Minnesota Man Jailed For Telling Us How His Child Was Transitioned In Secret

And revealing corruption in Sherburne County

Shortly after 8:30 PM last night, Brent Bowlby turned himself in at the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Department and was taken into custody for the crime of talking to us about his ex-partner for a podcast.

According to sound files Bowlby recorded and shared with The Distance, District Attorney Kathleen Heaney’s office determined that Mr. Bowlby had violated a harassment restraining order (HRO) by responding to a journalist’s request for contact information about his ex-partner, Kelly Magda.

In our two-hour podcast published yesterday, Mr. Bowlby explained how Magda has used a series of HROs to deny his parental rights to visit or contact their three children starting five years ago. All three of their children are supposedly suicidal and one of them has adopted a gender identity.

Brent has never been consulted on their mental health issues. Instead, he is blamed for them, despite never seeing the children because of the HROs.

By contrast, the scandal-plagued Sherburne County family court has not enforced its own custody orders on Ms. Magda even once, while Magda has twice prevailed on Child Protective Services to intervene in court-ordered reunification and prevent Mr. Bowlby seeing his children.

By speaking to The Distance, Mr. Bowlby has become extremely inconvenient to a corrupted family court system and ideological CPS officials. To make matters worse, when we reached out to Kelly Magda yesterday morning so that she could reply to allegations made in the podcast, she instead called for the arrest of Mr. Bowlby. Of course, since ‘trans’ is the new sacred class, Ms. Magda got what she wanted.

Here is the text of the email, which we sent from our publication’s offical account. The reader may judge for themselves exactly which of our questions set off the recipient so much that she felt compelled to invoke the police powers of the state.

Dear Kelly Magda,

TheDistanceMag.com has interviewed your ex-partner Brent for a two-hour podcast that we are publishing later today as well as a written investigative series to come. Several claims have been made about you. They are backed with documentary evidence. We are contacting you to notify you of your right to reply.

Brent Bowlby tells us that during your relationship, you physically assaulted him on multiple occasions. In one example, you kicked him in the groin area so hard that he required corrective surgery. On another occasion, you attacked him while he was driving you home in a convertible and you nearly killed the both of you. You have admitted these events under oath and/or in sworn affidavits. Would you care to comment on these matters for the public record?

We understand that you enjoy high-risk hobbies. One of these, according to your Facebook profile, is burning out in fast cars. Mr. Bowlby tells us that you also had adult men in the basement level of your parents’ home and that you and they were drinking while the children were present in the home. He says that some of these men entered your oldest daughter’s room when she was supposed to be in bed and that your daughter found this experience unsettling. This situation violated the order of a family court judge that you refrain from having strange men or alcohol at the location for 24 hours before having the children return to your parents’ home. We also understand from documents we have obtained that you showed up to at least two procedural intake appointments drunk and that CPS was aware of your alcoholism. To what extent has the need to cover up your substance abuse and/or sexual behavior in proximity to your children driven your contacts with CPS to prevent him from seeing the children?

Are you aware that LeAnne Boetel is under investigation by the Minnesota Board of Social Workers?

In 2018 you said under oath that your oldest daughter had no gender identity issues. At what point did [the child] become “Maxie”? Was it before or after CPS referred you to two area nonprofit organizations, Rivers of Hope and Timber Bay?

Mr. Bowlby received harassing communications from strangers who were children. He says that you encouraged harassment of him via Facebook. We understand from documents as well as from Brent that you were directing all three children to lie about him to other people, that you exerted control over his children while they were in phone conversations with him, and that as a result the children displayed tremendous cognitive dissonance. When your daughter “identified” as a boy, did you find a helpful new “community” ready to join your campaign to harass and defame and alienate Mr. Bowlby?

We understand from documents and from Mr. Bowlby that you have instigated all three children into reporting or expressing suicidal ideation and reporting it to CPS so they intervene in the family court process. These reported suicidal thoughts are supposedly inspired by the thought of seeing their father again. He has not seen your oldest daughter in five years and your younger two children in almost three years. You have worked with CPS to cut off all his communications with the children. How exactly are the children being so triggered and traumatized by someone they never see or hear from?

Were you ever able to intervene to protect your oldest daughter from _____, her classmate? What role did _____ and the bullying by other classmates play in the “transition” to Maxie?

What role did Jennifer Doeden, the play therapist, play in the invention of Maxie?

Our sources tell us that Anne Honsa asked Ruta Johnson, Mr. Bowlby’s attorney, “What are you going to do when Brent's bankrupt?” Was the plan to bankrupt him your plan or Anne Honsa’s plan?

Through the auspices of CPS and/or the family court, you are currently trying to have Mr. Bowlby further cut off from the children and even incarcerated for five years because he sent you an email concerning your shared older daughter. Why did you trans your daughter?

Are you aware that the Cass Review, a systematic medical review of the scientific literature on “trans kids,” found that the evidence for mental health benefits is “low quality” and that puberty blockers are neither reversible nor safe? You have cut off Brent from any understanding of his childrens’ health situations. What have you allowed them to do to your daughter, medically, so far?

According to Deputy Dean Cichy, the “county attorney” decided that Mr. Bowlby had violated an HRO by giving me an email address and phone number for Ms. Magda at my request. It is my job to verify the identity of a subject of interest in my reporting, so it was vital that I verify exactly which “Kelly Magda” in the world is his ex-partner.

It is true that the HRO enjoins Mr. Bowlby from providing her contact information to third parties with intention to harass her. Ms. Magda did not receive any harassment. She received questions from a reporter and she did not like the questions. Ms. Magda and the Sherburne County DA’s office have redefined journalism as harassment in order to shut up Brent Bowlby, and in effect, The Distance.

Today, I have lost access to my primary source on this story. I am being silenced. Here is the link to Brent Bowlby’s defense fundraiser.

American courts frown on prior restraint of free speech. Mr. Bowlby has a right to speak to a journalist about his case, and he in fact has spoken to several, including me. The Distance was merely the first to tell this story so we are now quite sure other outlets will follow our lead.

Here is the text of an email sent to the Sherburne County DA’s office yesterday.

Kathleen Heaney,

Today my website TheDistanceMag.com published a two-hour podcast with Mr. Brent Bowlby. Altogether, this podcast took perhaps 48 hours of working time to interview, record, and edit. Audio files, including county documents obtained through legal discovery, are sampled throughout the podcast to substantiate Mr. Bowlby's claims. Hopefully you have listened to it by now.

As a normal part of our editorial and journalistic procedures, when I finally finished the podcast last night, I asked Mr. Bowlby for Kelly Magda's contact information. Such information is used to corroborate her identity and request comment on the story. As I repeated two or three times to Deputy Dean Cichy in our call earlier today, Mr. Bowlby did not know what I intended to do with the information when I asked him for it. He understood that my asking was a normal part of my work. How dare you threaten to arrest him for complying with my request for information. How dare you have sheriff's deputies interrogate him about my reporting.

Kelly Magda apparently dislikes our story. She dislikes the questions we asked for our continued coverage of the case. She called on Sherburne County to make Mr. Bowlby pay for her anger at me and The Distance for reporting that makes her look bad. Our podcast establishes that Sherburne officials have consistently served Kelly Magda's interest in shutting up Mr. Bowlby about her defiance of court orders for visitation and contact with the children. You are doing it again. The podcast includes accounts of Kelly Magda being drunk, disorderly, abusive, and violent. Perhaps she does not want anyone to know this is the real Kelly Magda, in which case you are helping her to silence my source. Why?

I am not a lawyer. However, I would remind you that courts frown on prior restraint, and that HROs are not an end run around prior restraint, just as they are not supposed to be end runs around family court orders. Your unwelcome interference in my investigation and reporting of Mr. Bowlby's case is likely to produce a Streisand effect that could expose deep moral rot and public corruption in county government and services. Bear in mind that Mr. Bowlby has already spoken to other journalists with higher profiles than The Distance. 

Does the county attorney have any comment for the record on what makes them think they can get away with this? 

In his final thoughts expressed in a Twitter/X space as he was being driven to the county lockup last night, Mr. Bowlby expressed concern that jailhouse officials would confiscate his anxiety medication, as they have a history of doing so.

This would be contrary to Minnesota administrative rules which require that “an inmate shall not be deprived of medication as a means of punishment.” But it would be par for the course in a corrupt Minnesota county that seems to think it can just make up new rules as it goes along.

The Distance will continue to raise hell about this.