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Crime, Law and Justice
John Enger
Bemidji, Minn.

Parents sue over sexual exploitation by former Bemidji school official

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The parents of two students are suing the Bemidji school district over what they say was sexual exploitation by a former assistant principal.

Brandon Bjerknes
Brandon Mark Bjerknes.
Courtesy Bemidji Pioneer

Brandon Bjerknes is in federal prison, serving a 25 year sentence for producing child pornography and coercing minors into sexual conduct. He was assistant principal of Bemidji Middle School until his arrest in 2017.

A lawsuit brought by the parents of two of his victims claims that negligence on the part of the Bemidji School District allowed Bjerknes to abuse children for years.

Court documents say Bjerknes had a system for gaining access to his victims’ lives. He invited students into his school office to hang out and eat candy. And he kept a desk drawer full of cell phone chargers for when their devices ran low. He convinced students to leave their phones charging in his office, so he could look at their photos and learn students’ social media handles while they were in class.

A police investigation showed that Bjerknes used social media to convince dozens of girls as young as 12 to send him sexually explicit photos.

Rebekah Bailey, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the district should have been monitoring Bjerknes’ web activity.

“We know for sure, from the criminal filings that he used his school-issued phone to commit some of these crimes,” she said. “The school should have known about that.”

Superintendent Tim Lutz was hired months after Bjerknes went to prison. He said he couldn’t comment directly on the lawsuit, but shared some details about how the district has operated since he arrived. He said school officials track web traffic on school computers.

“But a lot of time,” Lutz said, “if students or staff bring their own technology, their own cell phones, and they’re using their data plans, they can get around that.”

The lawsuit also claims the school knew that middle school girls were being targeted online, but did not investigate.

Bailey said one of her clients told the school that someone posing as a teenage boy on social media was taking advantage of their daughter. They lodged this complaint six months before Bjerknes was caught, and parents said the district didn’t look into the issue.

“The school was put on notice,” Bailey said. “Had they acted, had they not ignored these serious complaints and concerns, more children could have been spared.”

She said she hopes the lawsuit will prompt the district to work harder at protecting students.