Michele Blair, the mother of a teenage girl who briefly identified as a boy, is suing the school board, school superintendent and multiple school counselors after her daughter’s school concealed the girl’s gender transition from her.
Sage’s story was the impetus for a Virginia bill that would have required schools to notify parents their child socially transitioned to another gender. “Sage’s Law” would also have prohibited teachers from hiding that transition and would have clarified that “misgendering” does not qualify as child abuse. State Democrats defeated the bill in Feb. 2023.
Sage’s parents were accused of “child abuse” due to concerns that they would “misgender” their teenage daughter. (RELATED: Pivotal Parental Rights Bill To Face An Uphill Battle In The Virginia Senate)
Sage was repeatedly assaulted as she was allowed to use the boy’s bathroom without her parent’s knowledge, Blair said in her testimony supporting the bill. At the time, Sage was identifying as a boy named “Draco.”
“She’d been jacked up against the wall by a group of boys, she was crying, terrified. I said just stay home, we’ll figure it out,” Michele said during a hearing on Sage’s Law in January. “That was my last conversation with Sage for five months. The night she ran, she went with a young friend she met online. She left a note saying she was scared of what would happen if she stayed.”
Sage was then trafficked from Washington DC to Baltimore, and raped and drugged by multiple men including a registered sex offender.
BREAKING: Every single Democrat in the Virginia House of Representatives just voted against “Sage’s Law,” which makes it illegal for teachers to change a student’s gender without parental consent.https://t.co/fa7aasiJCK
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 7, 2023
During a courtroom battle for custody, attorneys rebuked Sage’s father for using female pronouns to refer to Sage. Sage’s mother was also reprimanded for saying her daughter had undergone “trauma.”
“For over two months [the judge] withheld custody. He housed Sage in the male quarters of a children’s home,” Michele testified. “Sage told me she was the only girl, and repeatedly assaulted. She was given street drugs by the other kids.”
“Sage’s story is an absolute tragedy that no child should ever have to endure. But what is even worse is that it was entirely preventable. School administrators and public officials alike decided that their authority superseded that of her parents,” Vernadette Broyles, the president of the Child & Parental Rights Campaign, which filed the lawsuit on Michele’s behalf, said in a press release provided to the Daily Caller. “This is about who has the best interests of the child at heart, who knows that child better than anyone else, and ultimately who must make important personal decisions for a child. In no situation should that be anyone other than the parents.”
“This was nothing short of misguided and overzealous public officials risking a child’s wellbeing in pursuit of their own ideological agenda. My daughter was forced to suffer because of that arrogance,” Michele Blair explained. “We were robbed of the opportunity to provide the love and care for our daughter when she needed it most. My only hope is that no parent ever has to go through what we did to protect their child.”
🚨POWERFUL VIDEO🚨
A mother gives her testimony on the story behind Sage’s Law:
Educators kept her daughter’s gender identity secret, and even withheld custody, keeping Sage in a male children’s home where she was repeatedly assaulted and given drugs. pic.twitter.com/E4325kWwLi
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 31, 2023
A civil complaint filed Tuesday in the Lynchburg division of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia accuses the school officials of “reckless disregard” for Sage’s parents’ rights to direct the upbringing of their child.
Baltimore public defender Aneesa Khan told Sage that her parents would not treat her well due to her transgender identity were she to return home, per the lawsuit. Khan also allegedly worked to keep Sage out of her parents’ custody and placed her in male mental health care facilities where she was assaulted by boys. The abuse Sage suffered in these facilities caused her to run away and become a victim of human trafficking again, this time in Texas, the lawsuit notes.
“As a result of Ms. Khan’s extreme and outrageous actions intentionally aimed at harming and actually harming [Sage’s] relationship with Mrs. Blair, [Sage] suffered and continues to suffer severe emotional distress that was manifested in physical, mental and emotional injuries and resulted in [Sage] running away from a believed permanent placement in a male unit of a group home where [Sage] was exposed to sexual harassment and assault, and again being sex trafficked,” the complaint reads.
Michele said during testimony that her daughter no longer identifies as a boy and she only “wanted to have friends.” Sage still suffered from panic attacks and medical issues due to the repeated rapes she suffered, according to the lawsuit.