Virginia mom sues school district claiming staff kept daughter Sage Blair’s transition to male a secret before runaway teen was kidnapped, raped and trafficked across state lines
The mother of a teenage girl who was bullied at school and eventually forced into sex trafficking is suing her daughter’s school district for withholding information that identified the teenage student as a male at school.
Michelle Blair, Sage Blair’s mother, filed a lawsuit against the Appomattox County School Board and county officials, alongside a Baltimore public defender, for actions she says deprived her of her child’s proper education.
Blair now claims that her daughter was severely bullied in high school, which she was aware of, but claims the school district withheld information about why the bullying happened. Sage began identifying as a boy at school.
The bullying, according to Blair, included “verbal” and “physical” assaults, but also an ongoing barrage of “rape threats from male classmates.”
“Despite this, the school encouraged her to use the boys’ toilet,” she said.
Blair previously informed the school that her daughter had a history of mental health problems, including depression, eating disorders, self-harm and hallucinations.
But even with that information, the school chose to pursue a social transition for Sage behind her parents’ backs.
Sage, then 14, was encouraged by her school to transition socially, unbeknownst to her parents
Michele Blair is now suing the Virginia school district for withholding information from her and her husband about their child, which they say led to her running away and eventually being trafficked into the sex trade.
The then 14-year-old girl was allowed to change her name to Draco at school. Her parents ultimately didn’t discover the details of the situation until they found a hallway pass in Draco’s name.
According to the Child & Parent Rights Campaign, which filed the lawsuit on Blair’s behalf, the school’s decision to withhold information about Sage’s gender identity “deprived Blair of her ability to “exercise her basic parental rights to take direction. give to the education of her daughter’. including making decisions about education and mental health care.”
Vernadette Broyles, Blair’s CPRC attorney, told the Washington Examiner that Sage ran away from home because of the bullying and harassment she faced at school.
Previous reports indicate that Sage first ran away from home the night her parents found the hall pass with Draco’s name on it.
“The school officials encouraged her to use the boys’ bathroom even though they knew she was being threatened with assault, so she felt she wasn’t safe and ran away from home,” Broyles said.
“She runs into the arms of a waiting pedophile, who runs into her, rapes her, traffics her with two other men, and takes her across state lines to Washington DC, and eventually to Maryland.”
In Maryland, Sage was finally tracked down and rescued by FBI agents, where her nightmare journey should have ended.
However, the Baltimore Juvenile Court took custody of the adolescent on the instructions of Aneesa Khan, a public defender from the area.
Khan had stated that Sage’s parents did not “sufficiently confirm” her new identity and, according to the lawsuit, fabricated a “story of parental abuse and neglect” that convinced a judge to keep her in custody.
Sage’s parents said that during the time she ran away, she was kidnapped and abused by numerous men in various locations before being tracked down and rescued by the police. She was subsequently placed under judicial protection and spent nearly a year away from her family. Pictured: A missing persons poster after Sage ran away from home
Blair is suing the Appomattox County school district over how it handled information that her daughter began publicly identifying as male
Sage Blair was briefly identified as the trans boy Draco, with a vibrant streak of blue hair
While in state custody, Sage was placed in a juvenile facility for young men, “where she was again sexually assaulted, exposed to drugs, and denied medical and mental health care,” the indictment alleges.
“This is a 100-pound girl. What do you think is happening in this institution?’ Broyles said.
Maryland’s chief public defender Natasha Dartigue said she and her office supported Khan in the fight.
“We fully support our lawyer, who represented her client appropriately, in accordance with her legal, ethical and professional obligations,” she said.
At the men’s facility, again fearing for her safety, Sage ran away again and was once again apprehended by a sex trafficker who took her to Texas “where she was again raped, drugged, starved and tortured until Texas law enforcement took hold.” rescued her and notified her mother, who returned her to Virginia,” the suit reads.
Since returning to her parents’ home, Sage has undergone “intense inpatient and outpatient therapy to address the many incidents of extreme trauma.” Also diagnosed with complex PTSD.
Broyles states that what happened to Sage is a direct result of the school’s failure. However, the problem will be resolved when “ideologically driven school officials are forced to recognize that it is not within their competence, their authority, to hand over a child without the direct involvement of their parents, period.”
“It’s frankly just cruel and irresponsible of school officials to encourage confusion, gender confusion, in particularly traumatized young girls with a history of mental health.”
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has previously spoken on Sage’s case and several months ago introduced new state guidelines that will undermine some of the school policies that led to the teen’s experience.
Baltimore public defender Aneesa Khan is also named in the lawsuit for allegedly sending Sage to a juvenile facility for young men, rather than returning her to her parents, who she says did not confirm her gender identity.
Activist attorney Vernadette Broyles, founder of Child and Parental Rights Campaign, has led cases against school districts and other confrontations between parents and teachers
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has issued guidelines to prevent schools from withholding information about a child’s gender identity from their parents
Under Youngkin’s leadership, parents must now be informed if their child is going through a social transition – which was not the case in 2021, when Sage underwent her traumatic experience.
Youngkin, a Republican, won his race against former Governor Terry McAuliffe in late 2021 in a state that Joe Biden had won by ten points just a year earlier.
Michele and Roger Blair and Sage’s biological grandparents legally adopted her when she was a toddler.
When Sage was 14, she began treatment for depression while simultaneously attending a new high school in central Virginia. It was in school, the parents say, that Sage was exposed to a barrage of “emos,” goths, and an arsenal of sexuality and gender options.