A California mother is taking legal action against the Spreckels Union School District (SUSD), claiming that two LGBTQ activist teachers “secretly manipulated” her 11-year-old daughter “into believing she was a transgender boy and gave tips on how to bind her breasts.”
Jessica Konen took action against SUSD with a legal claim stating two teachers, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki, from the Buena Vista Middle School, who headed the school’s Equality Club, suggested her daughter was bisexual in sixth grade. Konen also claimed that, without her knowledge, school officials then created a “gender support plan” for her daughter.
Harmeet Dhillon, founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty, filed the case on behalf of Konen.
“Parents are supposed to have access to all the educational records of their children,” Dhillon told DailyMail.com. “The concept that the schools have a right to be running secret, don’t-tell-your-parents clubs and don’t-tell-your-parents programs and actively coaching children how to mutilate themselves, which is you know, not growing your breasts, is certainly not consistent with California law.”
Since filing the case, Dhillon added that she’s heard from parents in other states as well, who report “secretive trans grooming” by school officials, along the same lines as Konen describes.
Konen’s legal claim is a likely precursor to a lawsuit, the news outlet reported.
As Breitbart News reported in December, Konen claimed two years ago that the two teachers indoctrinated her daughter into identifying as “trans fluid” after encouraging her to join their lunchtime LGBTQ group they were calling the “Equality Club”:
Konen told the Epoch Times that toward the end of her sixth-grade year, her daughter informed her she might be bisexual, and later on, in December 2019, when her child was in seventh-grade, Konen said she was called to the school for a meeting with her daughter, a teacher, and the school principal.
During that meeting, the teacher reportedly told Konen that her daughter was “trans fluid.”
Additionally, Konen said the teacher accused her of not being “emotionally supportive” of her daughter’s new gender identity and criticized her for not using her daughter’s new name and pronouns. The teacher reportedly stated Konen’s daughter would now be using the unisex bathroom at school.
“I felt she completely coached my child,” Konen said at the time. “It made me feel very, very small as a parent. I was unaware of anything. Not one time had she mentioned to me, ‘Oh, I think that I want to change my name,’ or ‘I’m transgender or anything. Nothing. I only heard bisexual one time, and that was it.”
Konen reported that, within several days of that meeting, the King City Police Department visited her home to inform her a Child Protective Services (CPS) complaint had been filed against her.
The Epoch Times noted the police officers questioned both of Konen’s children, asking if they wished to be removed from the home.
Ultimately, Konen said CPS dropped the case. However, after additional meetings with teachers, the mother discovered that her daughter had also searched online for information regarding suicide, another surprising revelation she had heard nothing about from school personnel.
Konen reported once schools closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic lockdowns, her daughter returned to identifying as a girl.
Finally, Konen removed her daughter, now 14, from that school and enrolled her elsewhere. She reported to the Epoch Times that her daughter is now using her birth name and feminine pronouns.
In November, author and journalist Abigail Shrier revealed that leaked authenticated documents showed Caldeira and Baraki from the Buena Vista Middle School boasted a month earlier at a California Teachers Association (CTA) meeting about their “best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation.”
“Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents,” Shrier noted.
Caldeira and Baraki asserted their alleged activity of “stalking” children online to search for those they perceived might be transgender were “only made in jest,” the DailyMail.com report said.
According to Shrier, the two teachers led a workshop about how to run a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club in conservative communities.
“Because we are not official – we have no club rosters, we keep no records,” Caldeira reportedly said. “In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?’ You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.”
Baraki was reportedly heard describing how she has changed the name of her “GSA” to the “Equity Club,” and then later to “You Be You,” or UBU, in order to keep parents deferential.
“When we were doing our virtual learning – we totally stalked what they were doing on Google when they weren’t doing school work,” Baraki reportedly said in the leaked recording. “One of them was googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.’”
Caldeira, who had been awarded as a role model for inclusion, reportedly defended hers and Baraki’s efforts, stating the teachers offered honest answers to students’ questions, DailyMail.com reported.
Following Shrier’s report and other media coverage, SUSD officials responded by stating:
Many of the comments and themes stated in the article are alarming, concerning, disappointing, and do not in any way reflect the District or Board of Education’s policies and practices.
“Regarding the teachers involved, appropriate personnel steps are being taken to make sure such activities and comments will not be repeated,” the district stated.
In November, the teachers were reportedly placed on administrative leave, and their UBU club was suspended.
CTA defended its conference stating it was one of many offered to “help educators understand the need to protect students from discrimination, including sexual orientation and gender identity or expression,” according to DailyMail.com.
“We are concerned about a political climate right now in which outside political forces fuel chaos and misinformation and seek to divide parents, educators and school communities for their own political gain, which is evident in this complaint,” CTA spokeswoman Lisa Gardiner reportedly said.
“The Center for American Liberty is concerned with pushing its own political agenda through litigation and has filed multiple lawsuits against various school districts and communities,” she added.
Attorney Peter Renn of LGBTQ activist organization Lambda Legal also told DailyMail.com, “Outside of school, these students may similarly face potential hostility at home because of who they are.”
“For example, involuntarily outing a student as LGBTQ to their parents can very well lead to them getting kicked out of the home in some circumstances,” he said, according to the report.