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Garretson Business Manager Busted in Minor-Solicitation Sting; Lessons for Legislature?

A Democratic friend looks at the arrest of Garretson schools business manager Rodney Bernard Fischer and wonders why we aren’t hearing Republicans proposing legislation to ban male school administrators and teachers to protect our children from sexual predators.

The Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Department busted Fischer at work Tuesday for trying to hook up with who he thought was a 13-year-old girl from out of town:

Rod Fischer, Garretson K-12 business manager
Rod Fischer, Garretson K-12 business manager

On June 1, a special agent with the Homeland Security office in Sioux Falls received a tip from the office in San Jose, Calif., that an undercover agent had talked with a Sioux Falls man who was interested in having sex with a 13-year-old girl.Court documents show that the agent had posted a Backpage.com ad on May 23, posing as a photographer who was bringing her daughter to Sioux Falls for a few days.

Fischer allegedly responded to the ad, saying he wanted to have sex with both the photographer and her daughter. The undercover agent later posed as the 13-year-old girl and messaged Fischer on Kik, a messaging app.

Fischer, using the name sdhorndog2012, sent sexually explicit messages to what he believed was a 13-year-old girl, according to an affidavit filed in the case.

Homeland Security matched the IP address to Fischer’s name and address in Sioux Falls and received a warrant for his arrest on Monday [Katie Nelson and Megan Raposa, “Garretson Administrator Arrested for Soliciting Agent Posing as Girl, 13,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2016.06.08].

Another general rule for healthy living: if you’re doing something that requires or inclines you to use a nickname that includes the phrase “horndog,” you should probably stop doing it.

At peril of sounding like I’m soft on crime, let me note that Fischer does not appear to have harmed any children. In a letter to district parents, Superintendent Guy Johnson says “School officials have been in contact with the Minnehaha County Sherriff’s office regarding these charges, and they have informed us that ‘there do not appear to be any local victims in the case.'” The government apparently tricked Fischer into thinking he was talking to an out-of-town woman and her underage daughter. There is no 13-year-old victim, only a fiction created by a Homeland Security agent and allegedly fantasized by the defendant.

But demonstrating a willingness to realize such fantasies is a crime for good reason. We fight child-trafficking on the supply side and the demand side.

Consider, however, that this crime did not take place in a school bathroom or locker room. It was not perpetrated by some outsider or marginalized member of society. The defendant appears to be a pretty regular guy, a member of the community trusted for over a decade with the school’s money. No state rules dictating gender based on birth certificates protects 13-year-olds from this crime. No school gunslinger keeps adults from harboring such perverse thoughts and seeking outlets therefor.

We have far more examples of individuals in our schools using school computers and shoe cams and other means to act on predatory impulses than we do of armed assaults or transgender bathroom berserkers. The empirical evidence would suggest that, in its obsession with paranoid potty bills and guns and such, the South Dakota Legislature has been ignoring the real nature and methods of the predators who target children.

88 Comments

  1. Eve Fisher 2016-06-09 08:48

    It’s my personal opinion that most of the proposed potty bills are sponsored by people who are trying to shift awareness and attention away from the fact that children are abused by pedophiles, not LGBTs, and those pedophiles are overwhelmingly men, who appear to be normal guys who generally have positions of authority over children: coaches, teachers, administrators, priests, pastors. And, of course, relatives and babysitters. But if everyone’s in a panic about the wrong person in the bathroom, that makes life so much easier for pedophiles because they look so normal…

  2. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 08:55

    What is the lefts infatuation with non-normal sexual orientation? You would think the only thing of any importance in the whole country is whatever is the latest whine from the LBGT community. This guy obviously has some mental issues if he is attracted to underage girls, but yet a boy thinking he is a girl or vice versa is normal and not a mental issue to many of you????

  3. Dave 2016-06-09 09:09

    Yeah, Stum … a boy thinking he is a girl will hurt SO many people, and certainly something like that should be ALL of our business. Let’s brand such individuals the same way we brand cattle so we are all aware of who they are …

  4. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 09:22

    They are already branded in a way as to who they are. They were born with parts that distinctly tell them who and what they are. No problems as long as they use the bathrooms, locker rooms and play extra curriculars associated with the natural parts they were given. This is a pretty simple concept. Why the left needs to make up new genders or new distinctions for those who do not want to be what they truly are is baffling to many. I am in no way defending pedophiles, but what if their brains are wired differently? Should judgment be less critical of them, because their brain is telling them something that is truly wrong, is actually okay?? Of does the brain being different only matter in areas that the liberal left sees to be okay. My earlier argument that a 50 year olds brain says he is only 15, does a school district need to let them be in 9th grade, because in their mind they are only 15?? Can the movie theatre discriminate and charge them the adult price even though their brain says they are 15? Would those things be considered a mental illness, but your brain saying you are a girl when you are obviously a boy is normal? Where do you draw the line?

  5. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 09:29

    Stumpy and friends have the mental fixation on little children’s pee pees.

    That could explain wingnut’s fixation on ultrasounds for pregnant women. They want an early opportunity to assign potties before birth.

  6. Jeff Endrizzi 2016-06-09 09:31

    It’s not about a transgender physically hurting someone else…it’s the worry about hurting the transgender’s feelings instead of acknowledging there is something not right mentally with those few individuals PLUS the ignorance of the damage that can occur to “normal” kids by subjecting them to a transgender in that most private of places, the bathroom.

    Something isn’t right about the guy in the story above….and there are laws concerning people like that.

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-09 09:32

    Right away, Stu tries to derail this converion into another cookie-cutter condemnation of “The Left”. The crime in question isn’t a Right-Left issue. The infatuation, represented by proposed legislation in SD, appears to be all on the Right, which, as Eve notes, isn’t focusing on the real, empirically demonstrated threats to children.

  8. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 09:35

    Once again caheidelberger my examples have backed you into a corner and cannot be explained away and once again Mike has shown is immaturity and utter lack of being able to function in a normal society with his childish stupidity!

  9. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-09 09:39

    Jeff, let’s compare harms. The guy in the story above, if guilty of the crimes for which he was arrested, poses a pretty clear threat to others. He was trying to persuade a mom to arrange for him to have sex with her daughter. He communicated that desire directly to who he thought was that daughter. That’s dangerous behavior and is rightfully illegal.

    The transgender students targeted by this year’s vetoed school potty bill want to go pee and dress for basketball games. They aren’t trying to harm anyone else. Expanding the view a little, if any transgender folks have used the same bathroom as me, I haven’t noticed them. I haven’t seen anyone gawking at my parts, and I haven’t peered over my stall to check my neighbors’ parts, because we’re all too busy just getting our business done. What real harm comes from people saying, “I’m gender X” (sincerely, not larkishly or as a wiseguy protest) “so I’m going to pee in the Gender X bathroom”, and how does any such harm compare to the harm in cases like Fischer’s?

  10. Jenny 2016-06-09 09:39

    I absolutely agree, Eve. Pedophilia is a huge problem. Everyday you read about the latest teacher student sex scandal and creepy horny old men preying on thirteen year old girls on the internet but there’s no outrage on that. Stub is more upset over a bullied trangender going potty instead. Go figure.

  11. Nick Nemec 2016-06-09 09:40

    What does Stumcfar mean? In my mind when I see this handle I think of Storm Front, a neo Nazi hate group.

  12. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 09:53

    No neo-Nazi and no hate here. I am a Republican. The hate an venom comes from the left when everyone does not fall in line with their radical views.

    Jenny, no outrage are you trying to kid everyone. There is always outrage. These are criminals and they are punished for their actions. If there was no outrage this guy would still be working in the school. Why is every transgender bullied?? Maybe if the left quit excepting this mental illness as being normal and tried to help these kids instead of promoting them, their lives would be far less stressful!

  13. Nick Nemec 2016-06-09 10:02

    Well thanks Stumcfar, I didn’t think you were a nazi and didn’t think any neo nazis would bother to post here. Put what does it mean? Is it some sort of abbreviation? How did you come up with it?

  14. Steve Sibson 2016-06-09 10:20

    Stumcfar is right, the hate is coming from the left in the form of social justice bullying. The left’s worldview promote sexual deviance of all types. To say the one kind is OK and the other is not, is not justice. It is discrimination, as I have argued before. And this social justice bullying regarding the transgender issue has most recently been exposed in the Georgia ACLU:

    The head of Georgia’s ACLU chapter opened a new rift in the debate over restroom rights this week when she stepped down in protest of the civil rights group’s support for controversial efforts to let transgender people use the restroom that matches their gender identity.

    Maya Dillard Smith said Thursday she resigned because she was met with hostility when she questioned the organization’s stance on the policy, adding that she risked being branded a homophobe by even raising her critique.

    http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/06/02/georgia-aclu-director-resigns-over-transgender-fight/

  15. Bob Newland 2016-06-09 10:39

    Stumcfar; the left are accepting folks’ identification of themselves as they see fit. You are “excepting” everyone’s opinions of their own business except (note correct usage of “except”) yours.

    I am a grammar nazi, but I don’t care what sex the person in the next crapper stall is. That is to say, I am not a potty nazi.

  16. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 10:40

    Here is Smith in her own words- “I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six feet [tall] with deep voices, entered,” she wrote.

    WTF has she got to complain about? Transgender males are born female and were using the bathroom assigned to them at birth!!!!! Whiny freaking wingnuts making a ginormous mountain out of their own policy.

  17. Jenny 2016-06-09 10:43

    Where’s the outrage on Peyton Manning and his sexual harassment and groping of the female sports doctor? Is this just considered normal sexual male behavior in today’s sports? That was all swept under the rug.
    Again, date rape, pedophilia and domestic violence are far more pressing problems than bullied transgenders desiring the same rights as other Americans.

  18. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 10:45

    Stumpy-where is the link to your article claiming being transgendered is a mental illness?

  19. Steve Sibson 2016-06-09 10:48

    Mike, Smith is a “liberal” “wingnut” (And thanks for supporting Stumcfar’s point about the hate coming from the left):

    “Many Georgia conservatives have aired similar concerns, but Dillard Smith adds a prominent liberal voice to the mix.”

    Link from my previous comment.

  20. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 10:52

    Your idea of prominence is suspect,Sibby. Blowing her importance out of perspective is a bad habit of yours.

  21. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 11:16

    Just a couple of points. Jenny, “desiring the same rights as other Americans”. No, they have the exact same rights as other Americans, they are demanding special rights.

    Mike, is pedophilia a mental illness? If your brain says young girls are attractive, is that a mental illness because the brain says it is okay? If your brain has two distinct personalities, is that a mental illness or is that normal? If your brain says you are a girl, but you are distinctly a boy, is that a mental illness or is that normal?

  22. Steve Sibson 2016-06-09 11:27

    “Blowing her importance out of perspective is a bad habit of yours.”

    Denying the importance of truth is a bad habit of yours. Perhaps you should find a way to let go of the hate and stop with the social justice bullying. Letting men to go into a girls bathroom and causing fear is not a good public policy position. The transgender bullies need to be reined in.

  23. Jenny 2016-06-09 11:27

    Stub, you are ‘demanding a special bathroom’ for Transgenders. Anyone that has ever been bullied knows this will just make a bullied transgendered school day worse. Come on, people being excluded from the regular restrooms is icing on the cake for bullies that target transgenders.

    Look up the suicide rates for LGBTs, Sibs and Stub. Millions of students in the country are already scared to go to school b/c of bullying. Targeting separate bathroom facilities for an already severely bullied segment could possibly increase suicide rates amongst this group. I want to save lives and bathroom exclusion is not the way to do it.

  24. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 11:37

    You right wing tools are so afraid of someone in the next stall, why not wear diapers and give yourself some peace of mind?

    Maybe you figure demonic transpeople have x-ray vision and can watch you sit and think.

  25. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 11:37

    Some men have feminine characteristics and some women have male characteristics. How does one conclude what another person’s gender is anyway? Do you want all of us to carry our birth certificates so if anyone suspects we are not the gender that we claim to be we can satisfy your genitalia curiosity? And what about fake or modified birth certificates, how do you purport to control them?

    For example, consider Sibby’s ACLU gal who saw three 6′ tall transgender women in the bathroom in California. Did she merely assume that due to the height and voices of these individuals that they must be transgenders, or did she sneak a peak under the stall?

    The only real way to create a scary situation is to force people who identify and look like one gender into the bathrooms of the opposite gender. That ACLU mother would have been much more frightened if a biological female who identifies as a make, has taken hormone therapy, has grown whiskers, has short hair, and is a body builder, had been forced to go into the women’s bathroom with her and her daughter.

  26. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 11:38

    Stumpy-where is your mental illness link?

  27. Jeff Endrizzi 2016-06-09 11:49

    Jenny, I didn’t see “Stub” requesting a special bathroom for transgenders….I see him saying pee where your parts dictate you should pee.

    Cory, I’m not comparing the sins/crime of the man in question, I’m saying there’s a clear law concerning his behavior. The potential for harm is very great. The harm in my other example is to a youth that grew up with a transgender, knowing they are physically a boy, and now that boy is in their bathroom….you don’t have to observe them doing anything to be harmed….it can be traumatic for those following the conventions of society when someone with a disorder (yes, I believe something is wrong with the mind of a transgender or self-identifier) disrupts that society.

  28. Steve Sibson 2016-06-09 11:54

    “Look up the suicide rates for LGBTs”

    So maybe we should all just stop using them as political pawns.

    BCB, why is society better off with all the confusion you social justice bullies are putting on us? Your worldview allows people to think their sexual desires deserve equal protection, including those who chase after children.

  29. Rorschach 2016-06-09 12:22

    Hold on one minute. What we don’t know is whether anybody else lived in this man’s home and/or used a computer in that home. Even if what they claim occurred actually did occur, we don’t know that it was him soliciting the minor or somebody else. Let’s not pass judgment yet.

    Many people publicly accused by the government are not ultimately found guilty. Others who are found guilty are later exonerated because of government misconduct in the zeal to obtain a conviction. The school district is prudent in taking a wait and see position on this case, and with summer break the school also has time to wait and see.

  30. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 12:26

    Sibby, you seem confused. All I asked is do you want everyone who goes into the same bathroom you use to show you their birth certificates so you will know what their genitalia look like? Or would a selfie satisfy this need of yours to observe others’ genitalia? How do you assure others in the bathroom with you that you are of the correct gender – do you show them your birth certificate or a genital selfie?

    I have seen you photos and from them I have no idea what sex you were born, or whether you started hormone therapy years ago. I recall photos of you with a beard, which seems a male trait, and long hair, which is often a female trait. Do you really feel as if you should be required to prove what your genitalia look like to every person you encounter in a public rest room?

    By the way, I doubt that the author of the article where you picked up a new term – “social justice bullies” – to classify people who don’t agree with your views into an “other” category would approve of your use of the term for such a purpose. I read the opinion piece you linked, and I got the impression the author objected to using terms or labels to marginalize others simply because they have different views or opinions.

  31. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 13:11

    How about you Stumfer, do you think you should be required to carry your birth certificate or a genitalia selfie with you in case you want to use a public restroom?

    It is interesting how this attempt to marginalize transgenders by telling them they can’t use the bathroom that matches their gender identity has the consequence of making every non-transgender person have to prove their gender before they can use the bathroom of their choice.

    It looks like a jobs program – we can hire someone like a bouncer to check birth certificates and genitalia selfies at the door of every public restroom. Indeed, it can be just like airport security, with lines, people in uniform, genital smelling dogs, and perhaps even with one of those scanning machines that sees through our clothing. You guys are brilliant!

  32. Steve Sibson 2016-06-09 13:12

    BCB, I thought someone like you would believe in innocent until proven guilty. If some guy walks into a girls bathroom wearing a dress and causes problems, then there can be an investigation. But if it is no longer against the law for a man to walk into a girls restroom, then there can be no investigation. This is bad public policy.

    ” Do you really feel as if you should be required to prove what your genitalia look like to every person you encounter in a public rest room?”

    If I should happen to go into a girls bathroom and start showing by genitalia to under-age girls, I should be arrested. It should not matter that I am wearing a dress and claiming to be a girl because that is “my” identity right.

    And if the author of the piece can use “social justice bullies”, then I can because I have been explaining that point on this web site for some time now. It is a very easy point to understand for anybody who is thinking with an open mind. But of course, I do understand that social justice bullies believe they have rights that those of us on the right don’t. That is a typical thought process for bullies.

  33. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 13:18

    Just stop the stupidness for awhile. Think of what you are saying. When in history has there every been a question about what the genders are? There is nothing more natural than gender identity. Quit making people out to be something they are not. If I have 2 legs can I argue I only have one if my brain says I only have one and you liberals would help me get disability pay and parking permit, even though I have two legs just because may brain says differently? Just try to listen to yourself for awhile and then try not to laugh after you realize how absolutely ridiculous you sound!

  34. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 13:26

    Sibby, I am not sure if you are aware of indecent exposure laws, but I think they would cover the situation you describe. After all, aren’t we dealing only with “public” restrooms? And laws protect adult women as well as girls from activities that you are fantasizing about.

    “SDCL 22-24-1.2. Indecent exposure–Misdemeanor or felony. A person commits the crime of indecent exposure if, with the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person, the person exposes his or her genitals in a public place, or in the view of a public place, under circumstances in which that person knows that person’s conduct is likely to annoy, offend, or alarm another person. A violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor. However, if such person has been previously convicted of a felony violation of § 22-22-1, 22-22-7, or 22-24A-3, that person is guilty of a Class 6 felony. Any person convicted of a third or subsequent violation of this section is guilty of a Class 6 felony.”

    Since your transgender law is aimed at keeping people out you need some way to make sure you are keeping the correct people out. And you need a way to assure other users that you, yourself, are using the proper restroom. Otherwise a transgender might sneak in, go potty, and leave with no one the wiser. Oh, the horror, the horror!

    As for using your new favorite catch phrase to marginalize people as the “other,” or any other silly label you choose, you have freedom of speech to do just that. The author of your linked opinion piece, however, seemed pretty critical of such behavior.

  35. grudznick 2016-06-09 13:26

    Sibby and Mr. McFar, I sure appreciate you guys because you make me seem reasonabler than most.

  36. Jenny 2016-06-09 13:26

    I don’t know why the GOP is so afraid and calling us social justice bullies. I mean, they have their guns they carry all the time if they get attacked by a transgender in the potty room. They can teach their children self defense, or take their kids out of the public school system if they’re so afraid of transgenders pottying.
    It’s not like we’re making your children go to a school that has transgender bathroom rights. Don’t blame the govt on your transgender genital fear.

  37. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 13:29

    Stumfar, if you are unwilling to prove your “correct” gender to others, how can you demand someone else prove his or her “correct” gender to you or anyone else? Perhaps this might be a situation where the best solution is to live and let live, while minding our own business?

  38. Jeff Endrizzi 2016-06-09 13:39

    Jenny, do you have kids? What if you had daughters that had been in school with a boy (one that was born a physical male) and had only known him as a boy….but then one day this boy decides he’s a girl and begins using the girl’s bathroom (even though HE is doing HIS business in a private stall), the girls may see this BOY entering the bathroom, or coming in when they are already in there. How do you think they would feel? Not how do you want them to feel, but how do you think they would feel? Why would we want to put kids through that? Liberals want to believe kids will understand, all it takes is some education….sorry, not in my world. This issue should NEVER happen in our schools.

  39. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 13:51

    Jeff, then are saying only known transgenders must be barred, but transgenders that are willing to remain hidden in the closet can use the bathroom your daughter uses?

    What about a little girl that your daughter has known her whole life who, as a young teen, decides she is a lesbian that is sexually attracted to other teen girls. If this upsets your straight daughter should the lesbian teen also be barred from a public rest room?

    And while it seems appropriate to be concerned about a young person’s feelings, why should that concern disappear when the young person is transgender?

  40. Steve Sibson 2016-06-09 13:59

    “And laws protect adult women as well as girls from activities that you are fantasizing about.”

    Yes, us conservatives want those laws to stay in effect. Nice that we can finally agree. We don’t need the laws to be bent in order to allow society to be bullied by the transgender movement.

    “I don’t know why the GOP is so afraid and calling us social justice bullies.”

    The GOP is not saying that, I am along with others you see the same hatred being spewed by those who think they have special rights. Cory even admitted that blacks have rights that whites don’t on another thread. The whole political correctness crap is bullying.

  41. Rorschach 2016-06-09 13:59

    Imagine your daughter was at the pool and saw a boy peeing in the pool. He had his trunks on – of course. Your daughter didn’t see any privates. But there were girls swimming in the pool. There ought to be a law! Then, imagine that your daughter didn’t see who peed in the pool. Everyone is a suspect. Somebody peed in the pool. Everybody’s still swimming there. Is anyone traumatized?

  42. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 14:01

    Why is the left so infatuated with unnatural sex and unnatural gender identity?? It is crazy. There could be the greatest candidate to ever run for office, perfect in the liberal mind on the economy, the environment, foreign affairs, but the only thing that would matter to many in the voting booth is their beliefs on the LBGT community. The Democratic party has been taken over by left wing wackos with nothing but sex on their minds!

  43. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 14:04

    Imagine if your daughter was on the volleyball team and lost her spot to boy who thought he was a girl. Imagine if your daughter was in the state track meet and lost the state championship to a boy who thought he was a girl. Imagine if your daughter was on the basketball team and they had to have a teammate who was actually a boy and dressed and showered in the same room. All of these things have happened and who has been discriminated against, your daughter!

  44. Jeff Endrizzi 2016-06-09 14:13

    I think the term “transgender” is being used too broadly….isn’t a transgender truly someone that has undergone the process, including necessary surgery? Once someone has done that, and has changed their “parts”, then yes, they can use the bathroom that matches their parts.

    I do not believe someone self-identifying as something other than their birth gender/sex is transgender. There is a huge difference.

  45. Robin Friday 2016-06-09 14:19

    Stum, this isn’t about transgender, it’s about child molestation. This is a white male heterosexual. If he’s convicted, he’s a white male heterosexual child molester pervert. Try to get your ideas straight (no pun intended). It’s not the left which is infatuated with “unnatural” sex, it’s coming from the Christian Right and their constant and insidious attempts to pass laws in legislatures all over the country which will allow everyone to discriminate as they wish, according to their “religious freedom” fantasies.

  46. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 14:20

    Stumfar, why haven’t proponents been able to point to any instance in South Dakota or nationally where a transgendered child or teen has showered with kids of the opposite sex? Perhaps this is just a fantasy from your own teen years, something you wish you could do?

    And what if your daughter lost a sporting event to another girl who was more skilled? And what if that girl was big and strong and identified as a boy, but was not permitted to compete with boys?

    Maybe you should have a bit more faith in your daughter’s abilities and sensibilities. As Sammy Bee pointed out, for example, Ted Cruz’s young daughter seemed to know how to fend off an unwanted advance.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feALLLFdj7Y

  47. Kurt Evans 2016-06-09 14:28

    “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
    —Jesus Christ (Luke 17:1-2)

    The fact that there’s no 13-year-old girl involved in this situation raises a couple of questions:
    (1) Who stumbled?
    (2) Who caused him to stumble?

    The “special agents” who lie, bait, tempt and destroy are far more evil than most of their targets, and it makes me sick that Congress allocates our tax dollars to pay their six-figure salaries.

    The U.S. intelligence community: Wasting money and wasting lives.

  48. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 14:48

    http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/03/feds-order-high-school-to-allow-boys-who-dress-as-girls-to-use-girls-shower-locker-room/

    If a girl loses to another girl in a girl sport, there is not an issue. Try not be so silly!

    Still waiting for the exciting article about how South Dakota is considered, in a new study, as being the 2nd best state in the nation for millenials to reside. That would be the GOP heavy South Dakota. I am sure the story is still in the works. Now if it was a story on how SD was a great place for transgenders to live, caheidelberger would have been all over that!

  49. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 14:52

    Stumpy-your whining about SD being Number 2 is completely irrelevant to any discussion on here. You want to discuss-go to Sibby’s blog where you will find one like minded nut like yourself.

  50. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-09 14:59

    Jeff, that seems a really thin harm. It posits that we’re all paying a lot of attention to each other in the bathroom. I’ve been taught to mind my own business in the bathroom. If we teach that principle, almost all of the harm you postulate goes away, right?

    The suggestion that the harm hinges around the girls knowing a kid as a boy, then seeing that kid come use the girls bathroom also seems to defuse the harm. If they know the kid, they may well have a conversation (I hear ladies are more inclined to chat in the can) and come to understand the situation. As Senator Deb Peters said during the potty bill debate, today’s kids view this bathroom question as a non-issue. Again, where’s the real harm compared to the other threats our kids face?

    It seems to me that if I come back from the Senate to speak to a high school civics class and brag to the kids, “Hey! I kept transgender people out of your bathroom to keep you safe!” the kids are more likely to say, “Pffft. Whatever. What have you done to keep us safe from real rapists, bullies, bad drivers, and high student loan rates?”

  51. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 14:59

    Mr Evans-do you have the name of the agent who held a gun to this guy’s head and forced him to answer ad seeking sex with a minor?

  52. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 15:02

    Really Mike. A story touting the virtues of SD is irrelevant? Or is it only irrelevant because it goes against the constant GOP bashing on this blog and does not fit into the narrative that all life is as miserable as yours!

  53. Roger Cornelius 2016-06-09 15:04

    When was the last time anyone reading this blog visted a restroom that didn’t have stalls to keep someone from checking their pee pees?
    When was the last time anyone reading this blog had an encounter with a transgender showing their junk?
    There have probably been more gay encounters in public restrooms (republican Senator Craig from Idaho) than a transgender trying to hook up with a young girl

  54. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-09 15:14

    Even though Kurt’s point may sound a little radical, I’m willing to put it together with Ror’s point and entertain it. Homeland Security puts out fake bait and lures an innocent citizen into committing a crime. There could be more details (KDLT tries to throw some fuel on the fire by noting Fischer some DUIs and domestic abuse chargescharges), but all we have on the record is that Fischer sent illegal solicitous comments to a government agent pretending to be a minor. I appreciate the Sioux Falls paper’s highlighting that Fischer was arrested for soliciting sex from an agent posing as a minor.

    I’m curious: If Fischer had gone to a party and hooked up with a girl who claimed to be 18 but was really only 13, he’d be guilty of statutory rape, right? Now flip it: suppose this agent had come to Sioux Falls and was able to pass herself off as 13, and Fischer had had consensual sex with her. (I can use the word consensual because we’re talking about an adult agent.) Of what crime would he have been guilty?

    I can understand what’s going on with law enforcement. Predators are exploiting children. We need to catch those predators. We can’t always build prosecutable cases on the testimony of children (we can’t always find the exploited children or secure reliable testimony). It’s possible this baiting incident saved dozens of real children from exploitation.

    But it’s possible this drew a man into a crime he never would have committed otherwise.

    It’s also possible Fischer committed no crime, that linking the IP address to his Sioux Falls home does not show us that Fischer did anything wrong.

  55. Jeff Endrizzi 2016-06-09 15:23

    Cory, I think it can be quite harmful. I’m not talking about seeing parts, I’m talking about upending the normal that we strive to provide for our kids. I guarantee if I had walked into the girl’s bathroom in school, the girls would have stampeded out of there in a hurry…and I would have been called to the office (yes, go ahead, make some jokes, but consider the point I’m making). I don’t think knowing him as a boy diffuses the situation, it makes it worse.

    Rapists, bullies, etc. produce a different type of harm. Some physical, some mental. Using the non-normal bathroom in the presence of others could be quite harmful to some kids. Others may make negative comments, and my guess is you would blame the commenter instead of eliminating the concern in the first place.

    Fred Deutsch tried to put a common-sense bill into place, and it’s obvious the sides are widely split on this issue. I am clear in my beliefs, it is more harmful to allow people to use the facilities of their self-identified gender than it is to have separate facilities (or allow them to use the facility of their choice with a monitor at the door to avoid any potentially harmful contact with others).

  56. Steve Sibson 2016-06-09 15:29

    “If he’s convicted, he’s a white male heterosexual child molester pervert.”

    Would you want him walking into the school’s girls bathroom wearing a dress?

    “When was the last time anyone reading this blog had an encounter with a transgender showing their junk?”

    Nor do we want it for the future and then have no recourse.

  57. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 15:29

    Stumpy-you totally missed the point. You are irrelevant.

  58. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 15:35

    If Fischer is so pure,why answer an ad from someone he did not know? I don’t know if he is inclined towards underage sex,but he seems to have jumped at the opportunity when it was presented.

  59. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 15:43

    Mike it is far to easy to back you into a corner and then you have to fight your way out with insults.

  60. Donald Pay 2016-06-09 15:57

    Anyone taken an upper level biology course? The problem, I think, is that people need to think about this in biological perspective.

    In the animal kingdom, a penis is not necessarily needed to be male. The ability to make sperm, or the smaller, more mobile gamete is the determinative factor. Females make the larger, less mobile gamete. Anatomy is not determinative.

    Some animals have the ability to develop into either males or females, and some can actually switch sexes. Sex switching is usually triggered by environmental conditions which affect internal chemistry.

    If you study plants or fungi, you will find many different sexual systems. If you demand to think about sex from a Biblical perspective, don’t become a botanist or mycologist. All of these sexual systems are mediated by hormones, and various external and internals chemical interactions.

    Humans are probably the only animal that can think about gender identity. Sure, we all have our sex chromosome make-up, which generally provides us with two different sets of reproductive organs. We have other genes at work and multitudinous chemical interactions as we form our neural circuitry. Sometimes the reproductive anatomy and the neural circuitry are divergent. When that happens, generally the brain wins out.

  61. happy camper 2016-06-09 16:31

    The people who profess too much, repressed, inhibited, they’re always the closet freaks demanding purity in public. We’re complicated organisms. Sexuality is not black and white. They just can’t deal with that.

  62. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 16:39

    Stumfar, interesting find – close but off the mark. I went to the Chicago Tribune link, which was the source cited by the Daily Caller. The Tribune reported that the school had installed privacy curtains and that “. . . the student said she intends to use the private area or a locker room bathroom stall to change. . . .”

    The trans student’s objection was that the school was going to force her and only her to use the private areas, while all other students had the choice of whether to use private areas. She objected to being singled out – “The district’s policy stigmatized me, often making me feel like I was not a ‘normal person.'” If a school wants federal funding it must comply with Title IX and singling out a student based on her gender isn’t permitted.

    http://education.findlaw.com/discrimination-harassment-at-school/title-ix-protections-for-transgender-students.html

    Try again, can you find an example in SD or nationally of a complaint alleging that a transgender kid showered in the open with the girls?

  63. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 16:39

    Sexuality may not be black and white, but gender certainly is!

  64. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-09 16:40

    Curious: if there is a problem with individuals using the bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, and if existing remedies (legal and social) are insufficient and require legislative assistance to address that problem (LRC, get ready for my unisex, single-stall mandate!), is further legislative action required to protect our children from predators who do things like what Fischer has been accused of, or what the privileged swim team boy from Stanford was convicted of?

  65. Stumcfar 2016-06-09 16:51

    https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/man-undresses-in-front-of-girls-in-seattle-locker-room-cites-gender-identity-regulation/

    – “The district’s policy stigmatized me, often making me feel like I was not a ‘normal person.’”
    Guess what, you are not a normal person or you wouldn’t be in that situation. Look up the definition of normal if you need to. .3% of the population is not being normal. If you want to be treated normally then be normal otherwise you are asking for special rules.

  66. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 17:03

    Sibby, if you are presumed innocent when you claim, without proof, to be a certain gender, why would you not presume other folks to be the gender they claim to be? If they have to show you their’s then you should have to show everyone your’s, don’t you think?

    As for students being exposed to child molesters, SD law already prohibits registered sex offenders from living near or loitering in “community safety zones,” which is defined to include “the area that lies within five hundred feet from the facilities and grounds of any school, public park, public playground, or public pool, including the facilities and grounds itself . . .” SDCL 22-24B-22(1).

    More evidence that anti-transgender laws in SD are a solution in search of a problem.

  67. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 17:14

    Geez, Stumfar, now you are stretching. The Seattle incident did not involve a transgender person. It involved a man, dressed in men’s clothing, who never claimed to be a transgender female.

    You will be able to find many cases where individuals improperly expose themselves to others both in and out of SD. Such actions are already prohibited by indecent exposure laws and the Seattle article said the police should have been called. Try again.

  68. happy camper 2016-06-09 17:22

    Gender is certainly not black and white: “Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between and from masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity.”

    Stumcfar wants to be rigid about the parts we are born with, but they are just parts, and those don’t always develop normally. Some of these people can’t “be normal.” But they can be respected for whoever they are why do they have to fit strict roles? As you say, they are just .3%.

  69. leslie 2016-06-09 17:43

    boy, grudz, yah got that right

  70. bearcreekbat 2016-06-09 18:05

    You know happy, not only are Stumfar and his friends rigid, they (properly in my mind) resist the state if it requires them, but not others (improperly in my view) to prove their gender before entering a public rest room.

    If Stumfar had any integrity he or she would agree to showing his or her birth certificate or genital selfie to any and everyone they might encounter in a public rest room. But as Sibby points out, there is a presumption of innocence when it comes to proving what body parts you have.

    Unfortunately, they seem to think this presumption of innocence only applies to them, but not to other people in the state, and especially not to teenagers in school. For those kids, they seem to believe that they are perverts who only want to either expose themselves or ogle girls. It is a sad and factually unsupported view of our teens. It looks more like a projection of their own hopes and desires that they experienced when they were kids.

  71. mike from iowa 2016-06-09 18:46

    .3% of Americans is>the population of South Dakota. .3% = 960,000 humans.

  72. Roger Cornelius 2016-06-09 19:01

    stumcfar google search:

    Stuart MacFarlane or

    a 150 acre hunting preserve in northern Minnesota.

  73. Kurt Evans 2016-06-09 22:12

    “mike from iowa” asks:

    Mr Evans-do you have the name of the agent who held a gun to this guy’s head and forced him to answer ad seeking sex with a minor?

    No. My understanding is that Backpage doesn’t allow ads for illegal services.

    If Fischer is so pure,why answer an ad from someone he did not know?

    I don’t know or particularly care whether Rod Fischer answered any ad, but none of us is perfectly pure, especially not the San Jose “special agents” who specialize in seduction and entrapment.

    Cory wrote:

    If Fischer had gone to a party and hooked up with a girl who claimed to be 18 but was really only 13, he’d be guilty of statutory rape, right? Now flip it: suppose this agent had come to Sioux Falls and was able to pass herself off as 13, and Fischer had had consensual sex with her. (I can use the word consensual because we’re talking about an adult agent.) Of what crime would he have been guilty?

    When a 40-year-old woman seduces a married man and destroys his family, that’s a “home-wrecker.” When a 40-year-old man seduces a married man and destroys his family, that’s a “special agent.”

    We can’t always build prosecutable cases on the testimony of children (we can’t always find the exploited children or secure reliable testimony). It’s possible this baiting incident saved dozens of real children from exploitation.

    But it’s possible this drew a man into a crime he never would have committed otherwise.

    Exactly. It’s the same thing the intelligence community does with terrorism. When they can’t find anyone who’s actually broken the law, they find people they think might break the law and entrap them.

    Then Congress hands them another hundred billion of our tax dollars so they can afford to ruin even more lives.

  74. Private Richard 2016-06-10 10:52

    Any fictitious mother/photographer that would agree to allow her fictional thirteen year-old daughter have sex with an old non-fictional sdhorndog2012 ought to have her head examined!!!

  75. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-10 11:29

    Private Richard, I have trouble fathoming the mind of an individual who would think that such an offer was real, not to mention actually ask that individual to carry out the offer. But then the world has evil in it that most of us never experience, thankfully.

  76. mike from iowa 2016-06-10 11:39

    If the agent met this guy and enticed him to solicit sex act with a child-to me that would be entrapment.

    Maybe they snagged a budding pedophile and put an end to a criminal career. Maybe. I am not suggesting it is right or wrong. This guy did not have to respond to any ad. Makes his intent pretty clear-to me.

  77. Kurt Evans 2016-06-10 13:28

    Cory writes:

    … I have trouble fathoming the mind of an individual who would think that such an offer was real, not to mention actually ask that individual to carry out the offer. But then the world has evil in it that most of us never experience, thankfully.

    Thankfully indeed, but if this had happened exactly the way the agent claims it happened—and that’s a big if—wouldn’t the target’s apparent naïveté make the agent’s deceit even more disgusting? There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit in society that an intelligence agent can put in prison using XKeyscore, obscure laws and a few thousand dollars of our tax money, but does that really make the world a better place?

    I’m far from convinced the intelligence community is giving us an adequate bang for our hundreds of billions of bucks. In fact I strongly suspect its net impact on human happiness is negative.

    “mike from iowa” writes:

    If the agent met this guy and enticed him to solicit sex act with a child-to me that would be entrapment.

    By the agent’s own admission, “The undercover agent later posed as the 13-year-old girl and messaged Fischer on Kik, a messaging app.” Government agents shouldn’t get a free pass to engage in fraud, seduction and entrapment, and the rest of us definitely shouldn’t be on the hook to reward them with six-figure salaries when they do.

  78. bearcreekbat 2016-06-10 13:38

    Kurt, another side of this coin involves police interrogations. While police are no longer permitted to use physical violence they have carte blanche authority to lie, trick, mislead, threaten and confuse suspects. That also strikes me as an unfortunate abuse of power and it has resulted in many false confessions, including in capital cases investigated challenged by the Innocence Project.

    Incidentally, an early SCOTUS case that reversed a conviction based upon entrapment involved agents who repeatedly tried to convince their target to purchase obscene materials through the mail. He refused several times, but ultimately succumbed to the agents’ efforts.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._United_States

  79. mike from iowa 2016-06-10 13:55

    Kurt-wasn’t the original contact when Fischer answered the ad?

    I’d be more upset if they had chosen Fischer anonymously from the phone book and enticed him that way.

  80. Kurt Evans 2016-06-10 14:16

    “bearcreekbat” writes:

    Kurt, another side of this coin involves police interrogations. While police are no longer permitted to use physical violence they have carte blanche authority to lie, trick, mislead, threaten and confuse suspects. That also strikes me as an unfortunate abuse of power and it has resulted in many false confessions, including in capital cases investigated challenged by the Innocence Project.”

    I’ve had three personal experiences with this one, right here in South Dakota. I never gave a false confession, but I was initially tricked into telling truths “for your own protection” that the police later twisted into lies and used to utterly destroy my reputation. Then when I was less cooperative in subsequent encounters with law enforcement, they used that against me too.

    I believe those incidents are the primary reason I don’t have a family of my own at age 46, and it’s still an almost daily struggle to stay above the bitterness.

    “mike from iowa” asks:

    Kurt-wasn’t the original contact when Fischer answered the ad?

    I don’t know, but my understanding is that Backpage doesn’t allow ads for illegal services, and in any case I don’t approve of our tax dollars paying a government agent to post ads that are seductive, fraudulent or both.

  81. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-10 16:15

    Mike: “budding pedophile”? Maybe. We can only speculate as to what evidence led Homeland Security officials to pay attention to a school business manager in Garretson.

    Is there any difference between this scenario and an agent dressing as a hooker and trolling for johns to arrest?

  82. mike from iowa 2016-06-10 16:48

    Court documents show that the agent had posted a Backpage.com ad on May 23, posing as a photographer who was bringing her daughter to Sioux Falls for a few days.

    Fischer allegedly responded to the ad, saying he wanted to have sex with both the photographer and her daughter.

    Sounds cut and dried to me. HS cast some bait and Fischer swallowed hook, line and sinker. They didn’t contact him personally until after he made his intentions clear.

    As for soliciting Johns, I think law enforcement has better things to do than try to entice horny bastards into paying for sexual favors. Sex between consenting adults seems to me to be victimless crimes.

  83. David Newquist 2016-06-10 17:43

    This case is similar to some recent instances in which officials were hoisted by their own petards. Bait was offered online. Some guys saw it and assumed someone was cat fishing, so they decided to do some cat fishing right back and came on like corndog gangbusters. When the meeting was set up, officials were met with a phalanx of cell phones and video cameras. Turns out college boys are the better cat fishers.

  84. Kurt Evans 2016-06-10 23:58

    Cory asks:

    Is there any difference between this scenario and an agent dressing as a hooker and trolling for johns to arrest?

    That’s another disgusting, immoral practice that has the potential to ensnare a previously innocent person, and it raises the question of whether someone could be arrested for making sexually explicit comments to a fake hooker who falsely claims to be underage.

    “mike from iowa” writes:

    HS cast some bait and Fischer swallowed hook, line and sinker. They didn’t contact him personally until after he made his intentions clear.

    For the record, I understand that explanation and don’t accept it. According to KDLT, the initial bait indicated the woman “wanted her daughter to have experiences and learn about sex,” which seems like a carefully calculated attempt to entice without making an explicitly illegal offer.

    I’ll refrain from speculation about what kind of picture was posted with the ad, but based on the information presented, I disapprove of both the initial bait supposedly from the mother and the follow-up bait supposedly from the daughter.

    As for soliciting Johns, I think law enforcement has better things to do than try to entice [people] into paying for sexual favors. Sex between consenting adults seems to me to be victimless crimes.

    One could argue that making sexually explicit comments to an undercover agent who first used sexually explicit comments as bait is a victimless crime—unless, as I suggested in my first comment above, the victim is the person who took the bait.

    David Newquist writes:

    This case is similar to some recent instances in which officials were hoisted by their own petards. Bait was offered online. Some guys saw it and assumed someone was cat fishing, so they decided to do some cat fishing right back and came on like corndog gangbusters. When the meeting was set up, officials were met with a phalanx of cell phones and video cameras…

    Which again brings us full circle to my first comment above: The “special agents” who lie, bait, tempt and destroy are far more evil than most of their targets, and it makes me sick that Congress allocates our tax dollars to pay their six-figure salaries.

  85. Kurt Evans 2016-06-11 01:46

    “Project Looking Glass” was the name given to a U.S. Postal Service investigation designed to uncover purchasers of child pornography. The Postal Service apparently obtained names of potential targets for the investigation from raids of distributors of nudity-oriented videotapes.

    One target was a farmer from Shelby, Nebraska named Robert Brase. Brase’s name apparently turned up on a mailing list found during the raid of a California video distributor. There was no evidence that Brase had ever ordered an X-rated video or violated any of the nation’s obscenity laws. In 1987, Brase had been married for ten years and was the father of two children. He had no criminal record, and there was no evidence that he had ever sexually abused children.

    The Postal Service, as part of Project Looking Glass, mailed Brase a catalog advertising videos depicting minors engaged in sexual activity. Brase ordered a video tape. Less than one hour after the tape reached Brase’s Nebraska farm home, a team of postal inspectors arrived and searched Brase’s home. The only child pornography discovered was the tape received from the U.S. Postal Service.

    On October 22, 1987, a grand jury in Omaha indicted Brase for allegedly receiving by mail a videotape showing minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Eleven days later, Robert Brase drove his pickup truck to a seldom-used county road nine miles from Shelby and shot himself. Brase was one of four persons indicted in the government sting operation to commit suicide.

    H. Robert Showers, executive director of the Justice Department’s National Obscenity Enforcement Unit, defended the sting operation: “When normal law enforcement techniques don’t work to solve a problem, you have to go to new ones.” Showers denied any responsibility for the suicides: “This kind of sting is designed to penetrate into these underground, secretive operations, and we get some well-regarded people in the community — high-ranking professional people, persons who are considered upstanding citizens. In those circumstances, something like suicide is to be expected.”

    Learn more here: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/evil/evilP16.html

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