The Patriot Post® · Abuse of the Vulnerable

When ideology and self-gratification are placed above the physical and mental well-being of children, that is when the greatest evil is able to be realized. This is optimized in the harrowing ordeal of a teen girl who was trafficked not once but twice, all because of every authority in her life besides her parents.

The 15-year-old who is identified by the name “Sage” was already a vulnerable young lady. She had lost her father at a young age. She was adopted by her grandparents. She was in the Virginia public school system. Her past history of loss and trauma combined with being at a rebellious age served to make her high school experience a nightmare.

Virginia public high schools have been on the front lines of the transgender agenda, and not in a good way. The devastating case of the bathroom rape cover-up in Loudoun County — proving the reasons why having “gender-neutral” bathrooms is not a good idea — gave the state a Republican governor and sparked a parental rights coalition that has spread across the nation. Schools have, of course, been blithely ignoring parents’ demands for transparency and communication regarding their children’s choosing to identify as a different gender.

Sage’s high school was no different. She began identifying at school as a male named “Draco.” She was called male pronouns and told she could use the male restroom. Her school did not inform her parents about the transition. At the time, Sage told her parents: “I don’t know who I was. I’m a totally different person now. I never was a boy. Everybody was doing it, I just wanted to have friends.” This is enough motivation for any high schooler struggling socially. Sage had the added deficit of needing her behavior monitored because of residual trauma from her father’s early loss.

In fact, Sage’s high school completely cut her parents out of the loop on other important fronts such as medical needs associated with her behavior. Sage’s parents did not know if she needed a med change, about her identity change, or even about her getting severely bullied. This was because the school decided they didn’t need to know. When the school finally saw fit to inform her parents, it was days after the worst incident (and the school was still concealing Sage’s claimed male identity). Sage ran away from her home the night she confided everything to her mother.

Sage was found nine days later in Maryland, a captive of a pedophile. During those nine days, she was brutally and repeatedly raped and trafficked to others. She was “rescued” by the police, but her ordeal was far from over.

The authorities in Maryland refused to return her to her parents or to Virginia, Sage’s home state.

Judge Robert Kershaw and Sage’s public defender, Aneesa Khan, treated her sex-trafficking case like a runaway case. Sage was put in juvenile detention and didn’t appear in person at her trial. This girl needed therapy and counseling, not kid jail.

Judge Kershaw refused to return her to her parents because they “misgendered” her in court. Judge Kershaw was operating under the belief that they were “transgender”-abusive parents. Why else would Sage run away?

Attorney Aneesa Kahn, according to Sage, encouraged her to lie and accuse her parents of abuse and neglect. To help sell the telling of a lie, Khan reportedly told Sage her mother didn’t want her anymore and withheld her mother’s letters and messages to Sage. The end game for Khan seemed to be setting a precedent for “protecting” trans-claiming kids from “abusive” parents when those kids crossed state lines. Sage didn’t cross state lines of her own volition. She was kidnapped and trafficked. That all-important detail didn’t matter to Attorney Khan or Judge Kershaw; the only thing that did was the virtue signal of “protecting” the “trans” kid — really their own ideological agenda.

Sage was put in a Maryland children’s home with an ankle monitor so she wouldn’t run away again. Judge Kershaw delayed her even being sent back to Virginia for two months, which is against the Interstate Juvenile Compact. Sage, because of her claimed male identity, was put with the worst of the worst male juvenile delinquents. It was here she used drugs and continued to operate under the belief that her parents didn’t want her anymore. Talk about compounding trauma.

At the end of the two-month delay, Maryland authorities were going to move Sage back to a Virginia facility that was “trans”-friendly. Not liking the idea of being locked up again, she cut her ankle monitor and bolted.

Sage was going to meet up with another 16-year-old like herself with whom she had been chatting online. Instead, it was a monster who had groomed her. Once in his clutches, Sage’s nightmare began again. For months she was beaten, raped, starved, abused, and trafficked. She was eventually rescued in Texas, and those authorities returned her to her family.

Sage’s great suffering under the clutches of monsters and ideologues (but we repeat ourselves) is a case study in why parental rights are excruciatingly important. Sage’s parents had a right to know about her struggles with gender confusion. They had a right to know how much their child was suffering from bullies. The high school denied them this right and hobbled their ability to parent and protect their child. Had the school not hid Sage’s gender confusion, perhaps none of the rest of this horrific evil would have happened to Sage.

Steps are being taken by Virginia to make a new law that says schools need to disclose children’s gender confusion to their parents.

Sage’s case is heartbreaking. Sadly, she is not alone in the LGBTQ+ ideology leading to abuse and torture. Our Nate Jackson covered the horrific story of two children who were abused and pimped out by their adoptive homosexual parents. As he so aptly put it: “Adoption should be about making life better for kids, giving them a loving family, a home, and opportunity for success. Adoption is not about the gratification of adult desires, especially — and I can’t believe I even have to say this — sexual ones.”

The LGBTQ+ ideologues don’t care about the children they groom, use, and then throw away. They only care about forcing everyone to accept their sexual perversions or to pay the consequences. Those consequences, in this case, hurt an especially vulnerable child and her family. How many more children need to be sacrificed on this altar before everyone sees how self-interested and exploitive this ideology is when it involves children? The answer should be zero.