By Phillip C. Parrish
Retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander (21 years Intelligence), Teacher, Principal, Parish Executive Administrator, Father, Grandfather, Fraud Whistleblower, Lifelong Minnesotan
June 2026
Every decent Minnesotan — every parent, grandparent, teacher of conscience, and person of faith — wants to stop grooming, groomers, and child predators. Full stop. As a father and grandfather who has raised children and now helps protect them through my work at a Catholic church and school, as a veteran who spent 21 years in Navy Intelligence chasing real threats, as a 13-year K-12 music teacher who worked directly with students every day, and as a former school principal and administrator who has hired teachers and managed youth environments, I stand unequivocally against any sexual exploitation of children.
HF3489, passed unanimously (House 133-0, Senate 66-0) in May 2026 and signed into law, was sold as a tool against grooming. In truth, it is upside-down, backwards legislation from the same DFL/DSA-aligned forces that actively enable the sexualization, confusion, and medical mutilation of children. While pretending to protect kids from predators, it will drive away decent adults — especially men — who would actually guard them.
We All Want to Stop Real Predators — But This Bill Inverts Reality
No one disputes the evil of grooming: the deliberate building of false trust to exploit a child sexually. Real predators must be exposed, removed, and prosecuted with evidence and due process.
HF3489 creates a new felony for grooming (amending Minn. Stat. § 609.352) — an adult expressing intent for sexual conduct with a child plus a “deliberate pattern” of building a false trusting relationship, even without the act occurring. It mandates automatic teacher license revocation on conviction, requires law enforcement to notify licensing boards on charges, updates mandated reporter training, allows investigations of older allegations, imposes field-trip rules barring adults from being alone with students, and appropriates more funding for related programs.
On paper, it sounds tough. In practice, in Minnesota’s accusation-friendly culture — with weak due process in schools and licensing boards, and a climate where “believe the child” often overrides evidence — it creates a massive chilling effect. Decent men of substance, fathers, veterans, and mentors with families and consciences will look at the risks and simply walk away from teaching, coaching, mentoring, or volunteering. The protectors vanish. The talent pool collapses to the reckless or the actual predators who thrive in chaos. Children, especially boys, lose positive male role models who set boundaries and notice evil.
I saw this dynamic up close during my 13 years teaching K-12 music and my subsequent years as a principal and administrator: false or exaggerated accusations already destroy good people who are simply trying to connect with and guide students. This law supercharges it.
The Staggering Hypocrisy: The Real Grooming Machine
This is what makes HF3489 truly disturbing and backwards. It comes from the same intellectually and morally broken actors, nonprofits, unions, and ideologues who:
• Champion “gender-affirming care” for minors, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries that mutilate healthy bodies and cause lifelong sterility and regret. Minnesota has positioned itself as a “trans refuge” state, shielding these interventions from out-of-state parental protections.
• Enable secrecy from parents. Minnesota minor consent laws allow youth to access sensitive health services — including those tied to mental health and gender-related issues — confidentially, often without parental knowledge or consent, severing family bonds and exposing confused children to irreversible harm.
• Normalize deviant ideologies in schools: pushing gender identity lessons from young ages, social transition policies, curricula that sexualize children early, and broader cultural softening around harmful behaviors — all while treating parental concern and biological reality as bigotry.
These policies convince vulnerable kids they can “change” their God-given sex, hide destructive behaviors from parents, and pursue unhealthy, self-destructive paths. This is grooming on a systemic, state-backed scale — psychological manipulation and medical exploitation dressed as “care” and “compassion.”
Yet these same forces passed HF3489 with unanimous fanfare, claiming to fight grooming. The inversion is staggering. They attack normal, protective adult-child relationships and male mentorship while defending the very behaviors that prey on children’s minds and bodies.
Flip the Script: Use Every Lawful Tool Against the Real Exploiters
Enough is enough. As a fraud whistleblower who has exposed schemes looting Minnesota’s vulnerable, I urge every parent, grandparent, and caring adult who loves our children to immediately start filing complaints and charges against adults — educators, bureaucrats, officials, counselors, and clinicians — found advocating for or implementing these DFL/DSA policies that destroy schools, children, and families.
HF3489 and its related mechanisms (licensing board reporting, mandated reporter requirements, school discipline rules, and expanded investigation windows) give us tools. Document and report patterns of conduct that build false trust in harmful ideologies, encourage self-mutilation, promote secrecy from parents, or normalize sexual confusion and exploitation. Use the spirit and letter of the law against those who have been grooming entire generations.
• File complaints with licensing boards when teachers, counselors, or administrators push transitions, hide information from parents, or implement policies that confuse children about biology.
• Report to child protection services and authorities where these practices enable exploitation.
• Demand investigations into curricula and practices that fit the broader pattern of manipulation.
This is not vigilantism — it is lawful accountability, persistence, and truth-telling. The machine has weaponized accusations and bureaucracy for years. Now we turn the tables with evidence, documentation, and courage. As Christ flipped the tables in the temple (Matthew 21:12), we must confront this rot head-on in defense of the little ones.
Predictable Outcomes If We Fail to Act
• An exodus of decent protectors from our schools and youth programs.
• Weaponization of the law primarily against innocent men and families.
• More bureaucratic bloat feeding the very grift networks that loot education funding.
• Generations of children left more vulnerable — lost to confusion, sterility, despair, and actual predators who exploit the chaos.
Real Protection Requires Truth, Faith, and Courage
True child safety means ending the medical mutilation of minors and secrecy from parents. It means restoring parental rights as the primary authority. It means transparency in curricula, swift evidence-based removal of actual predators with due process that protects the innocent, and welcoming faithful, high-character men back into mentoring roles without fear. It means dismantling the networks profiting from this harm.
As a lifelong Catholic who integrates faith into all I do, I am guided by Christ’s warning: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). This law does not heed that call — it inverts it.
Call to Action
Parents and families: Start today. Document everything. Report patterns. Hold them accountable. Faith leaders, educators of conscience, and caring adults: Stand with the protectors, not the ideologues. Pray for Minnesota’s children — that God would shield them from both overt predators and the syndicate’s subtler grooming. Pray for wisdom, courage, and perseverance.
We must reclaim our schools, our culture, and our state for the next generation. The little ones deserve adults who understand human nature, incentives, and the reality of evil — not performative theater from those enabling it.
Phillip C. Parrish
Kenyon, Minnesota
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