A Moms for Liberty outreach organiser has been exposed as a child sex offender. (Getty Images)
An outreach leader for “extremist” group Moms For Liberty, a far-right movement that demonises LGBTQ+ people as a threat to children, has been exposed as a registered sex offender.
An investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Phillip Fisher Jr, who had been hired by Moms For Liberty as an outreach leader in Philadelphia, is a convicted child sex offender.
The Republican pastor pleaded guilty in 2012 to a charge of aggravated sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy.
Fisher, who was 25 and living in Chicago at the time of the felony, has insisted that he did nothing wrong, despite pleading guilty to one of the 12 counts filed against him, according to court records seen by the local paper.
Fisher served three years in prison followed by two years of supervised release.
When asked about their findings, Fisher confirmed the details to The Inquirer, but repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and described his criminal conviction as a “blip”.
According to Fisher, the charges made against him were part of a “railroad job” by the LaRouche organisation – a political movement that promotes the ideals of the late Lyndon LaRouche – with which Fisher Jr says he was once associated.
He insisted: “It was a member of his camp, his party, that made the accusation. They pushed it through.” Elsewhere, he described himself as a “victim” of the organisation
Court documents seen by the paper offer no information as to how Fisher met the 14-year-old boy, nor how the alleged felony came to the attention of law enforcement.
When approached for comment the chairwoman of the Moms for Liberty Philadelphia chapter, Sheila Armstrong, said that she was surprised to learn of Fisher’s conviction.
She told the paper that she had received a “child abuse history certification” from the state of Pennsylvania’s department of human services, and he was not named as a “perpetrator of an indicated or founded report of child abuse.”
However, as a result of his guilty plea, Fisher is now on a National Sex Offender Website operated by the US Department of Justice, and a registered sex offender on an Illinois state police list.
Fisher told the Inquirer: “I never went out of my way to hide anything. I’m in the database. It’s an easy search.”
After the Inquirer published its exposé on Fisher, the official Moms for Liberty accoun took to X (formerly Twitter) to share the aforementioned child abuse history certification.
“This person is not a chapter chair, he was a volunteer with the Philadelphia chapter,” they wrote.
“Our chapter chair did a background check with Pennsylvania DHS and he was cleared pursuant to Child Protective Services law.”
Under the guise of protecting children, Moms for Liberty has previously made headlines for accusing President Joe Biden of trying to turn kids trans and gay, calling the police when a teenager tried to check out a YA novel from her school library, and endorsing far-right candidates for office.
The SPLC-defined extremist group, which began as an opposition to Covid-19 public health regulations, now focuses on book bans, school boards, and the spread of homophobic propaganda to prevent what they believe is the “woke indoctrination” and “grooming” of children.