ST. PAUL — A bipartisan bill aimed at strengthening protections against sexual grooming of students was passed on the floor by the Minnesota House of Representatives 133-0 on Monday, April 27.
Hannah LoPresto sat in front of the House Ways and Means Committee a week earlier on April 20 to share her experience of being groomed and sexually assaulted by her high school band teacher.
Beside her was Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, the author of the legislation designed to prevent what happened to LoPresto from ever happening to another Minnesota student.
Bennett first heard LoPresto’s story last fall, and it brought back memories of her own band director grooming her when she was a 10th grader. Bennett said LoPresto’s bravery in coming forward inspired her to share her own experience and pursue the bill.
“It just appalls me that a generation ago I experienced this, and yet now we have young people still experiencing it,” Bennett said.
Bennett’s bill would establish rules for field trip supervision, improve mandatory reporting to include grooming and create a new felony offense for child grooming. The bill defines grooming as an adult knowingly engaging in a pattern of conduct that seduces, solicits, lures, or entices a child to engage or participate in unlawful sexual conduct.
Eagan Police Department Detective Chad Clausen investigated LoPresto’s case and found probable cause that her teacher assaulted her on school grounds. Nevertheless, the teacher was not charged with a crime.
“That outcome was not due to a lack of probable cause,” Clausen said. “It was due to gaps in Minnesota laws in 2016.”
In 2016, there was no law against a teacher having sexual contact with a student over age 18, which was the case for LoPresto. A 2021 law changed that, but did not specifically address grooming.
Grooming isn’t defined in current law, and it’s not a felony.
Additionally, the Minnesota Department of Education lacks authority to investigate allegations of student maltreatment that are more than three years old. Clausen first interviewed LoPresto in spring of 2022, roughly six years after she graduated from high school and three years after the education department’s deadline for investigating.
“A teacher cannot accidentally groom a student. It is not a one-time event,” Clausen said. “Grooming is a process committed over years and can take just as long, or longer, for survivors to disclose.”
In addition to defining grooming in state law and making it a felony, Bennett’s bill eliminates the three-year limit on investigations by the education department.
According to a 2022 study, nearly 12% of 6,632 people surveyed reported experiencing at least one form of sexual misconduct from educators in grades K-12. The reported abusers were primarily male. Just 4% of victims disclosed the abuse to authorities.
A similar study from 2025 found that most of the reported abuse occurred on school property during the school day, while school was in session.
LoPresto said the years of grooming she endured had long-term effects on her health and well being.
Rep. Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins, encouraged the committee to consider the bill as a basis for a comprehensive school safety bill, a goal DFLers have been pushing for all session, including with proposed gun control legislation. Republicans also have pushed school safety measures without gun control.
The proposed grooming law comes with a price: more than $1.45 million a year for the next three years to the Department of Education to cover hiring more investigators.
While some legislators raised concerns about the cost, the committee unanimously sent the bill to the full House for a vote.
“Grooming made me feel alone,” LoPresto said. “But I was wrong. There are victim-survivors all around us. They’re our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, our representatives, our family, our students and our children. You may not often see us, but we’re here, and we need your support greatly.”
Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news across the state.
