Parents who say they were separated from children for refusing to affirm transgender identity are still fighting states in court.
Alexandra Lyaschenko hasn’t spoken with her teenage daughter in nearly two years.
In June 2024, she had been taking her daughter to see a therapist for her struggles with borderline personality disorder, hyperactivity, and trauma from bullying at school.
At first, Lyaschenko thought the therapist might be able to help with those issues.
Instead, according to Lyaschenko, that same therapist accompanied Child Protective Services on June 3 to take her daughter away from their home in Mt. Shasta, California.
“She left barefoot, and my husband did the talking, because I developed an immediate physical reaction,” Lyashcenko told The Epoch Times.
“I grabbed my son. It was the scariest day of my life.”
Her daughter was then taken to what Lyaschenko described as a gender clinic in Chico. “After that, the hell started,” Lyaschenko said.
Fearing the state would try to take her son following what she described as accusations of abuse by her daughter, Lyaschenko fled across the country.
Several other parents in a situation similar to Lyaschenko’s were too afraid to speak to The Epoch Times, even under anonymity.
Their cases are ongoing, and they fear losing custody of their children by violating court gag orders.
The Legislative Battle
Accounts such as Lyaschenko’s are surfacing in legal battles across the nation, pitting states against parents and parents against courts or each other.
On April 2, Lyaschenko testified in New Hampshire, where the legislature was considering a bill that would ban Child Protective Services from removing minors from parental custody solely because they wouldn’t support so-called gender transitions.
New Hampshire is not the only state considering such laws. A similar bill is working its way through the Ohio Legislature, after reports that Cuyahoga County was implementing a program tracking the sexual and gender identity of children as young as 5.
The issue may also come before the Supreme Court.
In February, International Partners for Ethical Care filed a petition challenging Washington statutes that allow the state to separate runaways from their parents and commence gender treatments.
Washington’s laws required a youth shelter to notify parents or guardians, unless there was a compelling reason not to.
In 2023, the state amended the law to say “compelling reasons include when a minor is seeking or receiving protected health care services,” and “protected health care services means gender-affirming treatment and reproductive health care services that are lawful in the state of Washington.”
Martha Shoultz, co-founder of Partners for Ethical Care, said she was confident that if the Supreme Court took up the case, her organization would prevail.
“How can you think there’s not really an imminent danger to the kids, if somebody can keep your children after they run away, even put them on medicine … with possibly serious, long-term consequences?” she told The Epoch Times.
She added that, as with many issues surrounding gender identity, these runaways were treated differently than in other circumstances.
“Child safeguarding goes out the window if transition is involved, for some reason. … It’s like, basically, they’re throwing these confused kids to the wolves,” she said, expressing her personal view of how such policies affect minors.
On April 19, the organization hosted an event highlighting the stories of “detransitioners,” who underwent gender procedures but later experienced regret.
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president at Defending Education, said that in her view, Washington’s law effectively allows children to run away from their home state to seek gender treatment.
“Never before have we seen a state try to use an attempt to shield lawful law enforcement efforts on the basis of trying to transition these children against parental will,” she told The Epoch Times.
“Not only is it a violation of constitutional principles, both on the recognition of interstate powers, one to another, and not only a violation of a constitutional parental right, it also brings up potential criminal charges.”
That’s because “sanctuary laws” such as Washington’s rub against laws in other states that require parental notification for certain medical procedures, Perry said.
