Mother targets Calif. school with claim that they coached her daughter into bisexuality

A California parent is hitting back against educators who she says coerced and secretly coached her daughter to “alter” her very gender.

Jessica Konen says two teachers in the Spreckels Union School District (SUSD) of Salinas, Calif. ran a homosexual “club” during lunchtime at her daughter’s school, and that they used the activity to groom her then-sixth-grade daughter into first declaring herself bisexual and then into changing her gender identity.

The girl adopted a masculine name and pronouns at school, Konen told a board meeting in mid-December.

Konen said her daughter has since gone to a new school, gone back to using her birth name and seems happier. The mom took action on Jan. 19 under the Government Claims Act, a precursor to filing a lawsuit.

Teachers Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki as well as the school’s principal, Katelyn Pagaran, are named in the claim. Konen’s daughter is referred to only as “A.G.” since she is a minor.

SUSD and Buena Vista Middle School also had a “parental secrecy policy” intended to hide matters of students’ gender expression and identity from parents, said Center for American Liberty CEO Harmeet Dhillon, representing Konen. The language of the claim suggests the degree to which the girl was being groomed and sexualized by her teachers:

“Sometimes, Ms. Caldiera and Ms. Baraki would introduce and push LGBT+ identities on students that the students resisted” and “planted the seed in A.G.’s mind that she was bisexual,” it states. “That idea did not originate with A.G. In fact, she did not fully understand what that term meant.”

Konen’s claim alleges the policy at SUSD “authorizes minor children to make mature, consequential, and potentially life-altering decisions – such as what gender to identify as, what name to be called, what pronouns to use, and what privacy facilities to use – with no notification to or input from parents.”

Speaking to The Epoch Times on Jan. 19, Dhillon said: “It’s terrible what happened to this family. Supreme Court precedent has made clear that parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children, and their right is denied to them when schools keep secrets from parents, especially on matters as foundational as a child’s identity, name [and] pronouns.”