Chris Lieberman, FISM News
Parents of an elementary school student in Florida are suing their daughter’s school district for failing to disclose that school counselors were meeting secretly with their daughter to discuss her gender identity.
“We’re talking about the staff from school having this information and developing a plan of several sessions with my daughter, for months, talking about issues that are related and that the parents need to be involved,” the girl’s father, Wendell Perez, told the DailyMail.com. “They basically created a double life for my daughter.”
The lawsuit, filed by the Child & Parental Rights Campaign (CPR-C) on behalf of parents Wendell and Maria Perez, claims that the parents were not informed that their 12-year-old daughter was meeting with a school counselor to help her transition to a male gender identity until after she attempted to commit suicide twice on school grounds. In addition to weekly meetings over their daughter’s “gender identity crisis,” the counselor and school administrators also allegedly encouraged students to refer to her by a male name and male pronouns.
Wendell Perez told Action News Jacksonville that the school claimed they were withholding information about his daughter’s transition because of he and his wife’s Catholic faith. “I took offense because that had nothing to do with it,” said Perez. “I mean I don’t even know if she understands our faith. That demonstrated she was ignorant about it. Our faith is one of unconditional love for our children.”
The suit also claims that the girl’s new male identity led to bullying from other students on campus, causing “distress [which] escalated to the point of attempting suicide at school.”
CPR-C attorney Vernadette Broyles told DailyMail.com, “Unlike many other parents we’re hearing from, this child did not have a history of mental health issues. There were no other signs of gender dysphoria before this, there was not depression, anxiety. This was generally speaking, a mentally healthy, happy, child.”
Broyles added, “One of the things that’s so distressing and makes so clear the school’s liability and fault here is they took a healthy child and after months of meeting with her, in secret, they caused her distressed and in conflict with herself that she felt the desire to end her life.”
The school district responded to the allegations in a statement, saying, “We performed an investigation into these allegations and believe the statements made by this out-of-state organization invalid.” The district made no further comment.
Broyles said that her goal in this case is to “protect rights of parents to be able to raise their children, [and] to direct the care of their child, in accordance with their faith and without the interference of government officials.” She also said that gender transition “Is a serious mental health decision that school personnel are not qualified, not competent, and not authorized to make. Parents must be involved in these important decisions.”
Florida is currently working to pass legislation that would prevent incidents like this from happening in the future. House Bill 1557, known as the Parental Rights in Education bill, would require schools to notify parents about information related to a student’s “mental, emotional, or physical well-being.” It would also prohibit discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary school classrooms.