I'm really excited to have Mi Shelle Blair on the show. She's gone through a lot, burying a son early, very early, and then taking her daughter, his daughter to raise. I just want to give you the chat. First of all, thank you so much for coming on. Just like just what we've talked about, it's just I think as a parent, this is something that you need to listen to. You know, the people that are watching this, they need to listen to it. They need to understand this isn't somebody's opinion. This is your story, and so kind of tell us your story, you know, from Massachusetts. You started in Massachusetts, to start there and just talk about how you ended up with Sage, and then we'll go from there. Sure, Sage is the apple of my eye. And after my son passed, I fought the the Florida. She was in foster care for six months, for no almost a year, and she was in six dif from foster homes. And when I finally got her home to Massachusetts, me and my husband wanted to relocate to a small town so she didn't have to be raised in the city. So we moved and we ended up in Virginia. We've been here for almost ten years, and Stage went to a small private Christian school since kindergarten. But when she got up to middle school, she wanted to try a public school because she wanted to meet more friends because the schools she went to there's not a lot of kids. So she went and then everything went okay. But when she was twelve, she started going through depression, which I expected because of the trauma as a baby. So not to interrupt you, but just talk about what that trauma looked like. Yeah, she was very depressed. She had a lot of anxiety. She started to isolate. I noticed that she was not eating, so I knew she was having a problem with her self image and she started self harming, and that's when I took her to a counselor. So she was with a counselor. So the timeframe for this is when you got costody of her in Florida and took her to Massachusetts and then ultimately to Virginia. How old was she when you got her? Oh my goodness, she was the cutest old thing you ever did see. She didn't weigh much because she was failure to thrive when she was a baby. Okay, but it was the best ten years of me and my husband's life. So yeah, so old? How old was she when you got her? Just shy of two years old? So you got her when she's two years old? Your son passed away in Florida? Correct, yes, and then you go through all the process. Just talk about that process. I don't think people understand. They think you just show up and go, I want I want custody of this child. How does that work? Oh? You know what if you don't, If you can't handle paperwork, forget it, it's not going to happen. I was so persistent. There was not one piece of paperwork I have a file like this. I was such a I was so like I would kill them with kindness. I called every single day. How was sage? How's it going? What do I do next? How do I handle this? I had one attorney and she she bombed out on me. I had to lease her and get another attorney. I mean every time I called social services, they knew my voice like, this isn't so it's not. It's not as simple as just show up. I'm this child's grandmother. I need to take her with me. And I knew that I was going to fight and I knew she was going to have issues, and I would have taken her with all the pain and sufferings she had been through. She was abused in foster care. So she so she goes through the foster care system in Florida. And that's what when you talk about trauma, that's the trauma that she experienced. So fast forward. You go through all the process in Florida to get her back, to get custody of her, and you make a decision. You born and raised in Massachusetts, yes, and you're like, hey, this is probably not what's best for her. So you make a decision to come to a small community in Virginia and she starts in school. Kind of go through what that's like as a parent to see your child, and I think all parents go through that of like what is the best thing to do? And you know that there's a history of trauma. How do you navigate that as a parent. Well, it was kind of interesting because we drove here to bring her to the zoo because I have no family here, okay, And the lady there was saying, yeah, if you lived, you know, in Lynchburg and you go to this school associated with liberty and out of high school. She can go to Liberty for free. So I was like, let's move here because you go to Liberty for free, Okay, because I'm like, we're old. I don't want to leave her with a big student loan. She was great, we had we just had a blast. It was everything was going great. She's gone to church her whole life. Things were good. I didn't see any trouble on the horizon until she hit twelve, and I could see the depression. She didn't start self harming till the end of eighth grade into into the summer in between and COVID started. Is when she started again like serious about it because there was nothing to do. All the kids were starting. Everybody was at home and they're doing remote learning and everything else. Yeah, so her mental health really took good. And you were saying she transitioned from a smaller school into a bigger school. Yeah, she went to eighth grade the Appomats Middle School and she did okay, but they noticed she was having issues. But that was so what gray was she when COVID hit. Going It was in the end of eighth grade because that's when it's shut down. So you have a kid that's gone through all this trim as a kid COVID hits. Obviously there's a lot of bad things that happened, you know, there were some really negative effects on children. Yeah, And so when she goes back to school, where does she go back to school after, I mean goes back to in person. Learning appamatics high school? Ninth grade? Okay, so she starts back in school and that's is that kind of when you like twelve thirteen, she starts having issues, you know, like some of the trauma. Well she was she was kind of acting out with dyeing her hair and then going goth, dressing all black and listening to you know, the goth music, and she started just being depressed with the eating disorder. And as she got into ninth grade, she decided she was emo to so I did buyer like her size boys flannel shirts and you know, baggy jeans, and she was just a cool little emo chick. All right. So for the people that don't have kids. Is just another type of music, but it means emotional, Like they're very emotional and they get into emotion and they like to get you know, deep with it, and it kind of overwhelms them with too many dark, deep feelings. So it's kind of a progression from what you could see. And where did the progression ultimate leader? Well, I think at school everybody was talking about you know, being you know, a bye or trans or lesbian, and everybody had, you know, their different tastes, and for some reason she decided she was going to be identify as a boy. Okay, And. Her third day in Appomatox High School, the counselor came over to her and said, do you identify as a boy? And she said yeah, And she said, what do you want me to call you? And she said Draco. She said, oh, okay, so you can use the boys' bathrooms, then we would prefer you use them. So she used the boys' bathrooms and that's when the bullying started. So you have a counselor who is there for the well being of a child encouraging your child, who is a biological female to use a male's bathroom just because of a statement she made. And told her the girls are uncomfortable with you going in the girl's room. Did you ever find any evidence that girls that I mean she hung out with girls? Yeah, And so I mean there was nothing that you've seen that would have indicated that you was struggling, as you know, struggling in a relationship with other females where all of them had problems. No after school, they would go to the library outside the library, the gazebo and just hang out there talking. So you at home, so let's try to divide it up. Talk about what you now know happened at school, and talk about what you saw at home. Because I feel like you, you, based on what we've talked about, you have her life at school where she's doing stuff that you don't know she's doing. I mean, I don't think as a parent you'd say, can I call time out real quick and say I don't want my child who is a girl in a boys bathroom? As a parent, I don't want that, right. I would have said that I wish I had known. I wish they'd but you didn't know. I didn't know know. So so talk about let's let's break it up. You as a parent, what did you say at home during that period of time. I saw she was isolating. I knew she was depressed. She stopped, you know, talking and telling me things. And I would just every night I'd go and sit on her bedroom floor and I would talk and I would do like role playing with her and what would you do if this kid said that or you know, things like that, and we would she would answer me and we she was okay. But did she talk about anything about being bullied or anything else. No, No, I wish she had. So you didn't. So all you knew is you have a child, they're in a school, they're getting back from COVID. It's just a transitional period. You don't realize what. You don't have all the information, even though you're the parent. So talk about what was happening at the school during that time. Well, apparently they were making the boys were making fun of her. I mean they would follow her down the hall. She did tell me at one point, these boys keep following me, And I said, well why, she said, because they just keep they keep teasing me. I said, yeah, boys will do that. But apparently it was getting severe to the point where one time she went into the boys' bathroom and six boys followed her and they jacked her up against the wall and they threatened to rape her. And I don't know exactly what else. Parts of her memory are not really they're a little fuzzy. But when she got out, she told one of her friends, and the girl went home and told her mother, and the mother called the principal and said, listen, Draco, because at that point she was going by Draco. Draco Blair is getting bullied by boys in the bathroom, and. Nobody told me, so you have a vio. I learned about all this after she went. So, I'm just trying to understand because I've worked in this. You work with school systems and things like that. One of the quickest way to get kicked out of school is be involved in a violent encounter. When you have a violin encounter, everybody gets notified. If you threaten somebody, everybody gets notified. How did you not get notified that your child was involved in a violent. Instant to this day, I don't know. I don't know. You just know that well. I do know that they did. I mean I didn't learn this till after the fact, but they did talk to They called Sage into the counselor's office where they had a sheriff and the two counselors, and they said to her, you know and Sage said, I didn't. I didn't tell anybody. She said, I know somebody told, but I didn't say anything. They said, yeah, well we talked to the six boys and they all said that's not true. And do you know if one of these boys has a rich father, that they're going to sue you for slander. Now she's fourteen when this happened. Is that's the night she ran away? But you didn't know that? Now, I did not know that, So you have I saw that in the notes after she was missing. When you say you saw it in the notes. When we got the notes from the counseling, we got some of the notes from the school, all. Right, So kind of a progression, just so it's clear in my head, is she at some point identifies as a male. The counselor says, hey, you use the bathroom. There's some negative encounters because of that boy's bullying er and stuff, and at this point you still don't know that. No, and then there's that violent instant the school system and everybody's having a meeting about it, and next thing, you know, what happens, she runs away? Right? Well, yeah, well, I mean they call her in and they talked to her without letting me know that a CoP's talking to her, right, and then the bullying got so bad on the bus that one of the boys said he's going to shove her head out the window and do horrible X rated things to her. And that's when it another somebody. I don't know how it happened, but when they asked Stage about it, she said, yeah, pull the video and you'll see that I'm not making it up. Well, they pulled the bus video. I don't know if it's video and audio, I don't know, but they saw that it was true and they called me to come pick her up. They said, oh, no, all the kids got you know, there's something going on on the bus and nobody Sage didn't do anything wrong. We don't know what's going on. We just want, you know, her to be picked up and some other kids be picked up. So you had no idea of any of the stuff that had happened. You just know that during that time. Do you remember any any of the friends that she had around her or anything else that like you were like, uh, these are this is a different friend group or anything like that. Well, no, she was hanging out with the kids that were like emo and goth. Okay, yeah, there wasn't a lot of them, maybe four, maybe four girls. They were just hanging out. Was there anyone else or is she the one that took it a step further of saying like I'm identifying as a male. Yeah, she was the only one that did that. Yeah. But but the school, it sounds like, encouraged that. Well, the counselor did. Well, that was the problem when they thought she was a boy. They they encouraged it, and they glorified it because one counselor the other counselor took her in the office and said, there's nothing wrong with that, and it's okay that you're a boy. And I agree that you know you are a boy, and we recognize that. But I you know, don't tell your parents. Do not tell your parents because they're Christians, they go to church, and they won't accept you. Well, that's when the that's when that's when it got started getting I didn't know, I didn't know. You just know. She disconnected from me after that. So all the bullying and stuff that happened at school, obviously the trigger to that is I'm guessing probably because it's a female going into a male's bathroom. Yeah, and nobody's really preparing the other students for that. I wouldn't expect it a little tiny country school. I mean, it was a big compared to the Christian school, but still it was not on my radar. And then the worst case, the worst thing that happened was as Sage was getting more and more being told not to tell anyone, and they were glorifying her new identity. She would have to live a double life. Come home and let me call her stage, but go to school and be called a boy's name. And if you're and to me, why in the world would you not just give me a heads up in a phone call and say, listen, you do identifying as a boy. Are you okay with us calling her Draco? I would have said, well, thank you so much, I'm so glad you told me. I had absolutely no idea, and I would have gone and I would have picked her up and I would have brought her home and I would not have let her go back to school because at that point I knew she's going through a crisis in her head. So one of the things that we talked about beforehand is it's not like you made that decision just as a parent. You've actually gone through some specialized training about trauma where you identified it and YE talk about that real quickly. Yeah. I've been a volunteer CASSO, which is a CORN appointed Special Advocate of just a volunteer position since two thousand and fifteen, where I take on a case with foster kids and I followed the case through to the end, and I had to take a lot of classes to learn a whole lot of stuff. And because I have a love for children, it really helped me identify with Sage As I saw the different stages she was going through through puberty. I could see her changing and losing the joy that she had as a little girl. But I think the thing that I struggle with the most thus far is you're still the parent. You're still the one that's responsible for him. I always think about in order for a child to get ear rings, they have to have a you're if you're a certain age, you still have to get to your parents' permission. If you're a child, if you're not illegal, you know, legal age eighteen years old, you can't. That's right. But what you're saying is what your experience was with sagees. They just made that decision arbitrarily, never contacted the person that's raising the child that is the parent of this child and say, hey, she's struggling with this. I think when I listen to that, I think about if you had a child that had a mental health crisis, any of those different things, the school would engage you and say, hey, let's come up with a community response, not not say so, why do you think the school, based on your experience, what you've learned up until this point, why did the school just make the decision to exclude you as part of that. Well, yeah, looking back and doing all my research and seeing all these children that are you know, saying they're born in the wrong body and going through it's a social contagion in my mind, and had I lost my train at that. That's all right, So let's no, that's fine. So you're talking about all the because that's one of the things you mentioned before is kids go through all these different phases. For lack of a better way, it is a phase. Like they have different color hair, they cut their hair short, to cut their hair long, they do all these different things. This is just a different phase. And I don't think I don't think you're sitting here saying like I think everybody that identifies as trains or anything else is a bad person. You're just saying, as a parent, I should have had that information. I should have been engaged, right. And that's why it makes me sad, because they just assumed that I wasn't going to accept her as trends And how did they know. They never even gave me that chance. In fact, they did the opposite. They said, don't tell her, don't talk to your mom. Which tells your child what when she's going through puberty? That is not a safe space. That's what it tells them. It tells them like, don't go there, come here. And these teachers and these professionals are being told not to tell us. I mean, it is part of their curriculum not to tell us. They like they won't. They'll get fired if they tell us. And they think they're doing the right thing. On their behalf, they think they're doing the right thing. But who based on your experience, everything that you've experienced, because I think we talked about that before, I think it's really easy for me to go I don't agree with this, but my disagreement is based on what somebody else has told me. This is your first hand experience of you're telling my kid to identify like my kid is telling you, I'm having a dilemma in my identity, and you're telling them don't. Don't have a conversation with your parent about what your conflict is. Yeah, and I don't even understand words. I don't understand it either. And you know what, here's the thing when I decided when when when she did get found because another counselor gave her a couple of Pride websites to go on where she ended up meeting somebody who took her and she became a victim of sex trafficking, which she is a survivor. But at that point, it was it was it was too out of control. And so what's happening is not just to sage and not just to me parents. It is really truly happening to thousands of these kids all over the world, I mean everywhere, And we are in a big hub and not it's and you know what, as Akasa, our goal is to get the kids home, you know, get the if they're in an unsafe home, call CPS. But by you telling them not to tell your parent that you identify as you know, a different gender, is making them live a double life, and they're too young to be put that burning on their on their brains. It's just you don't just do you just don't do that to a child. You always include the family, You always include the family. Well, I think that's I think as a cost of volunteer, I think that is one of the things that's burned into your brain almost to the point of like, it is infuriating to me to see cases, particularly with abuse and things like that, and it is the court's goal to get them back in that family unit that they came from. Yes, So why in the world, if that is what the goal is, why is this one special class It doesn't apply. You know what, Your guess is probably better than mine at this point. And I lived through it, and I still don't understand it. I really don't because it sounds like I know, there's like lots of disagreements about trands and everything else. But like for me, when I look at it and I think about it, I think about it from this standpoint is if everything else is the rules are like this, why is this a special like designation? Why do you have a special designation? I just I don't understand it. Is there something? Is there some kind of study that's been done or something that says, hey, our kids are gravitating towards this and we need to support this gravitation. No, as a matter of fact, if anybody did their research, it is harmful to the child. It isn't. They're doing irreversible harm to them by giving these drugs behind our backs. Like for stage, they were going to remove her breast behind my back and you don't need a parental signature to do that. They have safe houses that they're putting. When you say they are we talking about state government, federal government or who does that? Uh? The teachers called CPS, and CPS takes the child out of the home and bring them to a safe house and they and they trans transmetically. So there do you know? Oh, and I'm just asking this, do you know of places in this area that they have I know they have women's shelters for domestic violence victims. So you're saying, based on what you know you lived at, that there are places in central Virginia that a child who identifies as trans can be removed from their parents and go to a safe house to have That is correct. That is correct? And you know that because of why. Because I've done my research and I have done a lot of talk to a lot of different people, and I know of there's a lot of states that have these safe houses, and it's and it's real, and it's starting to come out. But people are still blaming the parents for not accepting the children. They still think they're doing the right thing. So is this like a national thing where oh this is all. Over the world, everywhere, everywhere, well except for Africa. But I guess like from my standpoint, the only way I can make sense of it is again is to isolate it, and isolate it from a standpoint, is this is a specialized This is the only type of event that you can have or identification that you can have that totally removes parental rights. Yes? Is that? Would that be accurate? That's so I think we talked about a couple of things that you experienced with sage. Is first of all, you had a counselor had a conversation about a mental health crisis. I mean, is is it safe to say that there was a progression for her that you realize as a cost of trained, cost of volunteer. She's in, she's in, she is having a mental health episode in a continuation which ultimately ended with her identifying as a male. Is that is that's accurate? Yes, because the summer a before school started, I knew that she needed more professional help than I could support her with. So she did go to a week long adolescent program okay, And when she got out, we started her on medication okay, And she started school a month later, and then it just went down hill from there. And I think that's where for me again, I I it. You hear stories and you and you hear how militant people are on both sides of this issue. One of the things that and that's one of the main reasons I want to have you on is like you're not talking about it and like, oh I heard this, like you actually experienced it. So let's just walk through what you experienced. You had a child that you got at a young age. She had trauma as a child. She started there's a progression of trauma. She's having an identification issue. And it's not just an identification issue as like it's in the way she dressed going through each one of those progressions, hair, all these different things, self harming and everything else. So like she would have been in a category as like, hey, this is somebody that's in a mental health crisis. Let's not do anything drastic. Is that safe to say? Is it safe to say that normally with a child that has a mental health episode, you're not going to make any drastic changes. You're just going to have a conversation. I mean, am I accurate in saying that? Yeah? Oh yeah, Like we're not gonna We're not gonna go okay, we see you progressing in this mental health like self harming. We're not going to sit there and go, okay, well, we're gonna we're gonna transition you to something different, like you're self harming, you have a mental health thing. And I think they're going to reach out to you as a parent even more and say, let's work together to figure out what this is. That's what I thought. But that's what I thought. But so when she was having all these other like all these self harming and everything else, did you ever have any contact with social services or anyone else that are like, hey, we just want to give you a quick update about this. No, but here's the thing. I knew she started self harming because you saw it yourself. Yeah, I saw it myself, and I knew and that's why she was going for counseling, and she was. But I think for me, I think a lot of people want to come back and go, well, it's not you know, like you I'm trying to say this in a way that I know where you're coming from. But I think what people want to say is they're like, well, it seems like you have a child that's in the midst of trauma and going through all these different identification issues, and obviously the parent's not doing a good job, so we need to, you know, like we need to support the child. But I think it takes away the really important step, which is that child is still the responsibility of the parent and somebody independent of the parent that doesn't know all the details you know, from the child at the time that child was born, and even more from the child that the time that Sage was two years of age, what she had been through. So why would you not be part of the process too. You know? And you know what, had I been part of the process, because trust me, I know Sage better than she knows herself, right, and had I been part of the process, I would have been able to fix it. I would have fixed it because you know, I would have loved her through it. I wouldn't have taken a textbook in text her through it. I wouldn't have glorified her and told her, Yeah, you're definitely a boy. Let me give you some websites. Go on and find your people. I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have told a child go use the boy's bathroom. Sorry, you're ninety pounds little, you know, little girl, I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have done that, not only as a teacher, just as a human being. I would not have done that. I mean, I think it's almost like when you go it is totally different. But like for me, I look at it as like if I went out to a restaurant and I saw somebody else's child misbehaving or doing something, I'm not a good I'm not going to go and intervene. No, and I'm called because I don't have all the information. And I think that's the key is you had people making decisions for her that didn't have all the information, and it. Make matters worse. They didn't even open the file and read her file. They identified her and glorious she got in this category and that fashion. I never even opened her school file to see what her records were. And as Akasa, the first thing I do is go to the foster child's school and talk and read the file and talk to the counselor. That's the first thing I do before I even go further with the case, because. You don't want to introduce something that. Will I want to know what happened, right. But you don't want to like your solution or how to navigate that child. It shouldn't be based on well I think this, it is like actual information. Yes, and so you, as the parent of this child, saw progression and that progression ultimately ended with her being bullied because of a decision the school and her maid, which was for her to go use the men's bathroom. So you go through that progression, you have the incident on the school bus, talk about were there any other things that happened that put her on the course where she was actually and if you need to just go straight to like they gave her websites of like, hey, you said that. They said, these are some of your people that you're going to identify with find friends here, okay, And so they they introduced her to an unsafe environment, and she ultimately was a victim of trafficking. Talk about that. She went on one of the websites and thought she was taught. And this was when this was the night that the school had brought in a sheriff to the school and and told her that they talked to these six boys and they never they never ever threatened her with rape or bullied her. And so the sheriff told her, well, if one of the fathers was rich, they would take you to court. And that's when sage. And you got to remember she's going through this. She's fourteen. Now she's traumatized, and now she's thinking it's all her fault and she tried to say it's but it's not my fault. I didn't tell anybody that that happened, but somebody did. Another student did and told the mom who called the school. So now she comes home and she's upset. And at this point I'm in her room and I know she's upset, and I'm like, say, we need to talk. Something's bothering you. And I find on her floor a school pass that says Draco, and I'm like, oh, here's the school pass. Who's Draco, she said to me, And I said, what do you mean that's you? She said, I'm a boy now and I didn't want to tell you. I said, well, you know what, I can see you're upset. And she started crying and I held her and I said, Sage, you know what, don't worry about it. I love you. It's okay, and you know what, just get some rest and we'll talk about it in the morning. You're not in trouble. So how old was she at this point? Fourteen fourteen? And so she's in the ninth grade, fourteen years of age, only two and a half. Weeks into school. Like nobody knew her. How do you try to judge my child? You don't know her that well. You only had two sessions with her. Actually they called her in to two consoling sessions eight times, but we don't know what was said during them. I would guess they were telling her she was a boy. That's my guess, that's my educated guess. But you have somebody at school having a really, really life changing conversation with your child without having any conversation with you, okay, which to me, is like we discussed, is abnormal. It's sad. But it's not just me, It's it's all these kids. We'll go to I would like to talk more about the other kids. But like, so you find this past where she identifies as Draco, she go to bed upset. But what you didn't though is she was already having contact with people online. Correct. Yeah, and she ran away that night. She ran away that night, but it wasn't so when she ran away, were you how were you able to figure out where she was and kind of talk about what happened to her. I didn't know where she was. The the FBI, I mean the search and rescue dogs came out. The FBI told me, you know, we're probably looking for her body at this point where I was on my knees. And nine days later, the FBI got a tip from somebody and they found her in the home of a second time sex child sex offender in Maryland. So on day nine they called me at ten at night and said, we found your daughter. She's safe. We have her at the hospital. Come get her. And they give me an address. And this is in Maryland, Maryland. But just so we're clear on this, the way she met these people when she. Ran she was meeting a sixteen year old kid to go skateboarding with. But that introduction was was from who. From somebody online that the counselor had given her. So they basically introduced her to the person that ultimately right now. And who would give somebody else's child any website, any without my permission, even if it was just ABC's Why would you do that without not sending home a note? No, I agree, I wouldn't give I wouldn't ever give anybody's child that. So you have to The FBI caused you talk about what that nine days was like, because you said the FBI said, I. Thought you instead I was, I was a mess. It was just did you find any information that like or did they? Did you have any information that said other than like that one thing that you found the past that said Draco on it? Was there anything that was like, hey, this is probably why it happened. You good? Well at that point, I I did not know, and there was nobody to point the finger at. I was just like, I don't know what happened, and I was just too traumatized at that point because I thought. He thought she was gone. So you had mentioned earlier, when did you have the conversations of like actually tracking her down and tracking her movements. Was that after she was. Found, well, when she was found, me and Roger we packed I mean I packed the car up with pillows and blankets and stuffed animals and we went toget her and they had her in a girl and a woman, a girl's female jail. So I knock on the door at eight in the morning and I'm like, my daughter's here. We're here to pick up Sage Blair. And she says, oh, you can't see him. You have to you have to talk to the judge at four o'clock. Her. They called her her at four o'clock. So we just sat in the car waiting for the hearing. And then we get into the courtroom and Baltimore, Maryland, and up on the zoom screen is a little tiny Sage in the corner of a jail cell on this chair. When I start crying and I say, Sage, I love you, and that was it. The judge shut down the hearing and said we have to you know, they shut down the screen for Sage and said this is Draco and that's why you know, now we're going to invest We're going to have Marylynd, investigate you for child's abuse, and we need Virginia to investigate you and your husband for child abuse. Not recognizing her as a boy. That's that's what happened, or that's what happened. I got the transcripts to prove it. So you so you go from okay, I just see this pass that identifies her aid. And she's a runaway child, which the law says, you returned the child to their state. They could have at least returned her here and put her somewhere, but no, and they didn't tell her that we were there. So that's the first time you were you'd ever seen her since you nine days before. It's here and the public defender told her that your parents don't love you, they don't want you to come home because you identify as a boy. So now she's thinking, Now, you've got to remember, here's a fourteen year old child, has been very innocent, goes through a sex trafficking, a bunch of grown men trafficking her, and then she gets put into a hospital. Cops pick her up, raid the house, pick her up, put cuffs on her, bring her to the hospital. She goes through a very extremely painful rape exam, which is a horrible thing. So she reported that she was a victim of a sexual assault. Well, they just knew. They just knew because they knew he was a sex offender. So so they just went and yeah, and there's but did you know that when you went to the initial hearing, so you so your child gets raped and they don't even tell you. They should have called me and said, we found your child. She's in the hospital going through a rape exam. I would have got on, I would have. Drove there, but instead that here in jail cell. Yeah, and now she thinks it's all her fault because if you know what goes through you know a girl's you know that girls are very emotional. Now she's just feeling guilty and it's all her fault. And well, I mean, I feel like she went through the fact that she ran away and you know all that, and then I feel like she I would say, she definitely felt like. I feel like there's a lot of experiences that victims of sexual assault go through and blame and like her support system wasn't even there because they didn't allow you. To And then they told her her supports system meaning her parents don't want her anymore. And then I say to the judge, we have to come back on Monday. And I say, why is she in jail? She's done nothing wrong And the judge as public defender, is that true? And she says, no, there's no criminal charges. Well, we'll find a facility for her. So we come back for she does a week in jail and solitary confinement. Now she's left alone for a week, you know, fourteen broken in. A women's prison in Maryland. Solitary confinement in Baltimore. Yeah, and so then the judge says, yeah, so you know what happens. They put her into a boy's home. They put her in a boys home. They put her in a boy's home for a high risk teenage boys. I mean, that's insane. It's insane. I don't even know, Like, you have a kid that's experienced all that, and you think the solution is to put her in in a home, put a female with boys high risk, you know. So the kind of people that. Nobody would listen to me kept saying, it's trauma, it's trauma. It has nothing to do with her gender. This is a girl that's traumatized. And the judge said if you say the word trauma one more time, I'm throwing you out of my courtroom. So you have the you have the experience of like, hey, thank goodness, my child is safe, and then and then it and then it. Then it goes to now you're part of what they believe to be part of the problem and you can't have access to your own child. How long did it take you to get your child back? Well, she was there for three months. She was in a boys home for three months. Three months, and they finally agreed to let her come back to Virginia. But I couldn't. I couldn't give her the ride. We had to have an appomatic sheriff and a female social worker bring her. But they wouldn't let her come home. They were going to put her into a facility. Well I found the facility because I'm a CASA and I'm used to finding beds and open spaces forget these kids. But they need to go for support. And it's called Youth for Tomorrow and it's a wonderful Christian program with all outdoors and she would have she would have been part of They have a specific part of their program is for girls, young teenage girls that have been sexually exploited. Well, the judge said no, because they won't call her Draco. She had to go to a facility where they recognized her as a boy and affirmed her as a boy and called Draco. So I couldn't find. One quick question. Did they ever say anything about providing her any type of counseling for her sexual assault for the three months that she was in a male FLD. And that's what I said. I said, you know what, sir, I said, you're honor, you can It's okay, But please get her some trauma help. I asked, I begged, please get her some trauma help. She's just gone through a horrible thing and she's she's not in the right place. She needs help. So we're talking about we're talking about at that point, they knew she had been sexually assaulted. Yes, they knew that she was, Yes, a run away from Virginia. And their solution is to put her inside of a boy's home. Oh and the boys home, by the way, does have sessions, group sessions, but she wasn't allowed to join in because and I said, can you And they said no, we can't get her trauma help because she's not a Maryland resident, and that's why she couldn't join the boys' support group, which that's fine with me, but they would not get her help because she wasn't And I said, well, then please let her come home because I have her support system here. I said, I have a psychiatrist lined up, I have a therapist lined up, I have everything she needs here. And they still wouldn't know. And I said, I'm a CASA, sir, so they you know what. He said, Well, you were CASSA on this case. I said, no, you're on r I'm not. He said, well that ends that. So what I hear is I hear again the way things are traditionally handled in law enforcement change because of that one designation that at some point she identified a girl that identified as a boy, which totally changed everyone's reaction to a sexual assault victim a runaway, and. That it didn't matter, that was just all on the back burner. None of that mattered, and even to the point of when you found a place for yes, that was one of the considerations. Draco, and that is the only reason it is in the transcripts. It is absolutely unbelievable. So I always think about one of the things people talk about Lynchburg is it's part of the Bible belt, you know, and like you've got all these conservative thought processes and everything. Yeah, I have all these conservative processes. But yet this is so prevalent. I would guess that even in this area, we decide that we tell a girl without notifying her parents, Hey it's fine for you to use the boys bathroom if you identify as a male. All these different Your child is involved in a violent incident in school, and you're not ever notified about the violent incident. Never again, everything's changing just because of that single designation of I am possibly trans and they. All focused on that. That was their folk. So none of the other stuff matter. The fact when you got your child back, just go through that real quick. When you got your child back, how many men had sexually assaulted your fourteen year os? More than she could count? So she wasn't like those nine days she was gone, what would be your base? It got worse, but the nine days. Let's just deal with the nine days. The nine days she was gone. How many times was she sexually assaulted? I don't know, and how many. There's part of her memory that won't that won't. Allow her but let's talk about the first night that she could remember. She got she got. There's the first guy that picked her up, who. Came all the way from where. I don't know, but he was in Virginia. I don't know where he came from, but he brought her to DC. He took her to DC and she got gang rape. Well, now he left her with two guys that were traffickers and they both they kept her there a few days and then brought her to Maryland and gave her to the other guy. But so when was she first actually assaulted? When the Virginia guy picked her up, she lost her she lost her innocence. In his back seat of his car, and she thought violently. She thought she was getting picked up by a sixteen year old correct. And so how old was that guy? I don't know, but he was. He was an older guy. But he wasn't a child, No, No, he was an adult. He knew what it was doing. Yeah, so you have that guy that sexually assaults your daughter. Him never found him. He takes her to somewhere else. And when we think about so, I think people think about trafficking and they think about well, they just bring in younger children from other countries and everything else. Your fourteen year old daughter was trafficked from Lynchburg, Virginia area, to DC and ultimately to Maryland. So and they were they told her, we're going to transport you to family, and that's their code for the next guy in line that brings her to another state until they finally get the kids into Mexico where nobody then they're gone. How far do you think based on what the FBI and everybody told you, was your child from disappearing. Forever right there? They said it was like looking for, you know, a needle in a haystack. They didn't think she was alive. They thought either she was not good. She either she was dead, or she's already in that she's already in that pipeline. Yeah, and going, because I think that's. What they told me. They prepared me for it. They're like, she's in the pipe and that's based on their evaluation of her computers and everything else that they were like, oh, she's in so Bible bil out of Virginia. Your child has all these different things that happened to her, and ultimately she ends up in a drug in a human trafficking network at multiple occasions, she was violently raped. What happens then after all that happened. After she ends up in a boys home, you mean, yeah, Well, what happens then is when the court judge decides that she can finally come back to Virginia and she had to go to a locked facility. And the. Did they ever say why she had to go to a locked facility? Because you said, because it was the only place that would call her draco. We couldn't find any other place except as one place in Virginia that would call her Draco. So again, all these things that traditionally were handled something different. She We're going to focus on the fact that she's identifying as a male. So all of her rehabilitation treatment and everything else is based. Out on that. Yeah, yeah, so it's more important. And that's what they did to her. Then, is in her head a lock facility. Now you got to remember, these guys kept her locked up. So now in her little head, she's like, oh no, they're gonna bring me to a lock facility. So what does she do? She runs away? She ran away again, yep, out of the high school. She gets on somebody's phone, and again she thinks she's meeting a kid, and so she. Makes it back to Virginia and runs away again. Is that correct? No? No, no, she never got out of Maryland. She was in Maryland and ran away again. She ran away from Maryland, but she didn't come home because she knew. She thought that we didn't want her. That's what she was told. But you know that because that's what she's told you. Yeah. Oh yeah, she told me, she said, she said. When I finally got her, she said to me on the airplane, because they found her in Texas, they said, she said, Nana. She goes, I tried so hard. I tried so hard not to think of you, but I really missed you. But I knew that you didn't want me anymore. And I looked at her. I said, Sage, what do you mean I didn't want you anymore? She goes, well, my attorney told me that you didn't want me because I wanted to be a boy. I said, no, Sage, I would never say that. Never. I said, I was there. I went to the jail. I was right, She said, you did. I said, yes, I went to get you. I was there. Me and Papa were there. We were there to get you. She said, they didn't tell me that. So how did she end up in Texas? She thinks she's meeting this guy in this boy in Texas, and they get her a bus ticket. Now the Maryland cops caught win that she was on her way to Texas. I don't know all those details. But when she gets to Texas, there waiting for her at that bus. But because she's tiny and little and had a black hoodie on her, and she knew that the guy wasn't answering her calls anymore because somebody gave her a phone, weren't answering her calls, so she knew something was up, So she snuck off the bus because she thought they were going to bring her back to jail. And now she's left on the streets of Fort Worth, Texas at night because the guy the cops went to where they knew who she was conversing with on the phone and took him away because he was the next trafficker. But they caught him. But now she's lost on the streets and somebody picks her up and the whole thing starts over again. She becomes his victim for three months, almost three months? How old was that guy? He was thirty eight. So he sees a fourteen year old child walking around. Asks her if she wants some chicken nuggets at McDonald's and she's hungry, and she says yes, and that was it she got. And how did she end up getting out of that situation? That was a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible situation. I won't go into detail, but long story short, I am a mess. Now. I'm ready to lose my mind. I am getting into all her social media. I am on our Instagram, her everything, all the all the things, and I'm talking to people going this is her, this is her mother, I love her, Please help me find her. And I get all these hate people. He ran away because you wouldn't accept him, and I'm just getting I'm just taking it. I'm like, listen, I just need to find him. So this is the friend group that was introduced. People all over the world. But the friend group, the reason she has contact with those people if we go back, is that, yeah, the counselor saying, here's some of your people. Yeah, And I don't know. I mean she's got a list of contacts and I'm just sending out these you know, so os S O S s O S and one guy gets back to me and he says, listen, I've got this picture that I know came from Draco. And he sends me this picture and it's this big blackbird on the roof of a car. So I called the Texas well before all that, I called the Texas. What are they not? The sheriffs, the. Texas Rangers Range? No, not the rangers, state police or the troopers. No, what's the other ones? A help? I know, I can't think of either. And I said, she's got a phone. Can you tap her phone? And he said, no, it's not our case. You have to have the Maryland detective sign this sign off that we can have the case. So I called Maryland detective and he says, well, I can't. I can't sign off on it because she's still missing child here. I said, but she belongs in Virginia. But they were like they were looking for a foster home for her in Maryland is what they were doing, and that's why they wouldn't let her leave. Anyway, he wouldn't sign off on this document, so he couldn't tap her phone. So I went into you know, cosmode, and I did get get that picture and I sent it to them, the Texas authorities, and one of the guys says, I know that convenience store. There's a sign, a convenience store sign behind the bird, and he says, I know that convenience store. He goes to the convenience store, he gets the video, He sees the guy's car, his license plate from Missouri, finds out where he's staying, and goes there and crashes in and. The police officer dead. Yeah, and and bring her to the hospital and called me immediately, and I get on a out of Lynchburg because now I'm like here, pull off the credit card Roger and I fly right there. And as I'm coming in to the airport, he calls me. I just knew that they were going to find her. It's kind of It was definitely a divine moment, and it was definitely miraculous because I knew they were going to find her, but they hadn't called me yet. They called me as I was flying into the airport and I said, I'm here, and he's like, what do you mean you're here? I said, I just knew. I knew that this tip was going to find her. So I was flying here and they were great. They didn't even ask me for an ID. They had two women cops picked me up, brought me the hospital. I waited there when Sage walked in. She didn't even recognize me. She was so broken, and I start crying and she's like, are you my nana? I said, yeah, Amy, Nana's seag She said, oh, no, one wost and very flat and I bring it to a hotel room and I'm very guarded and quiet. I don't want to overwhelm her. I want to I had to make myself stop crying. And we spent the night and it was on the way home on the airplane that she started talking to me. So from the time she ran away from your home in Virginia to the times she was recovered by you in Texas, how long was she gone? She was gone six months? Six months. And I think that's what strikes me in the whole situation is that all of that was preventable. Yes, with a phone call, if. They would have just taken the time to have a conversation with you and say, as a parent, your child is going through this. They didn't have to say that, to just say your child wants to be called Draco and identifies as a boy. That's all they had to say, because it was everywhere is there? But is there any did they ever give you a reason why you weren't as a parent, treat like a parent. I never talked to them again. They wouldn't talk to me. I know, for me, when I have to pick up my middle schooler, I have to show them a dag on my I d well, you don't hear, and but you have to. But they're allowed as as an entity to say, well, we think this that the parent doesn't know best in this. You know what's funny. It's a policy and it wasn't signed till a month after she went missing, so they really didn't have to follow that Policy's all right? So who but who puts that policy out? The school administration? But is it something that's the like the Virginia Department of Education puts it out to dictate to all the local schools. So every local school in Virginia, every public school in Virginia has a policy that would have been followed like what you have. So what my suggestion as parents is to get out there and find out what your school's policy is as far as being notified on any type of an environment like any type of an environmental or personality change or anything else. But the school boards aren't passing it. They're still saying because we as parents, I've got to so many school board meetings and I stand up and I give them my story. I've gone all over Virginia talking okay, but nobody will vote it. Well, nobody's voting for it. The board is like against us all the foods. So there is no large scale effort in Virginia to say we have a governor. Governor Younkin is governor because he said parents should have a choice as to what happens with their kids. But even after all that, what you're saying is if your child identifies differently, you will not be notified. Yeah. Yeah, and that's not that's just not a theory. That is one percent what happened to you. And as you travel around the commonwealth, it's not unique to Mathematics County. It's it is it is. We tried to actually push Sages law. I had three different delegates bring it every year and we were still voted down. Sages law was going to be very simple. In a nutshell, Sages law if the bill had passed. It meant when a child is in school and identifies as the other as a different gender, the school has to notify the parents and ask the parent. For instance, Sage wants to be called Draco, will you allow this? Yes or no? And if I say no, they have to honor that. If I say yes, then it's okay and they would not pass it. That's all it was. I mean, I think when you listen to what people are talking about, people will go into all these different things about like, well, you know, we're not protecting our children. We're not. But let's just take a look at Sage's experience. She's introduced to a group of people who ultimately traffic her, and she ends up in Texas as a trafficking victim and as the victim of a sexual assault. You get back a broken child just because she wanted to be a boy. Yeah, and you were never notified her. It is right there. Now I'm dealing She's dealing with permanent complex PTSD for the rest of her life. As a matter of fact, when I got her home and she went into her room, she started crying. And this kid never cries, fell down on the floor saying I'm not here. I'm not here. I don't know where I am. She need it like her own room. She just couldn't believe it. And anytime she heard a loud noise, I'd go see if she's all right. She's in the back of her closet. She's scared out of her mind. Without going into graphic detail, just talk about a single day that she experienced as a child in Texas. What was that like for her? She was drugged, she was locked in a bathroom, okay, and she was brought out to be used with different men and put back in there. And people feel like that's okay just because she identified as a male, that they. Didn't do all that. That was the last part of her. But that decision that they made to take her out of your care and your direction ended with her locked in a bathroom in Texas being sexually assaulted by numerous men, to the point where when she comes home at the end of that she's lying in shambles. Yeah. Yeah, oh, and there's another little part that you don't know about. In Maryland, they would have given her back. But I think like the fifth hearing in Maryland, up on a big zoom screen comes who the two counselors from Alphamatics, and they are there to testify against me. Don't give her back because they do not they are not affirming her as a boy. And then the guy, the guy counselor says, I've never seen him as happy as he is now, almost dropped dead. I'm like, she's got a bruised face, she's all beat up. You've never seen her so happy, are you kidding? So this guy behind my back, I starts zooming counseling lessons with her while she's in the boys facility, and I write a letter saying, do not let him talk to my fourteen year old daughter. Ever. And you know what they did. They kept letting it happen because they let me get that. I mean, so I understand this correctly. As a parent. You were not given access to your child. You say, oh, I. Was sending her cards the mail. No, no, no, But I'm saying when you had a hearing with a judge, you had a conversation and you were like, I really miss you. They cut it off. However, the person that put her in the situation, you can say whatever you want. That counselor provided her a gateway to be trafficked and it's still okay for him to counsel her. You can't make this stuff up. I have all the emails to say, I keep begging these people please don't because he kept telling. Her, who have you found locally? I know you had mentioned some legislators that have tried to put this forward, but who else locally or nashally has taken your case and said, hey, this is let's just let's just forget about the fact of like she identifies as this. You have a fourteen year old child that was in a violence, sexual, sexual exploitation type of environment for six months. Is that not enough to get somebody's attention to say, hey, maybe we need to re maybe we need to rethink of how we're doing that. I calling attorneys was a full time job, forty hours a week. We were mortgaging the house. Not one attorney would take my case because I could not get her out of the lock facility. Nobody would take my case because it was too controversial an issue. Nobody. So for you, as a parent, what would you tell other parents as it relates to your child and if you see them transition into different, like different behaviors that are concerning what can you do to protect your child because of the schools? Tell them, you know what, You know that child better than anybody, and you love that child more than any of these people do or ever will be able to. And you know what, you it is up to you as the parent to guide your child through this stage of life. It is our decision because we do it out of love. We will love our child through any and everything that happens to them. And you know what, parents, it's okay to speak up about it because I know there's thousands of you out there, and I know that you're not alone because I stand here with you. This has happened to thousands, and I know that you feel broken and you don't you don't know how to speak up because you know what, you are just feeling so like exhausted. It is so mentally draining to be told that we are wrong over and over and over and over again, and to be taken our parental rights away from us, like you're going to take the kid out of state and never tell us where he is. I talk this one poor mother. You know, I could go on and on. There's that many stories, the horrible things. So talk about after your story got out and Sage's law started going through the General Assembly in Virginia. Talk about like the one that's the one phone call that you got from another parent where you're like, this is it's one too. Many, it's you know what one of the one of the worst ones was really a dad that wouldn't affirm the daughter. So they took they took custody of the child and started giving her the medical transition. And so we're talking, they. Put him in jail. They put him in jail because he wouldn't because he kept saying no, absolutely not. So they put him in jail and took the daughter and transitioned her. How old was the child? She was fourteen too. Yeah, So when you hear all the rhetoric you have a recently, you have someone who's in a relationship with somebody who identifies as trans and it's going through transitions, and you have all this nasty rhetoric back and forth on both sides. I haven't heard anything from you that says I hate people that are in that at all. You're just saying, as a parent, I know it's best for my child, and unless I'm putting my child in physical harm, like you can't. The other option is it looks like in this situation, the government was like, hey, let us intervene. The hell of a job. My child is trafficked to another state and has an endure six months of sexual assaults because of your decision to tell her who she was. And then the guy retired a month after she went missing again. The counselor, no, the judge in Maryland, I like, it's just you just it's just sad. It's very sad. I mean I almost think I've had other people that have come on and they've said their story, and I think they go, you're not going to believe this, and I don't. I hope anybody that listens to your story understands that you're just as much as risk as you were in that situation as a parent. If you're a parent, there's a really good chance that you could be in the same environment. The judicial system and all these other entities are more concerned about identity politics than they are about the actual child. Because you can't tell me at any point during that time where she was missing that they couldn't have done what's best for her, because obviously they didn't. Because she ends up in another state with the traffic grip from Missouri anyway. I don't know. I'm just very very very fortunate that I had the experience with juvenile court system as a CASA, because anybody that doesn't, I don't think, could mentally have gone through seventeen hearings like that along with no lawyer. And I asked for a public defender, and they said no. I'm like, why can't I get a policy defender? I can't find I said, I can't find an attorney to take the case. You're on her? Oh wow, Well, all I will say is I don't know if my fury will help you or not. Like it is infuriating as a parent and as somebody in law enforcement to think that anyone in the anyone in government would take There is no set of circumstances that I think validate what happened to your child. No set of circums don't. I don't care what other than you being physically or physically abusive towards your child. I don't know if any other I don't know if any other reason why a government entity should interfere with your rights as a parent if a child is in harm's way, And I'm not saying harm's way of like you might hurt their feelings. You might do this like if Sage decided she wanted to be a boy or a man years later. I don't think you'd have an issue about all. Should not at all, because you know what, You're an adult making an adult decision. And I think that's and I think that's the key. The key is I think decisions made like this are adult decisions, and they need to be made by adults. And I'm not saying adults that aren't the parent of that child. I'm saying an adult needs to make that decision. Absolute because the child's brain isn't even done forming until you're twenty eight. And I think you're given a fourteen year old girl hormones. I think that's the scary part about it is what you said early on, which is they thought they were doing what's best for her. They did, but they took they made them all take classes to tell them that this is what's happening, and they all fell for it, hook line and sinker. It's because we love these kids that we have to keep them from their parents. But you didn't even tell me. You didn't need I know, but I guess when I think about it, and I think about foster parenting and everything else, I think I've seen kids that have been physically abused, been around parents that have substant abuse problems that everything else you have. They're in a good foster home, they're on a good path, and because of the way the system is set up, they will be sent back to that parent, that parent who has all those issues. And I'm saying I'm not saying like an issue of like, hey, I don't agree with that decision. I'm saying a parent there's being physically abusive, there's abusing narcotics and everything else. They'll put him back with that parent once all he needs a couple of good clean drug screens, and they'll put him back with them. So how I just I don't get it. I don't get it, and you never will get it. This is just like this, God help us, this one subject that is just I just hope it's. A I hope it's a phase, because like from my standpoint as a parent, I don't know. I don't know that I was survived at like you did, because I think I probably would have burned. I would have burned the place down. I really my poor husband, he was just out in the garden all the time. He couldn't even talk to me about graduate. Well, he didn't know what to do. It was Thanksgiving. She was still missing, and we drove. We knew she was in Texas. We drove to Texas for Thanksgiving, just driving around Texas thinking we're gonna find her. Just happen to see her, yeah, just maybe, yeah. Well, we had nothing else. And I think that's I think that's the thing that I think about, too, is I think everybody thinks about these nightmare environments that like you think about a nightmare for as a parent, for your child to be abducted, to be the victim of a sexual assault, to be forgotten. All those things happened to you because somebody in government thought they knew how to be a parent better than you. I will tell you I was on my knees one night and I just completely surrendered. I said, Lord, please take her. I would rather you take her home to have it than leave her here with what's happening. To her, to her to suffer anymore. Well, I appreciate your time. If there's anything that we can do to help what you're doing, I think. More people, grateful that you invited me just to be able to share it, because I will share it with everyone. Well, I think more parents need to stand up. I mean I think I don't think parents are I don't think they just need to get engaged and they need to understand I'm just as guilty. This is not me staying on slap box saying I'm a wonderful parent because I've got I've got enough kids that will tell you that I'm not a great parent some days. But I guarantee I'm not gonna let I am not going to put my child or I wasn't put it this way. I would never put somebody else's child in an environment I don't care what they identify as, that is going to that has the risk of what age had to experience. And I think that's the key. So thank you for your time, Thank you very much for telling the story, and I appreciate it
