Parents war with teachers who let children secretly change genders

The parents of a 14-year-old girl who was allowed to secretly change gender at school have accused teachers of making a huge mistake by keeping them in the dark after she was bullied, assaulted in the boys’ restroom – and ultimately ran away and into the hands of an abusive online groomer.

Michele and Roger Blair told DailyMail.com that their daughter, Sage, was allowed to change her name to Draco and use the boys’ restrooms at Appomattox County High School in central Virginia without their permission.

The couple said teachers effectively sidelined them from supporting their daughter, who suffered from depression, during her at-school transition. Ultimately, they only discovered she was trans after finding a hall pass in Draco’s name.

‘Why they didn’t tell me or at least request a parents’ meeting to this day is just way beyond my understanding,’ said Michele.

‘This school made a very poor decision that was not in my child’s best interest. And it was at the cost of my daughter’s mental health.’ 

Such cases are becoming more common as teachers grapple with the small-but-growing number of children wanting to change gender at school, and the especially tricky ones who don’t want their parents to know about it.

On this frontline in America’s culture wars, parents, kids, teachers, and therapists have to make tough calls about rising rates of transgenderism, mental health issues, peer pressure and whether affirmation-on-demand is always the best answer.

Michele and Roger are Sage’s biological grandparents; they adopted her when she was a toddler. At age 14, Sage was being treated for depression as she started out at her new high school in central Virginia, the parents told DailyMail.com.

There, she was exposed to ’emos’, goths, and a panoply of sexuality and gender options. Teachers followed the state’s then-guidelines and accommodated her wish to be called Draco, use the male restrooms, and keep her parents in the dark.

The Blairs are traditionalists and skeptical about newfangled trans ideas. The school did not inform them about Draco, even when she got bullied over her new identity, and was assaulted in the boys’ bathroom.

As tensions mounted at school, the parents discovered a hall pass bearing Draco’s name at home. The secret was out. That night, Sage left a goodbye note and ran away from home, unwittingly to meet up with a sex abuser who had been grooming her online, said Michele.

Sage, an avid 5′ 4” skateboarder, was not available for interview. Her parents said in the time she ran away, she was abducted and abused by numerous men in several locations before she was tracked down and rescued by law enforcement. She was then placed under court protection and spent nearly a year away from her family. 

Sage is back home now, aged 16, presenting as female, and battling her inner turmoil without Draco’s trademark streak of blue hair.

‘She has recall in nightmares,’ Roger told DailyMail.com. ‘She has a lot of trigger points. Every once in a while, there’s normalization.’

DailyMail.com confirmed parts of Sage’s story with the Family Foundation, a conservative Christian campaign group helping the Blairs. Senior school officials did not respond to requests for comment. 

The public high school that Sage attended was one of many across America that allowed students to socially transition – by changing their names, pronouns and outfits – without keeping parents in the loop.

Last week, Republican state representative Dave LaRock proposed a bill – known as Sage’s Law – that would require Virginia school officials to notify parents if their child identifies as transgender in school. 

Under the law, school staff who have direct contact with a transgender student would have to contact at least one of their parents to ask if they are aware of the student’s mental state and ask if the parent wishes to obtain counseling for them. 

LaRock said Virginia must protect the rights of the Blairs and other parents, so that simply ‘affirming a child’s biological sex does not’ constitute ‘abuse’ that can see families torn apart. 

His bill’s passage through the state legislature is not guaranteed.

The number of transgender children between the ages of 13 to 17 has doubled to about 1.4 percent, an analysis of government health surveys show. There’s been similar rises in teens seeking puberty blockers, hormones and surgery, insurance data reveal.

Advocates of ‘gender-affirming care’, as it is known, claim the rise is down to more awareness of gender dysphoria and support among clinicians. Other experts, conservatives and parents warn of an ideologically-driven ‘social contagion’.

Schools are under pressure to assist trans students in this fractious political environment, where the ‘gender-affirming’ model touted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other bodies, is increasingly called into question.

While the school Sage attended was legally allowed to let her socially transition without notifying her parents, that changed in Virginia last year. 

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Parents must now be informed, under rules from Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, who was elected in the heavily-Democratic state in 2021 on a platform of parents’ rights and other ‘kitchen table’ issues.

Florida and Alabama have passed similar rules. Under Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education Act, public schools in Florida are legally barred from teaching gender identity to children from kindergarten to third grade. He is also considering expanding the law to cover children up to the sixth grade.  

Across the US, school administrators have said they want to involve parents, but must follow a patchwork of federal and state guidelines designed to protect students’ privacy, fight discrimination and include all comers.

As with the Blairs, this stokes clashes between teachers and parents, who say they know what’s best for their kids and resent being vilified just because they don’t buy into new wave gender ideology.

This week, a California high school history teacher revealed she had helped students change their gender at school without their parents’ knowledge – and said it was necessary in some cases.

Olivia Garrison, an unabashedly progressive nonbinary person, told the New York Times that they felt it was their job as a teacher to ‘protect kids’ — ‘sometimes from their own parents.’

‘My job, which is a public service, is to protect kids,’ Garrison said. ‘Sometimes, they need protection from their own parents.’ 

Clashes between parents and teachers such as Garrison are not always solved in the principal’s office and end up in court.

Single mom-of-two Aurora Regino this month launched a case against the Chico Unified School District, in northern California, saying a school counselor encouraged her fifth-grade daughter to transition to a male without notifying her.

Regino bashes California’s ‘Parental Secrecy Policy’ and a school counselor who affirmed her daughter’s vague female-to-male transgender request ‘within minutes’ and even ‘pressured’ the child.

California mom Jessica Konen is suing the school district in Spreckels, east of Monterey, and two teachers, alleging her seventh-grade daughter was manipulated into changing her gender and keeping it from her.

Konen accuses a ‘predatory’ teacher of coaching her daughter and other children on how to express LGBT+ identities at the school’s so-called ‘Equality Club’ meetings.

In Eau Clair, in western Wisconsin, a group of parents is suing the school district, saying the school’s policies for supporting transgender students violate constitutional protections for parental rights and religious freedom.

A similar case against Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin was dismissed in November.

A judge last August dismissed a complaint against the Montgomery County school board, in Maryland. Three parents had complained that school trans guidelines sidelined parents from important decisions in their kids’ lives.

Wendell and Maria Perez launched a case against Clay County District Schools, alleging that their 12-year-old daughter’s gender identity and mental health issues, including two suicide attempts, were concealed from them for months by school officials.

The school created a ‘double life’ for the child that led to bullying and breakdowns, they said.

Lawsuits against schools are often backed by conservative legal groups, including the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, America First Legal and the Liberty Center, headed by Harmeet Dhillon, who is running this week to become chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

Disagreements over notifying parents take place alongside debates on whether trans teens can use the school restrooms and compete in sports in alignment with their gender identities. Again, the rules vary by state, and often end up in courts.

DailyMail.com has spoken with several parents of trans-identifying kids. Many worry that their offspring were influenced to transition by classmates, TikTok influencers, or teachers and school counselors with a drum to beat.

Some do not believe their kids are truly transgender and aim to defer such irreversible steps as puberty blockers or surgery. Many said their child instead had mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and autism.

Some are liberals who had backed LGBTQ rights until they were confronted with a weighty dilemma — whether to affirm a child’s hurried request for breast-removal surgery, even when they felt their daughter was just ‘going thorough a phase’.

Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation, said she had encountered parents of trans-identifying kids who were rapidly reassessing whether they were still at home on the political left.

‘All of a sudden, previous ideas about political ideology or public policy have to take a backseat to the very real situation in their own lives,’ Cobb told DailyMail.com.

Some parents have formed self-help groups, where like-minded moms and dads speak openly about a ‘transgender cult’ swaying young minds. Others set up campaigns, like Our Duty and Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans.

The Blairs would fit right in. They feel vindicated now that Sage is back home, wearing feminine outfits and make-up, and said their daughter’s decision to become Draco was a way to make friends and that she’d outgrown the ‘transgender thing’.

‘We love our children more than any counselor, judge or teacher,’ said Michele.

‘They have no business teaching our children what gender they are, and certainly no business, teaching them to keep secrets from their parents.’