Brent Bowlby Faces Prison Sentence For Objecting To A Child's Secret Transition

Minnesota court documents confirm our reporting

This story has been updated below.

Kelly Magda claims to be a victim of harassment by The Distance for our reporting on the secret transition of her child without the father’s knowledge or consent.

A Sherburne County, Minnesota district court will hold its first hearing in the matter this afternoon.

The court will consider whether our email to Ms. Magda requesting comment for our podcast story about her ‘trans child’ counts as “indirect harassment” by Brent Bowlby, the subject of our interview.

Matt Osborne, editor of The Distance, is identified as Witness 1 and may be called to testify at trial.

Separately, Mr. Bowlby is scheduled for an administrative trial on 5 December. He is accused of alleged “maltreatment of a child” despite not seeing this second daughter for three years.

Our questions “accused” Magda of “violent conduct towards Bowlby, engaging in high-risk hobbies, being an alcoholic, and also criticized her parenting,” according to the statement of probable cause.

In fact, in our email to Ms. Magda, The Distance asked pointed questions about the former couple’s oldest daughter and how she adopted a ‘trans’ identity around the age of 11.

As explained in our podcast, Magda has prevented Bowlby from communicating with the older daughter for five years. At the time of our interview, Mr. Bowlby was already facing a possible five year prison sentence for allegedly harassing Ms. Magda with questions about the daughter’s ‘trans’ identification.

In three emails Mr. Bowlby sent to Ms. Magda regarding the child’s ‘trans identity’ during July, he asked “What happened to your brain?”

Then “If you don’t stop this crazy right now … (including a child’s name), I will do everything possible to make sure you sit your ass in jail for a year or more.”

Finally, “What the fu*k is wrong with you? (Language about a child). Are you so fucked in the head that you don’t know the difference between a male and a female?”

The “active harassment restraining order signed by Judge Brianne Buccione on March 7, 2024, that is in effect until December 13, 2024 … prohibits … the defendant, from having any direct or indirect contact with” Ms. Magda, “including visits or phone calls to the protected person, contact via electronic means such as email or social networking sites, threats or assaulting behavior” towards Ms. Magda.

However, Mr. Bowlby has a right to communicate with Ms. Magda about their children. He also has a right to speak to a journalist about his case, while The Distance has both a right and an obligation to contact Ms. Magda for comment on our story. We are not under a gag order by any court. We object to law enforcement harassing our sources for talking to us.

Through her continued abuses of court process, Kelly Magda is prosecuting Brent Bowlby for objecting to the transing of his daughter, and for talking to a journalist about it. She is mad at us, so she is taking it out on him.

We consider Ms. Magda’s parenting debateable, but her alcoholism is a matter of record. Public arrest records show that “Kelly Malinda Magda, 45 of Big Lake, MN 55309” was in fact charged with a gross misdemeanor for “3rd degree DWI & test refusal” on 2 July 2022. She was convicted four months later.

As reported in our podcast, CPS records obtained by Mr. Bowlby show that Magda also showed up to her first intake appointment drunk. We asked Ms. Magda about this history. We also asked the CPS agents named in our story, LeAnne Boetel and Kayla Reichel, for comment.

According to court records, Ms. Magda allegedly enjoys sex with multiple male partners with her children present in the home. As evidenced by her social media trail, Ms. Magda also likes burning out in parking lots in expensive, fast cars. We did in fact ask Ms. Magda for comment on these “high-risk hobbies” in our email.

We did not include the entire history of Ms. Magda’s violence towards Mr. Bowlby in our podcast, but it is also a matter of record, or else backed up with documentation from Mr. Bowlby, that she has violently, physically abused him more than once.

Meanwhile, the Sherburne County family court has never once enforced Mr. Bowlby’s parental rights. Judge Mary Yunker even decided that Ms. Magda should be free to have sex with multiple men at home, with the children present, because of her “socioeconomic situation.”

Yunker was forced to retire from the bench, and the Magda-Bowlby case, in 2022 after an eight-year-old child, Autumn Hallow, died of abuse and neglect following a long, contentious custody case. Brett and Sarah Hallow, Autumn’s father and step-mother, pleaded guilty to the murder and were both sentenced to forty years in prison.

When Kelsey Kruse, Autumn’s mother, tried to use the family court to save her child, “Yunker denied the motion because Kruse did not properly serve the Hallows, ‘failed to demonstrate that the current circumstances constitute an emergency’ and stated that a hearing would be scheduled ‘when the COVID-19 pandemic orders permit.’”

Ms. Kruse filed a $30 million lawsuit against Sherburne County after her child’s death. Yunker’s retirement was part of the settlement agreement to that lawsuit. Ms. Kruse’s experience in Judge Yunker’s court bears eerie similarities to Mr. Bowlby’s ordeal.

“I was constantly accused by Sarah of harassing them.” In court, Sarah spoke for Brett. Tenth Judicial Court Judge Mary Yunker ordered that Kelsey could only contact Sarah because Brett had disabilities “and I caused him to have seizures frequently,” recalled Kelsey. “I’ve never seen a seizure. She didn’t show any proof.”

Brett blocked Kelsey’s number so he didn’t get the messages she sent about the kids’ education and medical care. “They said I never told him,” said Kelsey. “It was very manipulative. They tried to make it seem like everything was my fault all the time. There was a lot of blaming. If something went wrong, it was always my fault or the kids’ fault.”

After her forced retirement, Ms. Yunker was punished with a promotion to Senior Judge, serving statewide. She has now been assigned to Mr. Bowlby’s case and will oversee his trial for our alleged harassment of Kelly Magda.

While Ms. Yunker will be most familiar with Ms. Magda’s many lies on the witness stand, her perfect record of deciding against Brent Bowlby suggests that the fix is in once again.

“I will ask for a different judge after next week depending on what she has to say,” Mr. Bowlby tells The Distance. “I've been dreaming what I want to say at that hearing.”

We will continue to report on this story as it develops. Mr. Bowlby has been bankrupted by the family court system and is still without a lawyer. You can donate to help him with legal expenses at this link:

UPDATE: Brent Bowlby was granted a continuance until 15 January. While he requires a public defender, all the family court lawyers in Sherburne County are now conflicted and unable to represent him. Meanwhile, in a separate case, Texas father Jeff Younger has been stripped of his parental rights by a woke California judge so that his son can be chemically castrated against his wishes. This is happening everywhere, not just the blue states, to far too many parents, mostly fathers.