Sage’s Law
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Start at 3:20
Link to videoSage’s Law, or the Child Protection Act, was introduced last Thursday by Del. David LaRock in honor of a courageous Appomattox teen whose school, by concealing from her parents her stated transgender identity, set in motion events that led to her being sex-trafficked twice. Her story, which I documented, was shared in person by her mother Michele. Sage’s Law addresses the clear points of failure that led to Sage’s ordeal, when institutions designed to protect her endangered her instead. It requires that: 1) parents be notified if a child presents as a different gender at school; 2) counselors may not withhold or encourage a child to withhold counseling information; 3) raising a child according to his or her biological sex may not be construed as abuse.
Sage disappeared in August 2021, after telling her mother of an assault in the boys’ bathroom at school. She was found by the FBI nine days later, having been brutally raped, drugged and sex-trafficked into Washington D.C., then Maryland. Instead of restoring her to her family, a Maryland judge withheld custody for more than two months while a public defender built a case of alleged parental abuse in connection with her “expressed male gender identity.” Sage later told Michele she was told to lie about being abused in order to win the case, and told that her mother no longer wanted her. Housed in male quarters in a state children’s home, she reportedly was assaulted repeatedly. Sage ran away and again—for months--fell into the clutches of a sex trafficker, until a tip Michele discovered online led marshals to Sage’s rescue in Texas. Sage now says she doesn’t know who she was back then, that she never was a boy and that she had just wanted to make friends.
Both school and judge instantly affirmed her gender—precisely as prescribed by the 2021 Northam policy on transgender students and our own Fairfax County Public Schools--and thereby missed entirely the underlying trauma and bigger picture of her emotional and mental health. Within minutes of meeting Sage, they wrongfully asserted authority to determine her best interests, leading to lifelong scars and nearly fatal consequences.
Policies that conceal information from parents purport to protect vulnerable children, but in fact remove a child’s greatest protection, opening the door to predators. Sage’s harrowing story is, sadly, far from unique. Despite the claims of activists, we do not have data substantiating that trans-identified kids are thrown out by parents. We do, however, have growing evidence, with “secrecy...part of the lore of youth gender transition,” that children are lured into believing they are at risk at home but safe with “friends”—who may encourage them to leave for the illusion of a “glitter family” better than their own, or worse, turn out to be predators. The consequences have been tragic, resulting even in suicide.
Removing a child from family is proffered as a solution by activists—thus the promise to “rehome” children by the Pride Liberation Project. Yet Sage’s lived experience in foster care is all too common: easy access to street drugs, indifferent supervision, and repeated assault. No claim can possibly be made that such catastrophic “care” was safer than her loving home.
Parents overwhelmingly oppose being deceived by schools, as demonstrated by reader interest in Sage’s story, the New York Times article Sunday and other recent pieces. Del. Danica Roem has alleged Sage’s Law does not “include the very community...legislate[d] about.” Yet Sage was transgender-identified and “affirmed” precisely as advocated by Roem—secretly in school and proactively by a judge. In fact, as a transgender adult, Roem is wholly unrelated to the community affected—minor children and their parents. Gender-dysphoric children, 8 times out of 10, embrace their biological sex as puberty passes, making affirmation a dangerous mistake 80 percent of the time. Sage’s Law simply recognizes that parents—not schools or judges—should be both informed and in charge of their child’s health.
No child should ever pay the price Sage did for misguided policies. It is time to shut the door to predators and pass Sage’s Law.
Laura Bryant Hanford is a Fairfax mother with a background in human rights advocacy and policy, in Romania for the US Embassy and on Capitol Hill where she was a lead Congressional staff drafter of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. She is a graduate of Princeton University.
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The very fact that schools FOR ANY REASON withhold information from students legal guardians and custodians is so completely outrageous and is a complete violation of the compact made between educators and parents.
For a Maryland judge to then refuse custody back to the parents on a ludicrous new guideline in his state that cannot nor should not stand a legitimate legal challenge is beyond absurd.
What the fuck are we doing to our kids?
The Brad
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The very fact that schools FOR ANY REASON withhold information from students legal guardians and custodians is so completely outrageous and is a complete violation of the compact made between educators and parents.
For a Maryland judge to then refuse custody back to the parents on a ludicrous new guideline in his state that cannot nor should not stand a legitimate legal challenge is beyond absurd.
What the fuck are we doing to our kids?
@LuFins-Dad said in Sage’s Law:
The very fact that schools FOR ANY REASON withhold information from students legal guardians and custodians is so completely outrageous and is a complete violation of the compact made between educators and parents.
Exceptions are reasonable when legal guardians/custodians are reasonably believed to be the abusers inflicting harm on the students.
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@LuFins-Dad said in Sage’s Law:
The very fact that schools FOR ANY REASON withhold information from students legal guardians and custodians is so completely outrageous and is a complete violation of the compact made between educators and parents.
Exceptions are reasonable when legal guardians/custodians are reasonably believed to be the abusers inflicting harm on the students.
@Axtremus said in Sage’s Law:
@LuFins-Dad said in Sage’s Law:
The very fact that schools FOR ANY REASON withhold information from students legal guardians and custodians is so completely outrageous and is a complete violation of the compact made between educators and parents.
Exceptions are reasonable when legal guardians/custodians are reasonably believed to be the abusers inflicting harm on the students.
A math teacher aided and abetted a teenage girl in running away. A girl with known mental health issues and whose parents had just been cleared from a case court case where it was shown that they had never been abusive, physically or emotionally. Yet this teacher helped this girl run away, did not provide information to the parents, with the end result that the girl wound up in Texas where she was again abused and drugged.
Excuse me if I don’t think that teachers should be deciding what’s “reasonable” regarding parents rights.
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@LuFins-Dad said in Sage’s Law:
The very fact that schools FOR ANY REASON withhold information from students legal guardians and custodians is so completely outrageous and is a complete violation of the compact made between educators and parents.
Exceptions are reasonable when legal guardians/custodians are reasonably believed to be the abusers inflicting harm on the students.
@Axtremus said in Sage’s Law:
@LuFins-Dad said in Sage’s Law:
The very fact that schools FOR ANY REASON withhold information from students legal guardians and custodians is so completely outrageous and is a complete violation of the compact made between educators and parents.
Exceptions are reasonable when legal guardians/custodians are reasonably believed to be the abusers inflicting harm on the students.
This is one of those cases where you like talking out of your ass because you think it's fun to piss people off by peddling your simpleton propaganda.
We do actually have a system in place to determine whether information should be withheld from legal guardians and it sure as fuck isn't, "whatever the Math teacher thinks is okay." None of this has anything to do with gender, but their making it so led to this tragedy.
