A California mother is claiming that teachers in her school district had been secretly manipulating her daughter, who is just 11 years old, into changing her gender identity. The concerned parent, Jessica Konen, has filed a legal case against the Spreckels Union School District.
According to The Mercury News, Konen said that the Spreckels Union School District was responsible for "extreme and outrageous conduct" of two middle school teachers who led the school's Equality Club, which led her daughter on a path towards transitioning into a boy. The concerned parent said that it drove a wedge between herself and her daughter, as evidenced by the claim filed on Wednesday by a conservative legal group.
Konen accused the two teachers who led the Equality Club, which was also known as UBU or You Be You, for "[planting] the seed that her daughter was bisexual in sixth grade and then introduced the idea she was transgender," the report said.
The legal claim, which was a precursor to a lawsuit, comes after controversy in the district last Fall after an author of a book that was widely criticized as "anti-transgender" quoted the pair of teachers who spoke during a conference on how to run an LGBT club and push LGBT ideology to kids in a conservative district.
Konen recounted how her daughter revealed to her that she was bisexual, but was unaware that the 11-year-old student was already identifying as male until the parent was called to a meeting at the Buena Vista Middle School principal's office back in December 2019. At the time, Konen's daughter was in seventh grade.
"I literally was caught off guard. I was blindsided," Konen said, explaining that she had not been told the purpose of the meeting until her daughter entered the room and sat across from her while teacher Lori Caldeira told her about her daughter's gender identity. "I didn't even know what to feel like because I didn't even know where it came from."
Konen recounted how she began to cry and that her daughter was caught by surprise as well. Her daughter had informed teachers that she wanted to notify her mother about her supposed gender identity, but did not know that it was the purpose of the meeting that day. Konen added that she allowed the school to call her daughter by a boy's name for attendance purposes but that the ordeal was difficult.
When the pandemic forced students to learn from home, Konen's daughter started to return to her "old self" and has since used her real name. During the Fall of 2021, Konen started questioning how her 11 year old daughter had gone down the path of transgender ideology. That's when she came across an article by Abigail Shrier, which spoke of a leaked recording of a discussion featuring Caldeira and Kelly Baraki at a California Teachers Association conference.
In the discussions, Caldeira and Baraki spoke about how they "stalked" kids who were more likely to be interested in transgender lifestyles and kept meetings with them private. Now, the Center for American Liberty has filed Konen's complaint on her behalf.
"Parents are supposed to have access to all the educational records of their children," lawyer Harmeet Dhillon said, as per WND. "The concept that the schools have a right to be running secret, don't-tell-your-parents clubs and don't-tell-your-parents programs and actively coaching children how to mutilate themselves, which is you know, not growing your breasts, is certainly not consistent with California law."
