In a quiet Washington suburb, a married couple thought they were raising their three children in a safe and supportive community. Instead, they say they found themselves locked in a years-long battle with school officials and state policies over their daughter's gender identity.

The couple spoke anonymously to Heywire News.

According to the parents, their 10-year-old daughter was assigned one of her elementary school therapists after she reportedly spoke to a classmate about harming herself. Over the next few months, the parents were left in the dark by the school, not receiving any information on their daughter's progress, they claimed.

'The school was hiding things from us, the teacher was hiding things from us.'

One day, the therapist finally informed the parents, but it was not what they expected to hear.

"[The therapist] was using male pronouns and a different name to explain to me that our daughter wanted to come out to us as a boy, and she was giving us a few days to process this," the mother said.

According to Washington state law, all school districts must adopt a policy that prevents employees from disclosing "a student's transgender or gender nonconforming status to ... the student's parents" unless the student consents.

Traumatized by the news and worried for their daughter's future, the parents decided on homeschooling. Years later, she returned to school as a high school freshman.

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The choice to allow the girl to attend public school again would only end up worsening the situation.

“The school was hiding things from us, the teacher was hiding things from us. … There were other students that were working against us,” the mother said.

A staff member in an after-school program even provided the girl with a burner phone and set up a host family so that she could run away from home, the parents claimed.

“They had devised a plan for her to run away. Adults planning with the child to take them from the parents. And hide them and allow the state to control them,” the father exclaimed to Heywire on the brink of tears.

Since Washington state law allows minors seeking gender-related treatment to remain in a licensed youth shelter for up to 90 days without parental permission, the father decided to uproot his family and move across the country to the East Coast in fear of losing control of his daughter.

“The state can house your child, not divulge any details as to their location, physical health, mental health. You’re essentially separated from your child, and the state knows where they are, but the parents don’t. That was the primary concern,” the father explained.

He added, “There’s a lot of kids that we know and families that we know that have been torn apart by this. Not only in our neighborhood, but in the county, in the state. I mean we're not a one-off here. This has become pervasive."

Vicki Murray, the director of the Center for Education at the Washington Policy Center, focuses her research on school choice and parental rights in education. In a statement to Blaze News, Murray said, "When there is a real concern about a student's safety, mandatory reporting and child welfare protocols are the appropriate mechanism — not a blanket policy of withholding information from parents. ... Outside of documented safety concerns, the default should be transparency with parents."

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