QAnon Influencer Sues Newspaper, Gets Exposed as Alleged Child Predator (2024)

QAnon leader Phil Godlewski accidentally outed himself as an alleged child predator after filing a defamation lawsuit against a local paper that exposed old court records to public scrutiny, according to a report from The Daily Beast. Despite Godlewski and QAnon’s obsessive fixation with pedophile cabals running the government, it seems in this case the call is coming from inside the house.

In 2010, Godlewski was charged as a result of his relationship with a 15-year-old girl, identified in records as “B.D.” According to police records and testimony from the victim, Godlewski began a sexual relationship with the girl in 2008, when Godlewski was 25 and working as a high school basketball coach near Scranton, Pennsylvania. B.D. reportedly stopped cooperating with law enforcement after Godlewski threatened suicide, and Godlewski ultimately pleaded guilty to charges of “corruption of a minor,” and served three months of house arrest.

By 2021, Godlewski had established himself as a major figure within the QAnon world, and was raking in cash hawking multi-level marketing schemes to his hundreds of thousands of followers. Godlewski reportedly purchased a $1.7 mansion using the funds this year.

After the Scranton Times-Tribune published a profile of Godlewski in 2021, Godlewski sued the paper, accusing B.D’s mother of fabricating the allegations in a financial ploy and calling the victim a “conniving” fraud. The accusations prompted B.D., now an adult, and her family to further cooperate with the Times-Tribune’s response to the suit. This cooperation, as the Daily Beast reported, has exposed further details of Godlewski’s misconduct.

Police reports and letters submitted by the girl’s parents indicate that at the time of the relationship, Godlewski exchanged hundreds of text messages with B.D., and bought her lavish gifts. In one text exchange, he told her he had “realized that you’re only 15, but quickly stopped caring.”

Records show that Godlewski detailed his sexual desires and exploits with the teenager, telling her he would “ever be sexually satisfied if we did it like 4-5 times a day.” He allegedly used his work as a real estate agent to gain access to homes within which to have sex with the teen. “We’ve probably had sex in like 40% of the homes in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Godlewski messaged her in one instance.

In written testimony, B.D. indicated that Godlewski continued to contact her in her adult life. Following the death of her grandfather, he texted her: “I had no idea your Popa died. I’m so sorry. I think we had sex in their bed though.”

The Times-Tribune’s lawyers have also submitted that Godlewski attempted to bribe B.D. into perjuring herself in order to exonerate him, telling her that he was “literally foaming at the mouth to take [those motherf*ckers] down once and for all,” and offering her “a very, very large, and very, very unique financial opportunity,”

The paper has accused Godlewski of breaking a variety of courtroom rules and is seeking an additional $70,000 in damages and legal fees.

The QAnon conspiracy theory, which has been heavily promoted by former President Donald Trump, has led to multiple murders and violent attacks. The conspiratorial movement holds that the world is run by a cabal of satan-worshiping pedophiles, and that Trump is the chosen figure destined to bring them to justice. The conspiracy and its followers were a driving force behind the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol.

Godlewski’s case is not even the first instance of a prominent QAnon figure being exposed for preying on a child. Last year, public records obtained by Right Wing Watch revealed that in 1999 David Todeschini, a QAnon influencer, was convicted of sexual abuse and sodomy after abusing an 8-year-old boy.

Both Godlewski and Todeschini demonstrate that if QAnon believers would truly like to rid the world of child predators, they should start by purging them from their own ranks.

A previous version of this story incorrectly described Scranton Times-Tribune writer Chris Kelly as the subject of the 2021 story that referenced Godlewski’s 2010 indictment. Kelly was the author of the story.