A California mother is seeking restitution from her daughter’s school district after two teachers allegedly coerced her child into adopting a transgender identity without informing her.
In a statement of facts filed with the Spreckels Union School District in Salinas, California, Jessica Konen claimed her daughter, a student at Buena Vista Middle School, had been coerced into becoming transgender by two of her teachers.
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The filing says Konen’s daughter, who was in sixth grade at the time, had been invited to join the “Equality Club” that the teachers, identified as Lori Caldiera and Kelly Baraki, had organized for “potential LGBT+ students.”
Caldiera and Baraki had previously bragged in a presentation to a gay and transgender conference in October that they monitored the Google searches of their students during online classes to identify prospective members for their club.
At the time, the school district said that “appropriate personnel steps are being taken to make sure such activities and comments will not be repeated.” The Equality Club was also shut down.
The teachers “took measures to keep students’ participation in the Equality Club and new LGBT+ identities … secret from students’ parents” by coaching the students into secrecy and failing to maintain any official roster or record within the school, according to the filing.
The filing says Baraki and Caldiera “planted the seed” in the mind of Konen’s daughter, identified only as A.G. in the filing, that she was bisexual and later transgender.
“That idea did not originate with A.G. In fact, she did not fully understand what that term meant,” the filing says.
The school, along with Baraki and Caldiera, orchestrated a transition for Konen’s daughter, then in seventh grade, to a male identity with a new name and male pronouns in the fall of 2019. Eventually, the school informed Konen of the transition after it had been orchestrated.
After moving to remote instruction due to pandemic-related school closures, and no longer under the direct influence of her teachers, Konen’s daughter “began to return to her old self.”
Now using her female name and pronouns again, the filing says Konen’s daughter “believes that she was pressured by Ms. Caldiera and Ms. Baraki into portraying a character they created” and that she was pressured into confusion “about issues relating to her sexuality and gender.”
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Konen is represented by the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit legal group that specializes in “defending the civil liberties of Americans left behind by civil rights legacy organizations,” and is demanding the district grant her “appropriate damages.”
The Spreckels Union School District did not respond to a request for comment.
