Former Minnesota School Principal Sentenced For Sexual Assaults

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Wabasha, MN (KROC-AM News) - Former Hayfield High School Principal Grant Klennert is not going to prison for his conviction on child sexual assault charges.

A Wabasha County Judge today granted Klennert a stay of adjudication and sentenced him to 42 days in jail with work-release privileges. He has also been ordered to spend 19 years on supervised probation and to pay $1500 annually to an appropriate charity while he is on probation.

The 39-year-old Hayfield man avoided going to trial last month by entering guilty pleas to two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. Under the terms of his plea agreement, another first-degree charge and another second-degree count of criminal sexual conduct were dismissed.

The charges alleged that Klennert "repeatedly and forcefully" sexually assaulted a juvenile boy between 1997 and 2003. The court document states that Klennert was a teenager at the time, but was 18 years old by the time the sexual assaults ended in March 2003.

The criminal complaint also lists two other victims. A woman alleged she was sexually assaulted by Klennert when she was 13 or 14 years old, and a second man told investigators he was seven years old when Klennert sexually assaulted him.

Klennert resigned from his job as the high school principal in Hayfield shortly after the charges were filed against him in December 2022.

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