Bennett’s grooming bill moves forward

Four months ago, Rep. Peggy Bennett saw Hannah LoPresto on TV as the Eagan High School graduate spoke about a teacher who had groomed her throughout her teens.
Last week, LoPresto sat beside Bennett in St. Paul, testifying in support of a new bipartisan bill designed to make her former teacher’s behavior a crime.
“It happened to me a generation ago,” said Bennett, a Republican from Albert Lea who represents parts of Steele, Mower, Waseca and Freeborn counties as the representative for District 23A. She previously represented parts of Dodge County.
The bill she introduced includes a field trip policy that would prevent adults from being alone with a child; require reporting suspicions to licensing boards; and criminalize grooming.
Grooming, as described by Detective Chad Clausen of the Eagan Police Department, “is the slow process of building a false, trusted relationship with the child to facilitate future sexual abuse, whether or not the physical abuse actually occurs. Waiting for physical abuse means waiting for more harm,” he said.
Bennett is the Republican chairwoman of the House Education Policy Committee; she turned the gavel over to Republican Vice Chairwoman Patricia Mueller, of Austin, then took a seat at the testifiers’ table.
LoPresto said she was groomed by her high school band teacher from 2012 until she graduated in 2016.
“Early on, this teacher made me feel special by asking me to help him organize music or move instruments after class,” she said during her Feb. 24 testimony before the committee.
Over the course of four years, she said, “he normalized touching me and communicating as if we were close friends,” escalating the behavior during an international band trip to Greece.
When they returned to Eagan, the teacher “used religion as a form of control, and made me believe that I had to marry him because of the things I had done.”
LoPresto said the man sexually assaulted her on the morning of her last day of high school.
“Due to the years of grooming, I believed that I was an active participant in my abuse and that I had caused it to happen,” she told the committee.
She told no one — until an Eagan Police Department detective found her while doing an unrelated investigation into the teacher in 2022, for similar behavior with a student.
“My story exposed numerous gaps in our state laws that need to be strengthened to better protect K-12 students from sexual abuse,” LoPresto said, “especially when it involves educator misconduct.”
The bill also addresses the need for stricter mandated reporter training and requirements; LoPresto said there were educators in her school who observed “concerning patterns” and didn’t report it, “but I believe they didn’t know what grooming was or how to identify the signs.”
She told legislators that “establishing the grooming of children as a (standalone) felony can prevent abuse from escalating to sexual assaults — and it recognizes that grooming alone causes substantial harm to a child.”
LoPresto said the sexual assault at the hands of her teacher was less harmful to her long term health and well-being than the “five-plus years of grooming,” which she called “years of psychological manipulations that harmed my understanding of intimate relationships, my own value and my ability to trust others.”
Clausen was the detective who investigated the cases against the former Eagan teacher.
Though the man was not criminally charged, it was not due to a lack of probable cause, Clausen said.
“It was due to gaps in Minnesota laws in 2016 regarding positions of authority and high school students,” he said, and prior to 2021, it was not illegal for a teacher and a student to have a relationship if the student was 18 or older.
Still, Clausen said, other gaps remain, “many of which are included in this bill.”
Isolation on field trips, especially overnight trips, “creates predictable opportunities for one adult to be alone with one student,” he said. Preventing the situation protects both students and staff.
“This isn’t a typical bill that we hear in this committee,” said DLF Committee Chairwoman Sydney Jordan, “but I think it’s a great bill, and I’m sure we’ll be supporting it.”
Bennett, who has revealed she was groomed decades ago as a high school sophomore — also by a band director — noted how similar her story is to LoPresto’s.
She was vulnerable, Bennett said, “and it’s so gradual that you think it’s OK — because we’re young people. Our brains are not mature enough to give consent at that point.”
Bennett said she came close to being raped after the teacher “broke boundaries that never should have been broken.”
She was a teacher in the Albert Lea Public School District for 33 years, and said she knows “the vast majority of teachers do not groom our children.
“They care about them deeply, and I know that,” Bennett said, “but this is common enough that we need to deal with it — so let’s have a good law that makes sure we keep kids away from these kinds of predators.”
The House bill has now moved to the Public Safety Committee.
The Minnesota Senate introduced a similar bill last week.