Ex-North Dakota lawmaker to be sentenced for traveling to Europe to pay
for sex with minors
[March 26, 2025]
By JACK DURA
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A longtime, powerful former North Dakota lawmaker,
who is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday for traveling to Europe with
the intent to pay for sex with minors, exploited vulnerable boys and
young men for decades, a federal prosecutor said last week in court
documents.
The new details emerged as prosecutors outlined their reasons for the
judge to impose a roughly three-year prison sentence and lifetime
supervised release for former state senator Ray Holmberg, 81. He pleaded
guilty last year to travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual
activity. He faces up to 30 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and
lifetime supervised release.
The new court documents say Holmberg used his positions as a high school
guidance counselor and state lawmaker to exploit vulnerable youth and
young men for decades, and cite numerous messages the prosecutor said
show some of his countless arrangements to pay for sex with young men
while traveling, often while on state business trips.
Holmberg also manipulated a Canadian teenager, who later took his own
life, into sending him sexually explicit images, and used an alias to
email certain colleagues and friends about “his sexual interest in
adolescent-age boys, among other things,” acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer
Klemetsrud Puhl wrote.
Holmberg has not been charged with any new crimes. He has been jailed in
Minnesota since about early November awaiting sentencing.
His attorney, Mark Friese, asked in a separate filing for a lighter
sentence of time served plus an unspecified period of home detention,
citing Holmberg's age and multiple physical ailments. Friese wrote that
Holmberg had already spent nearly a year under house arrest and would
have served 145 days in custody as of Wednesday’s sentencing.
The case mainly focuses on Holmberg traveling to Prague at least 14
times from 2011 to 2021 where he visited an alleged brothel for
commercial sex with adolescent, often homeless boys, prosecutors said.
In a plea agreement last year, Holmberg acknowledged that he had
“repeatedly traveled from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Prague, Czech
Republic with a motivating purpose of engaging in commercial sex with
adolescent-age individuals under the age of 18 years.”
In his court filing asking for a lighter sentence, Holmberg’s attorney
wrote that while his client admits he violated federal law when he
traveled to Prague with the intent to have commercial sex with a minor,
the government failed to confirm any instance of him actually having sex
for money with anyone under age 18.
Records previously obtained by The Associated Press show that Holmberg
made dozens of trips throughout the U.S. and to other countries since
1999. Destinations included cities in more than 30 states as well as
Canada, Puerto Rico and Norway. At least one of Holmberg’s trips to
Prague was state-funded through a teacher exchange program, the
prosecutor wrote.
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North Dakota Sen. Ray Holmberg, R-Grand Forks, speaks on the Senate
floor at the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D., in November 2021.
(Mike McCleary/The Bismarck Tribune via AP, File)
“Holmberg’s offending conduct over the course of decades ... can
only be described as corruption,” Klemetsrud Puhl wrote. “That is,
he used his position to serve his own ends.”
In one example the prosecutor described, Holmberg brought a
University of North Dakota student to the university president's
suite for hockey games, representing “a right to access some of the
most influential people in the state" — including the UND president,
governor and congressmembers — with the expectation of him engaging
in sexual activity with Holmberg, she wrote.
In 2012 and 2013, Holmberg posed as a teenage boy in an online
chatroom for teens who had undergone circumcision, and misled and
manipulated a 16-year-old Canadian boy into sending him explicit
photos, the new filing said.
The full story of the relationship is unclear because the boy later
took his own life in 2021, “but no doubt Holmberg's conduct
contributed to his struggles,” Klemetsrud Puhl said.
Former U.S. Attorney Tim Purdon said the acts described in the
prosecutor's filing paints a picture for the judge of Holmberg's
overall character.
“What we see here is a defendant who has a decades-long track record
of identifying extremely vulnerable young men, grooming them and
eventually using them for sex," Purdon said.
He said the filing raises the question of who in Holmberg's circle
were aware of his behavior and “approved of it or countenanced it by
their silence.” Investigators know who those people are, Purdon
said.
Holmberg served in the North Dakota Senate from 1976 to 2022. He
resigned in the wake of The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reporting on a
number of text messages he exchanged with a man in jail in
connection with child sexual abuse material.
Holmberg chaired the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee for
many years. He also had stints leading a panel that handles the
Legislature's interim business between biennial sessions, a position
that let him approve his own travel.
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