Friends, 

I have waited years for Congress to look directly at what we see in our cases.  This week Senator Eric Schmitt and Congresswoman Mary Miller introduced the Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act in Congress.  

I have sat with parents who were investigated, separated from their children, or told that treating a son as a son or a daughter as a daughter was the problem. I have hugged and cried with Abigail Martines, the mother of Yaeli Martinez — a girl taken from her mother by California’s child-welfare system after her mother would not raise her as a boy. In state care she was given testosterone over her mom’s objections. She died by suicide at the age of 19.  

That is why this bill bears Yaeli’s name.  

The Act would create, for the first time, a simple rule for any state that takes federal child-welfare money: a parent’s affirmation of a child’s sex is not abuse. It would bar those funds from being used to remove a child from fit parents, from denying a foster or adoptive placement, or to pushing sex-rejecting drugs and surgeries on children already in state care. It would require sex-separated housing for children in state care. It would stop states from using a runaway or parental kidnapping as a way around another state’s custody order when the purpose is sex-rejecting interventions. And it would give parents the right to sue rogue child welfare services in federal court when their rights are violated. 

CPRC is proud to have helped draft and to be counted among the organizations supporting this bill. 

What the bill does, who Yaeli was, and the two ways to help are on one page. Please read it, and send it to one person who should see it while this is still news: 

I am also eager for Congressional Hearings — where the voices of once-silenced parents can be heard. Families like Joseph and Arlene Kutzko of Massachusetts, and parents in California, Washington, Colorado, and too many other states, should be allowed to testify. When all of their stories are assembled together, the anecdotes vanish and trends emerge. Ideologically-driven school counselors, hospitals, therapists, and child-welfare agencies are working from the same playbook. 

CPRC Of Counsel Erin Friday and I have spent years working on these cases. Together, we have seen the same pattern across the country: a quiet social transition at school, a report to the agency, a vague abuse or neglect allegation often coupled with other fabricated allegations, a gag on the parents, then state-sponsored transition once the child is out of the home.  

The Kutzkos’ next hearing is October 29. A judge has temporarily blocked high-dose testosterone. We still have a child to save and a record to make. 

If you want to help Joseph and Arlene with family costs, their GiveSendGo page is here: 

https://www.givesendgo.com/kutzko   

If you want help support this firm to defend these families, pay the experts, and keep showing up after the cameras leave, give to CPRC. We are a 501(c)(3). Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent the law allows. 

[DONATE — Parental Defense Fund] 

Thank you for standing with parents who refuse to lie to their children. 

Vernadette R. Broyles 

President and Chief Counsel 

Child & Parental Rights Campaign 

P.S. Please share this with one person who should know the bill exists.