Two teachers in California are being accused of coaching and manipulating a middle school child into believing she was a boy, changing her pronouns, and her name, while hiding these changes from her mother.
The child’s mother, Jessica Konen, is now suing her child’s school district under the allegations that two teachers and the school’s principal attempted to pressure her 11-year-old daughter into thinking she wanted to transition into a boy and change her pronouns, all while keeping it a secret from her mom.
In late December, the two teachers, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki initially attracted negative media attention after admitting to stalking their middle schoolers’ online activity to select and coerce students into joining their LGBTQ club called ‘You Be You’.
The teachers explicitly admitted to their disgusting recruitment approach at an LGBTQ conference last October.
“When we were doing our virtual learning — we totally stalked what they were doing on Google when they weren’t doing schoolwork,” Caldeira. “One of them was Googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”
One of the conference attendees recorded Caldeira saying this and sent it to a journalist who soon broke the story.
Following these reports, both teachers were suspended and placed on administrative leave.
After this unfolded, Konen spoke out on how the same teachers had been inappropriately manipulating her daughter and even revealed that the school called Child Protective Services on her when she objected to what was happening behind her back.
At a school district meeting, Konen defended her opposition to the teachers’ actions. “You took away my ability to parent my child, even before I had any knowledge,” Konen said. “I didn’t even get to show support. You asked for support, I didn’t get the chance.”
In an interview with FOX News, Konen explained the process she had gone through with her daughter.
“[M]y child rapidly started going through changes, experiencing sexuality in a different way than she has ever done before,” Konen said. “She never showed any type of interest in it. It went from bisexual to transgender to researching different types of gender fluid, and binding… her changes happened very rapidly, and I was very concerned about it.”
Konen then explains that once the story broke on how the two teachers were recruiting kids for their LGBTQ club, she realized why her daughter had changed so much in such a brief period of time.
Konen’s lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, then spoke about what their lawsuit is really about and why it is important that they take this action.
“There was… coaching and targeting, and telling the child and other children that they should be in this gay-straight alliance type club…” said Dhillon, “…also coaching this child about things that are medical in nature like binding her breasts to make sure they don’t grow as part of a transition process. We’re talking about a middle school child here.”
Dhillon goes on to explain that she is helping with this case to bring awareness to this issue that is occurring in schools across the country. Dhillon says she is pursuing this case not only for Konen and her daughter but also to “draw attention to this issue and make sure that other families don’t suffer from this kind of targeting, abuse, conspiracy, infliction of emotional distress that can be permanent on a young person and certainly their family.”
“[P]arents make those decisions with their children privately,” continued Dhillon, “not teachers pushing a political agenda with no medical training or psychiatric training.”
Watch the full interview here.
