(The Daily Signal)—A New York school district socially transitioned a girl without her mother’s consent, repeatedly lying to the mother about the child’s mental health and social struggles, according to a new lawsuit.
Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, Jennifer Vitsaxaki of New York filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Skaneateles Central School District and Board of Education, accusing them of violating her constitutional rights through their deception and their social transitioning of her 12-year-old daughter, Jane.
The Daily Signal first obtained the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. Skaneateles, New York, where the school district is located, is about 22 miles southwest of Syracuse.
“Parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their kids, and they cannot fulfill those responsibilities when schools hide information from them and make critical decisions that can have lifelong consequences for their child,” said Kate Anderson, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. “So, this case is important to ensure that all parents can have the information they need to do what’s best for their kids.”
Though Michael Vitsaxaki and Jennifer Vitsaxaki are both U.S. citizens, the Vitsaxaki family had spent almost a decade in Greece, where the Vitsaxaki parents were from, and Jane’s primary language was Greek. The family decided to leave Greece when its economy collapsed and they realized that they could not continue raising their children there, but the transition from their closely knit community in Greece to the U.S. was disruptive to the entire family’s lives.
Young Jane Vitsaxaki had to adapt to a “new culture, including learning to go through each day speaking primarily English instead of Greek,” and her father’s job required him to frequently travel out of the country.
The complaint states that Jennifer Vitsaxaki began to be increasingly concerned as her daughter was exhibiting signs of anxiety and depression and occasionally refusing to leave home. The mother repeatedly asked school district employees about whether they had noticed anything troubling her daughter, but was met with denials and assurances that her daughter was fine.
“Those repeated reassurances concealed the truth,” the complaint states. “While school officials kept telling Mrs. Vitsaxaki that there was nothing to report, a school counselor was regularly meeting with her daughter and her peers to address ongoing bullying suffered by … Jane, and other girls in the group.”
Worse than that, the complaint said, the district began treating Jane as though she were a boy—”just as it had done with several other girls in her grade.”
“The same counselor instructed school staff to treat Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s daughter as though she were a boy by referring to her with a boy’s name and the third-person plural pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’—part of a controversial psychosocial intervention often called ‘social transition,’” the complaint states. “Then, a school psychologist, who told school staff to keep their actions secret from Mrs. Vitsaxaki, began meeting with Jane regularly without Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s knowledge.”
No one had told Jennifer Vitsaxaki that the district had made any of these decisions or taken these actions.
“School staff carefully used Jane’s given name and female pronouns when speaking with Mrs. Vitsaxaki, and they repeatedly said everything was fine, all the while treating Jane as a boy and sending her resources for medical transition behind Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s back,” her lawsuit says.
The district employees didn’t tell Vitsaxaki about any of this for months, the lawsuit alleges, and Jane’s mental condition worsened. She was resisting going to school and becoming increasingly anxious and negative.
“At one point, and at her daughter’s request, Mrs. Vitsaxaki even took a job as a bus driver to learn more about what could be causing her daughter’s distress,” the suit says.
Finally, a staff member “could no longer stomach” the deception and urged the principal to tell Jane’s mother.
“When [the principal] finally did, Mrs. Vitsaxaki was shocked,” the complaint says. “She and her husband, Jane’s father, met with representatives of the school district. They directed the school district to stop taking any further action without their consent and sought open communication with the teachers to understand what had happened.”
It continued: “But the principal told them school district policy required employees to deceive them, and despite assurances to the contrary, the deception continued. Left with no other options, Mrs. Vitsaxaki withdrew her daughter from the school district.”
Vitsaxaki’s lawsuit stresses that she has a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and health care of her child, a right that is “inconsistent with the deceptive, heavy-handed, and disruptive intervention that the school district perpetrated against Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s daughter—an intervention that gravely interfered with her ability to raise her daughter and contradicted her religious beliefs.”
“Ultimately, parents—not school employees or other government officials—ought to decide how to resolve a child’s questions about sensitive topics like identity and gender confusion,” the complaint says. “Parents like Mrs. Vitsaxaki know their children better than anyone else. And parents, not school employees, will be there for a child in the long run, when the consequences of these decisions become fully apparent.”
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected], and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Why One Survival Food Company Shines Above the Rest
Let’s be real. “Prepper Food” or “Survival Food” is generally awful. The vast majority of companies that push their cans, bags, or buckets desperately hope that their customers never try them and stick them in the closet or pantry instead. Why? Because if the first time they try them is after the crap hits the fan, they’ll be too shaken to call and complain about the quality.
It’s true. Most long-term storage food is made with the cheapest possible ingredients with limited taste and even less nutritional value. This is why they tout calories so much. Sure, they provide calories but does anyone really want to go into the apocalypse with food their family can’t stand?
This is what prompted the Llewellyns to launch Heaven’s Harvest. They bought survival food from multiple companies and determined they couldn’t imagine being stuck in an extended emergency with such low-quality food. They quickly discovered that freeze drying food for long-term storage doesn’t have to mean sacrificing flavor, consistency, or nutrition.
Their ingredients are all-American. In fact, they’re locally sourced and all-natural! This allows their products to be the highest quality on the market, so good that their customers often break open a bag in a pinch to eat because they want to, not just because they have to due to an emergency.
At Heaven’s Harvest, their only focus is amazing food. They don’t sell bugout bags, solar chargers, or multitools. They have one mission – feeding Americans in times of crisis.
What they DO offer is the ability for people to thrive in times of greatest need. On top of long-term storage food, they offer seeds to help Americans for the truly long-term. They want them to grow their own food if possible which is why they offer only Heirloom, Non-GMO, Non-Hybrid, Open-Pollinated seeds so their customers can build permanent food security on their own property.
