
A man who holds a top position in the Philadelphia chapter of the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty has been outed as a registered sex offender.
Phillip Fisher Jr., who is a “faith-based” outreach leader for the chapter and a Christian pastor, was convicted in 2012 for aggravated sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Moms for Liberty claims to advocate for children in schools with its efforts to ban books from school libraries they deem to promote pornographic content and racially divisive ideology. The group has claimed certain school materials promote are “indoctrination” or “grooming” of children and have accused various LGBTQ activists of being pedophiles.
“Their use of homophobic dog whistles, which are then spread across social media, are leading to anti-LGBTQ violence. One of the more common targets of this group and the notorious ‘Libs of TikTok’ social media account are drag queen story hours, which are events where drag queens read books to children in local schools or libraries,” the LGBTQ Victory Fund wrote in a post. “A drag queen story hour event in Boston was infiltrated by a white supremacist group that mirrored the same homophobic talking points that the ‘Moms for Liberty’ also push.”
Fisher is registered as a sex offender in Illinois state police list and on the Justice Department’s national sex offender list. He told the Inquirer that he never intentionally hid anything about his past.
“I’m in the database,” he added. “It’s an easy search.”
Fisher pleaded guilty to one of 12 charges filed against him, alleging he had oral and anal sex with a victim in the case in January 2011. He served three years in prison followed by two years of supervised release.
He claims the charges against him were a “railroad job” by the political action committee for Lyndon LaRouche, a former U.S. presidential candidate now widely regarded as conspiracy theorist.
“At the time, I was the victim,” he told the Inquirer. “What they did was basically trumped up charges to drown out the complaints that I was making on the issues of human rights.”
Read the full report over at the Philadelphia Inquirer.