A concerned mother has sued a Salinas school district alleging that her daughter was being coached to identify as bisexual and transgender.
In her lawsuit, Jessica Konen accuses two Buena Vista Middle School teachers of trying to sway her 7th grader to switch her gender identity, according to media reports.
“Vulnerable children are very liable to be swayed by peer pressure, by wanting to fit in, and by authority figures who they look up to and trust and right now we have a lot of vulnerable children in our society,” said Dr. Miriam Grossman, a child-adolescent psychiatrist. “The lockdowns have created a lot of vulnerable children. They have raised the amount of anxiety, depression and isolation in our kids.”
Konen, represented by Harmeet Dhillon and the Center for American Liberty, sued the Spreckels Union School District (SUSD), Buena Vista Middle School Principal Katelyn Pagaran and teachers Lori Caldiera and Kelly Baraki under the Government Claims Act.
“In addition to their teaching duties, Ms. Caldiera and Ms. Baraki operated the Buena Vista Equality Club, a club for students comprised primarily of students that they had identified as potential LGBT+ students,” the Jan. 19 complaint states.
“Ms. Caldiera and Ms. Baraki identified students as potential LGBT+ students based on comments students made to them, comments that they overheard students make to others, and their own observations of students in the classroom setting and otherwise. Once they identified students for the club, Ms. Caldiera and Ms. Baraki would invite them to participate.”
The lawsuit further alleges that a 'Gender Support Plan' instructing faculty to allow her daughter to use the unisex teachers’ restroom was created without Konen’s knowledge or consent.
A Gender Support Plan is a Buena Vista document designed to help students create an understanding among school staff about the ways in which the student’s new gender and expression will be accounted for by the school, according to the complaint.
“We can look into history and we can see all sorts of ways that young people have been swayed in one way or another over the generations and right now there is certainly an epidemic of transgenderism,” Grossman told the Southern California Record.
“We know that there's an element of contagion. It’s been documented that most of the kids who are announcing that they're transgender have at least one friend, if not more, who are also announcing they are transgender. It happens in groups of kids.”