The ‘faith-based’ leader for Philly’s Moms for Liberty chapter is a registered sex offender

spaceghoti@lemmy.one to politics @lemmy.world – 535 points – The ‘faith-based’ leader for Philly’s Moms for Liberty chapter is a registered sex offender
inquirer.com

Phillip Fisher Jr. is a pastor and Republican ward leader who coordinates faith-based outreach for Philadelphia’s Moms for Liberty chapter.

He’s also a registered sex offender, due to a 2012 felony conviction for aggravated sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy when Fisher was 25.

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i like how moms for liberty's whole thing is that trans women are taking away opportunities from cis women and yet the leader of moms for liberty is a cis man.

I would never cease to point out to them how liberal it is that they don't discriminate by gender for the leader of Mom's for Liberty.

Fenerty said he was unaware of Fisher’s conviction until asked about it by The Inquirer last week.

Are they not doing background checks on these idiots before hiring them?

Only a few sentences later it's specified that they obtained a child abuse certificate for them which came back with 'no records exist'.

Happy to dis silly conservative groups, but it honestly looks like they did their due diligence with background checks.

I saw that, but then the next paragraph says:

Fisher is listed on Pennsylvania’s “Megan’s Law” website for registered sex offenders, maintained by the Pennsylvania State Police, in a file last updated in July.

So it doesn't seem like it would have been too difficult to find. A controversial political group claiming to "think of the children" should try really hard to make sure they aren't employing convicted sex offenders, especially in any kind of leadership role.

Maybe it's a certificate like mine for database administration. He's a certified child abuser. He took some classes, and he knows how to abuse children. Like looking for the union label.

It’s almost like they recruit them.

There's an obligatory reminder that he is not a drag queen that should go here. Since conservatives keep insisting that drag queens are all (or mostly) pedophiles.

Not a drag queen, but a Republican grifter, again.

Whenever they say this they are just admitting that they find sexually attractive men dressed as women.

Otherwise nobody is thinking there's anything inherently sexual about drag. You can make it sexual, sure, only if you want to, though.

I love how there's one pissed off pedo/Republican down voting everyone in here.

If Republicans had an ounce of good faith I might wag a finger at conflating then with pedos. However they do not so I find this fucking hilarious

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I gotta hand it to ya, Philly, you don't act predictable. This Mom for Liberty is a black man Republican, checkmate, atheists.

I was about to say, how is a black Republican man leading a women's group? Does he have godlike rizz? Is it possible to learn this power?

The national Moms for Liberty organization held a summit in Philadelphia this past summer, where denying transgender identity for children and removing books from school libraries were major themes.

Meanwhile, back at his church:

Fisher has supported Trump’s campaigns; a 2020 report by WHYY included a mural in support of Trump that Fisher said was painted on an exterior wall of his church by children he worked with in his congregation.

The charging documents allege that Fisher had oral and anal sex with the 14-year-old boy in January 2011

Fisher said he took the plea bargain to get out of the county jail, where he said he experienced violence from other prisoners.

Wew. That was a wild ride.

Anybody really surprised by such a relevation?

I'm sure some are, but they shouldn't be. Meanwhile, the MFL assholes are probably claiming it's all just a smear campaign.

Yeah, those pesky lefties and their time machines going back in time to frame good people years before they joined MFL. When will they learn that neo-cons are smarter than them and will quickly figure out their conspiracy while failing to provide any evidence every single time.

Definitely seems like a pattern with these things. So many of these people who are into some stuff, but rather than accept it as a personal battle, they channel everything into finding some external "evil" to help them rationalize the existence they're struggling with. It's too bad they can't see how many others they're hurting.

The dude running my local M4L has strong pedo vibes.

Any time another dude is more interested in someone's kids than their parents are? Alarm bells.

I get it, there are lots of well meaning men who care about kids. Unfortunately they present the same way as predators, and I err on the side of caution.

Men are not the only ones who can sexually abuse children.

It's a numbers game. I have to deal with the same thing in my field- men are not allowed to provide one-on-one hygiene care (bathing, toileting, cleaning waste) for female adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Since we're talking about children instead of my field, 96% of people who sexually abuse children are male. Even factoring in that female perpetrators might be underreported, that is a stark number, so when people say they err on the side of caution, I'm sure you can see why only using female staff for this job would seem safer.

Are there perfectly healthy, nurturing men who pay the price? Of course. But not as many of them as potential sexual predators it seems.

Fuck me sideways, I've never seen such a perfect response to essentially a 'not all men' comment (granted this is the more unusual flavor of 'not just men's but still)

Thank you!

It's a response I developed explaining to people why men aren't allowed to work alone with women in my field. I often throw in, "If you were a predator, what kind of job would you look for?"

People with developmental and intellectual disabilities are five times as likely to face this abuse as their neurologically typical peers, because many of them can't report that abuse as effectively.

It's my experience that the few men of the world who find this stricture upsetting do so because either they are pretending to be one of the "good" ones in order to get close enough to abuse someone, or because they believe themselves incapable of abuse and chafe at being paint with the same brush. To them I always ask; which is more important to you, that you aren't being seen as a potential predator, or that we have a system designed to keep as many people as possible, as safe as possible? Because we can't have both.

Fisher said he took the plea bargain to get out of the county jail, where he said he experienced violence from other prisoners.

So he used his position as a pastor in the African American community to advocate for prison reform, right? That seems like it'd be a pretty popular position in that community.

You say he instead decided to demonize trans kids? Well, ok, then.

At this point, I think I'm more surprised when the Republicans have an upstanding patron that isn't a pedophile, rapist, or crazy religious figure.

You seriously can't make this up any more.

Hearing this kind of thing is becoming less and less surprising

you can't spell Republican without one of them being outed as a pedo because that's how often it happens

Gosh, it's almost like pedophilia and sexual abuse is a solid Republican value at this point.

It's ok, everybody. He said that he was "railroaded." Everything's fine. /s

These stories still make me laugh, but I've stopped being the least bit surprised.

"I hate queers!" Oh, you're gay. Or attracted to trans women. Or whatever the fuck else makes you afraid.

That's one conflicted man I cannot appreciate but his excuse doesn't sound too far fetched TBH

Can you copy paste it. I'm pay walled.

Not the person you replied to but

He repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and called his conviction “one blip” in his background. He blamed it all on a dispute about his trying to break away from the LaRouche organization, and said the 14-year-old boy and his parents were part of that group.

“It was a political situation that happened between me and Lyndon LaRouche,” Fisher said. “It was a member of his camp, his party, that made the accusation. They pushed it through. It was really a railroad job.”

In his "defense", one picture from his time working for LaRouche included holding a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache for some protest. By all means, I could see a group like that being crazy conspiracy theorists concocting some crazy plot to hurt him. But he was a part of that group. He's now a part of a different crazy conspiracy group. He could maybe try a group that isn't full of crazy conspiracy theorists. But then he might not feel at home.

Good Lord. Yeah I mean, that doesn't sound super believable. 14 year old going through with what their parents want? Nah. He fuckin diddled that kid.

Again not defending him but, I could easily see a 14 year old in a cult going along with what their parents or other authoritative figures say.

That being said, the part that doesn't pass the sniff test for me is the grand jury indictment. Abuse cases like that are notoriously hard to prove in court (in part due to kids not making the most reliable witnesses). If a grand jury brought charges, I'm more inclined to believe there was enough smoke to investigate for the fire.

Could also try a group that doesn't have as a core uniting value the hatred and distrust of black people, you know, if you are one.

It's really not his fault. As a conservative, he's been trained to ignore conservative sexual deviance, especially if it involves kids, and more especially from a religious leader. Could you imagine trying to find a group that would accept a black child molesting religious leader? Much easier to hide not disclose that and be accepted as the black religious leader.