Member Newsletter
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Moms for Liberty and Moms for Liberty-adjacent, right-wing school board moms like Bridget Ziegler and Clarice Schillinger, it’s that they know how to party. You’ll remember that late last year Schillinger, a one-time candidate for Lt. Gov of Pennsylvania and the head of a major anti-woke school board group in the state, was charged with a mix of offenses related to allegedly assaulting and boozing up minors at her daughter’s 17th birthday party. After a preliminary hearing on Monday, Magisterial District Judge Stacy Wertman held Schillinger over for trial on the same charges after hearing reality TV-style testimony about Schillinger’s, her mom’s and her then-boyfriend’s feral behavior corrupting the youth of Bucks County Pennsylvania — and in some cases just beating the crap out of the youth of Bucks County when they simply tried to escape her house.
Schillinger was released on her own recognizance pending trial.
Let’s go to the video (metaphorically speaking)…!
Most of the information that came out in testimony at the hearing — a good bit of it from minors identified only by their initials — was covered in the original filing documents. But there were more details. And, just generally … well, they’re amazing.
Unsurprisingly, local teens testified that this wasn’t a first time thing for Schillinger, who for whatever reason most of the teens referred to as “Miss Clarice.” Her house was a good place to get smashed. “It was common knowledge” that you could drink at Clarice’s place, one teen told the court. “You didn’t have to ask.”
At first everyone was having a good time. Maybe too good a time. One teen remembered drinking 15 shots before partnering up with Clarice in a game of doubles beer pong. The teen who testified said he had a clear recollection of all the night’s events until he passed out in an upstairs bathroom.
An 18-year-old freshman at Rosemont College, who was 17 when the party occurred and claimed he wasn’t drinking, testified about an uncomfortable moment when a drunken Clarice sat down on his lap while he was kicked back on beanbag, telling him, “You’re my favorite.” To “get out of the situation,” he testified, he told her he had to go to the bathroom.
What brought the party to grief was that it apparently was two parties at once: one in the basement for the teens and another one upstairs for Schillinger, her boyfriend and her mother who were drinking and playing cards. When things came unglued upstairs it spoiled everything downstairs too.
One teen testified that he went upstairs looking for his girlfriend who he found throwing up in a bathroom. When he was upstairs he heard Clarice arguing with her boyfriend, Shan Wilson. After Wilson punched the wall, the boy asked Clarice if she wanted Wilson to leave. When Clarice said she did want Wilson to leave, Wilson “grabbed my neck and slammed me into the wall.”
When the 16-year-old boy came back down to the basement crying, the rest of the kids appeared to have decided that things were just getting too weird and that it was time to get the fuck out of this house.
It was when the kids decided to leave that things got violent. Or, rather, more violent. “It started a whole confrontation,” the college freshman told the court. In the kitchen Clarice’s mom and Wilson started rumbling with the kids as they tried to leave. According to the testimony the three adults were attacking the teens, somewhat paradoxically, to get them to stay at the party and keep having fun.
After the teens managed to escape the house, the group realized that one of their number was missing and apparently still in the house. It was when they returned that Clarice met them at the front door and allegedly punched a then-17 year old teen repeatedly in the face, complaining that they had ruined the party, according to court testimony. “My only thing I asked is that nobody leave the house,” the teen testified Clarice told him, as a general melee ensued.
As you can tell, it appears it was a fairly kinetic series of events. Schillinger’s lawyer told the judge that the state hadn’t produced any evidence that she had provided the teens with alcohol. But the judge wasn’t having it and held her over for trial. The next hearing in the case is on March 1st at the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas where Schillinger will be formally arraigned.
A special thanks to TPM Reader LC who let me know about the latest developments in the story. There are good write-ups in The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Bucks County Courier Times.