She's like, you just need to calm down.
But it's because I know, like I've seen kids kill themselves.
I've seen kids ruin their lives and be molested and then become, you know, turn out gay because they don't know who they are.
And You know, that'll offend people that are gay, I'm sure.
But I mean, I have friends that are gay, but I also have a lot of people I know that were molested and raped and were preyed on and groomed.
And then they don't know, you know, where they fit sexually because it interrupts your natural sexual progression.
And so I just, we have to protect and be vigilant.
And it is like talent, a millstone around your neck to take a child's innocence.
And so they may be a high school kid.
It doesn't matter.
You've taken their innocence.
That's not how God intended it to be.
Intended it to be man and woman.
And you've fallen in love.
And you get married.
And intimacy is supposed to be special.
And it's supposed to be in the marriage bed.
It's not supposed to be out for everybody and multiple partners and anything goes.
And crude talking.
And so all of that and the access to pornography that's free, it's just an addiction there that's just by firestorm all over the country.
We're in a different day.
We're in a different place.
We have to be vigilant.
I don't think people realize that the United States is the biggest purchaser of child porn, of these kids who are trafficked.
It's a $152 billion a year industry.
$32 billion of that comes from child trafficking.
But they're also trafficking them for their organs, for work, You know, for sex, for everything.
So I think people need to understand that it isn't just about the sex trafficking, you know?
And when you look at these prostitutes, too, I mean, a lot of them have been trafficked into that.
You know, I think there are laws that are starting to be put in place as well where they're not actually charging the prostitute, but they're going after the john and they're going after the people that are buying the sex and trying to get that prostitute help because they do realize that they were probably Groomed and trafficked into that business to make them money.
So that's finally starting to happen.
I think our laws need to catch up with all of that.
The laws need to catch up with the technology.
It's so far behind right now.
Like you said, they're doing these apps where they can say that there's somebody else.
Where's the law put in place that the person who sent that text message should be the one who's actually going to prison?
You know, those things should be happening, but it's so hard for them to keep up.
And then the other thing, too, is I don't think a lot of people even realize, like, President Trump, he's the only president to ever write bills into law against human child trafficking, and he wrote nine of them.
And two of them he executive ordered.
And one of them was Executive Order 13818, which actually allows them to seize the assets of anybody who is convicted of trafficking.
So they can use their assets to actually help the victims that they were molesting.
So it's people need to understand how bought in President Trump is to stopping all of this.
And part of the reason why they don't want him back in there, he's taking their money away.
He's taking their funding away.
This is a huge industry.
So they're going to tooth and nail.
Yeah.
Whenever they start saying, you know, well, he's these women are accusing him of different things.
And I'm like, you know, the enemy always does that.
It's always a smokescreen.
I've met him several times.
He's a wonderful man.
He's very humble.
Totally not what I expected the first time I met him because he is not this arrogant person.
He is a New Yorker and we need an alpha man to be a butthole.
I agree.
To get this country back in order.
But he is so kind.
And he loves his grandchildren.
He loves his children.
And he is not twisted and perverted.
And the enemy wants to pay him that way because they can't bring him down for anything.
So we live in a warped, messed up society.
And we do have a...
We do have a federal grooming law.
So if they cross state lines, you know, or they put things in the mail across state lines, that would fall into a federal grooming law.
So I'm also looking for somebody on the federal level who could actually sponsor this bill at a federal level so that they can't take a plea deal at the federal level if they're charged with grooming as well.
And I have visions of President Trump signing that into law.
So we're going to make that happen.
We might get Marjorie Taylor Greene to take that up.
I have been really trying to see if she would be the one, but I can't seem to get to her.
So maybe you can help me get to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
I don't know.
But I think she would be the one that would really pick that up.
She's been doing a lot of stuff with trafficking and anti-trafficking stuff.
So I think she would be a key person for that.
It would be fantastic.
Yeah.
There's several in Georgia.
We have a, she would be great.
And then there's a couple others that are in Congress that would be, that would be great too.
So maybe between all of them and Georgia, they can come together and help with that.
Especially with this agreement, with this agreement, state agreement law that we just got passed.
So Michelle, thank you so much for coming on.
We're going to start praying right now.
All of y'all watching, we're going to start praying for Michelle's son, for his wife and that she is just wonderful.
And she is, she helps bring the rest of the healing that he needs and that she comes and that it's just a beautiful marriage.
Well, the enemy tried to steal.
We just call the enemy's hand.
You know, Proverbs 6.31, it says, we call the devil's hand.
He has to repay seven times.
So they're going to have a seven time more blessing than what God would have given to begin with because the enemy tried to steal from him.
Yes, there we go.
Thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate it.
And for any help that you can give would be great.
Do you want to tell everybody, is there a way that people can reach out to you about this?
Yes.
So after I spoke at an event in Florida, the America Project gifted me a website.
So it's just my name is Michelle Peterson.
It's two L's in Michelle.
And Peterson was O-N. So it's michellepeterson.org.
Also, they can email me at patriotsunite76atprotonmail.com.
So against Patriots with an S, unite76atprotonmail.com.
And then I'm also on X, so they can get a hold of me on X and DM me there.
Let me look and see what my...
I've said it wrong before, and so I always want to double check it.
But it's at michellepete77.
is my twitter handle so or x I guess I should say reach out if you're in your state and you want to help get the screaming law passed Michelle would love to help you do it and so reach out yes thank you so much thank you thank y'all for watching we'll see you next week I love you God bless you God bless America Hey everybody,
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