California

TAKEN: California Stole a Widow’s Teenage Daughter to Transition Her

Published

3 months ago

September 8, 2024

TAKEN: California Stole a Widow’s Teenage Daughter to Transition Her

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A mother in California lost her daughter to the foster care system in 2016 after she wouldn’t support the then-14-year-old girl identifying as a boy.

“I lost my husband, but this was worse than losing my husband, because I had my rights taken away,” the mother told The Daily Signal.

Years later, the daughter regrets attempting to transition, and her mother warns other parents against allowing minors to make irreversible changes to their bodies.

The mother of two, whose husband had died years earlier, was accused of emotional abuse for forbidding her teenage daughter from binding her chest and wearing male clothes. Her daughter was taken from the family and placed in a foster home for a few months.

“It was incredibly hard,” said the mom, who asked to remain anonymous to protect the privacy of her daughter. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

The Daily Signal reviewed Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services documentation in which a social worker, referring to the then-14-year-old with he/him pronouns and a male name, details the daughter’s time in foster care, her accusations of emotional abuse against her mother, and her later renunciation of the claims.

The mother had to hire lawyers to regain custody of her daughter and clear her name of the abuse charges. The charges would have disqualified her from continuing to pursue a career as a Christian counselor.

After a few months in a packed foster home in a dangerous neighborhood, the daughter asked to come home. She admitted to lying about the abuse, saying that she got the idea to accuse her mother of abuse from people online who said that was the ticket to getting away from her family.

“The process of getting her back, it was pretty difficult,” the mother said.

“She even admitted it to me later that she was influenced by people online who said you need to get out of your house if she’s not going to let you do what you want to do,” she continued.

The mother hired two attorneys to get her teenager back and clear her name. She said she felt like Child Protective Services was looking for reasons to tear her family apart.

“It was not about reunification,” she said. “It was more about, what can we do to this family to destroy them?”

After the daughter returned home, she called social workers on her mother a few more times, accusing her mom of abuse for refusing to buy her male clothing. The mother received a California Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) violation for declining to take her daughter to a program at the Los Angeles LGBT Center for LGBTQ+ youths ages 2-25 called Rise.

“I wasn’t feeling like that was really helping her, going to that center, because even when she was going to the center, I found that she was connecting with other kids, and her demeanor was even worse, even more rebellious, even more defiant,” the mother said. “I made the call. I’m not going to drive you there. And that’s when the social worker wanted to interview me, and because I didn’t do that, I immediately got a second hit for emotional abuse.”

“I just found it really crazy that they could deem that as emotionally abusive, just trying to discipline your child,” she continued.

At age 17, the daughter admitted to getting a prescription for testosterone from a therapist behind her mom’s back. She took it for a few days, but she told her mom she felt God was telling her to stop.

The mom said she couldn’t have gotten through the difficult time without her faith community. She left California a few years ago, partially because of how her parental rights were disrespected there.

“Once this was all resolved, I thought I had to get out of California, as much as it was home to me, and still is, to some point,” she said. “I didn’t feel safe there raising my daughter anymore.”

This is not the first time the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has taken a daughter away from her mother over transgender ideology. DCFS placed 16-year-old Yaeli Martinez in foster care after her devout Christian mother, Abby, expressed concerns over her daughter “transitioning” to a boy.

The government accused Abby Martinez of abuse and permitted her only brief meetings with her daughter weekly. Yaeli committed suicide three years later.

“My daughter was murdered by gender ideology,” Martinez said in a testimony before the California Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023.

The anonymous mother told The Daily Signal that in states like California and Minnesota, to which the family has since moved, “a parent does not have the rights to parent their kid or guide them from things that could be potentially harming.”

“It’s very concerning because parents’ role is to guide their children the best they can in a healthy manner,” she said, “and giving a 14-year-old those rights, it doesn’t make sense to me.”

The mother referred to a May 2023 bill signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—currently running as the Democratic vice presidential nominee—that allows kids to travel to Minnesota and receive medical interventions without parental knowledge or consent and to a 2013 California law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” in schools.

In mid-July, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed Assembly Bill 1955, which barred school districts from requiring that parents be informed of their child’s gender identity.

The mother told The Daily Signal she was very concerned about the health risks of chest binding. She told her daughter it could permanently damage her body. Chest binding can cause tissue and rib damage, hormone imbalances, and breathing issues.

According to the mother, social media played a huge role in her daughter’s decision to identify as a boy.

“I think if there wasn’t social media, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she said. “There’s just so many things that they can get into through social media and the internet.”

Although the road has not been easy, the mom and daughter—now 22 years old—have a good relationship now.

“She regrets it, what she put me through,” the mother said. “She’s sorry that she did.”

Now, the mother urges other parents in similar situations to limit their children’s phone usage, find support systems, and never give up on their families.

“Just keep fighting,” she said. “That’s what I did. I just kept fighting.”

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California

California man beheaded his 1-year-old son with a knife, authorities say

Published

5 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

California man beheaded his 1-year-old son with a knife, authorities say

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A man has been arrested on suspicion of beheading his 1-year-old son, Northern California authorities said.

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Friday that deputies responding to an early morning family disturbance call found a woman outside a home who told deputies that her husband Andrey Demskiy, 28, assaulted her and her mother.

Deputies forced their way into the house in northern Sacramento County when they learned Demskiy was inside with the boy. As they took him into custody, they found a “severed child’s head” in the bedroom where Demskiy was detained.

Detectives said Demskiy used a knife to behead his son after his wife and mother-in-law left the house, according to the statement. He was in custody and ineligible for bail, and was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

The sheriff’s department and the county public defenders office did not respond to emails seeking information on whether Demskiy had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

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California

Protests Swept California Campuses Last Year. Schools Are Now Blocking Them | KQED

Published

13 hours ago

December 21, 2024

Press Room

Protests Swept California Campuses Last Year. Schools Are Now Blocking Them | KQED

At UC Santa Cruz, police arrested one student who was using a megaphone during a demonstration on Oct. 7, according to an eyewitness who spoke to LookOut Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office public arrest reports show one person was arrested on the Santa Cruz campus for obstruction of a public officer and battery without injury that day.

While no arrests were made, Pomona College has suspended 12 students for the remainder of the 2024–25 academic year following an Oct. 7 demonstration in which they entered, damaged and vandalized a restricted building, according to the student newspaper. The college also banned dozens of students from the four other campuses of the Claremont Colleges, a consortium that includes Pomona.

Private colleges have implemented their own policy changes. Pomona College now requires students and faculty to swipe their ID cards to enter academic buildings. Since last semester, students and visitors entering USC are also required to show a school or photo ID.

Some students are still facing charges from last year’s protests

Few charges have been filed after UCLA’s encampment made headlines in April when counterprotesters led an attack on encampment protesters while law enforcement did not intervene for several hours. The following day, 254 people were arrested on charges related to the protest encampment. In October, two additional people were also arrested for participating in the counter-protester violence.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office is pursuing three felony cases against individuals arrested at UCLA in relation to violence during last spring’s protests.

Meanwhile, the city attorney’s office is reviewing 93 misdemeanor cases from USC and 210 from UCLA, according to information it provided to CalMatters last month.

Lilyan Zwirzina, a junior at Cal Poly Humboldt, was among the students arrested in the early morning of April 30 following protesters occupying a campus building and ignoring orders to disperse from the university. Law enforcement took her to Humboldt County Correctional Facility, where she faced four misdemeanor charges, including resisting arrest. Zwirzina thought she’d have to cancel her study abroad semester, which conflicted with the court date she was given.

“I was pretty frustrated and kind of freaked out,” Zwirzina said. Authorities dropped the charges against her in July.

Pro-Palestinian protesters demand police officers go home during a protest outside of Siemens Hall at Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata on April 22, 2024. (Mark McKenna/CalMatters)

The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office didn’t pursue charges against 27 of the 39 people arrested, citing insufficient evidence. The 12 remaining cases were referred to the Cal Poly Humboldt Police Department for investigation. Those cases remain under investigation, according to the university.

For 13 people, including students, arrested at Stanford University in June, the Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen has not pressed charges as of Nov. 20, according to information his office provided CalMatters.

Elsewhere across the state, some district attorneys are pursuing misdemeanor and felony charges against student protesters. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer is pursuing misdemeanor charges against 50 people, including two UCI professors, a teaching assistant, and 26 students, stemming from a protest at UC Irvine on Oct. 22, 2023. Charges include failure to disperse, resisting arrest and vandalism.

At Pomona College, 19 students were arrested on April 5 on charges of trespassing after some protesters entered and refused to leave an administrative building. Students arrested either had their cases dismissed or have accepted community service in lieu of further legal action. James Gutierrez, the attorney representing the arrested students, said he asked that the college drop charges against its students, citing their right to protest the use of paid tuition dollars.

“They are righteously demanding that their colleges, the ones they pay tuition to and housing fees and pour a lot of money into, that that university or college stop investing in companies that are directly supporting this genocide and indirectly supporting it,” he said.

Students fight back against campus protest policies

As administrators face the challenge of applying protest policies more uniformly and swiftly, the truer test of California public higher education institutions’ protest rules will be playing out in court.

In one already resolved case, UC leadership agreed in August to comply with a court order requiring the campus to end programs or events that exclude Jewish students. A federal judge ruled some Jewish students in support of Israel who were blocked from entering the encampment had their religious liberties violated — though some Jewish students did participate in UCLA’s protest encampment.

Now, students have filed at least two lawsuits against their campuses and the UC system for violating their rights while ending student encampments last spring. In September, ACLU NorCal filed suits against the UC and UC Santa Cruz for not providing students due process when they immediately barred arrested students from returning to campus.

“Those students should have gotten a hearing, an opportunity to defend themselves or to explain themselves, and the school would have shown evidence of why they created a risk of disturbance on campus,” Chessie Thacher, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Northern California, said.

UC Santa Cruz spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said the university “appreciates the court’s careful deliberation” and that the university “is committed to upholding the right to free expression while also protecting the safety of its campus community.”

In October, ACLU SoCal filed lawsuits on behalf of two students and two faculty members against the UC and UCLA, alleging the actions the university took to break down the encampment violated their free speech rights.

UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez told CalMatters via email that the university would respond in court and that UCLA “fully supports community members expressing their First Amendment rights in ways that do not violate the law, our policies, jeopardize community safety, or disrupt the functioning of the university.”

“The encampment that arose on campus this spring became a focal point for violence, a disruption to campus, and was in violation of the law,” Vazquez said in the email statement. “These conditions necessitated its removal.”

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