“Parental Rights” Activist Allegedly Threw Drunken Underage Party—and Punched Teen

A conservative parental rights activist and former candidate for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor has been charged for providing alcohol to minors at a party in September and then punching one of the attendees.

Clarice Schillinger was charged in late October over the incident at her home in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half’s drive north of Philadelphia. The charges were reported on Thursday. The 36-year-old faces charges of assault, harassment, and furnishing minors with alcohol. Her lawyer has denied the charges.

Schillinger has earned some notoriety in her home state for launching a political action committee in 2021 aimed at preventing schools from implementing lockdowns due to Covid-19. She also made a wildly unsuccessful bid for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor last year.

The October charges stem from a 17th birthday party Schillinger hosted for her daughter the month prior. According to the police report, Schillinger stocked a drinks table with vodka and rum, poured alcohol for the teenage guests, asked them to take shots with her, and played beer pong with them.

Things took a turn for the worse when Schillinger began to fight with her then-boyfriend, Shan Wilson. When a teenager tried to intervene, Wilson grabbed the teen by the neck. Schillinger’s mother allegedly punched the teen in the eye and chased him around the kitchen.

Wilson later hit another teen during an argument, after which some of the adolescent partygoers began to leave to get away from the adults. But things continued to escalate as Schillinger told them to stay and then grabbed one partygoer who was trying to depart. That teen told police that Schillinger hit him three times with a closed fist but didn’t injure him.

One of the partygoer’s parents called the police early the next morning, on September 30, to report the assault and the underage drinking. As it turned out, this was not the first time police had been called to Schillinger’s home for an out-of-control party. One week before, police responded to a noise complaint at Schillinger’s house. Officers saw beer cans thrown all around the front yard and street, and saw about 20 teenagers run into the house when the authorities approached.

Schillinger made a name for herself in 2021 when she launched a PAC to back candidates that opposed closing schools down as a Covid-19 safety measure. She has described her PAC and organization as bipartisan and single-issue, but they only back Republican candidates.

That first year, her organization took credit for flipping six school districts. But they fell victim to the pushback against parental rights activists, which delivered major wins for Democrats nationwide this past fall. Schillinger also ran as a Republican for lieutenant governor in 2022. She finished fourth, with a little more than 148,000 votes out of the 1.2 million cast in total.

Schillinger is the latest case of a conservative activist falling ironically short of the moral standards to which she holds other people. Most recently, the national organization Moms for Liberty has been rocked by a rape allegation. A woman revealed she had engaged in threesomes with Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler and her husband, Christian Ziegler. The woman accused Christian Ziegler of sexually assaulting her.