“I don’t think kids should ever question their sexuality. I don’t think kids should ever explore their sexuality. I don’t think any of that stuff ever ought to be in our school,” Shelton said. “But [my daughter] come home asking me why certain books were in that book fair, which were pertaining to books of gay. One of them was Heartstopper, which is where a gay boy pressures a straight kid into kissing him.”

“I don’t understand why we have this kind of stuff in our libraries, in our book fairs,” he said.

A probable cause statement from the detective involved in the case reportedly said that Shelton and his victim had a complex dynamic, suggesting that “the young woman felt groomed, trapped, and manipulated due to Shelton’s position as a religious authority,”