Ontario school hid girl’s transition, called CAS on parents questioning trans identity
Their daughter eventually detransitioned. Now, her family is raising the alarm about the power schools have to keep parents in the dark
Julie’s life turned upside down after COVID hit. Barely ten, and physically isolated from much of the world, in early 2021 she installed TikTok and began spending hours online, falling down social media rabbit holes. She eventually “discovered the LGBTQ+ community” and started questioning her identity.
“At first, it was only my sexuality: pansexual, lesbian, maybe bi?” she later wrote in a personal essay. Eventually, videos asking viewers whether they were “anxious and uncomfortable” in their own bodies triggered her to question her gender identity.
“Transgender activists were actively posting videos about ‘safe’ breast binding and how euphoric testosterone makes you feel and how it makes all your problems suddenly disappear. The more I was brainwashed by these videos, the more I started to resonate with them,” she wrote.
Julie began identifying privately as non-binary in 2021, at the start of Grade 5. She came out to her class at the beginning of 2022.
With the help of a teacher in York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB), her parents were kept in the dark about her use of “they/them” pronouns and a new masculinized name in the classroom. Only in June 2022 did her parents learn what was quietly going on in school. When they objected and asked school leaders to include them in conversations about their daughter, the school called the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), which investigated the family.
