How can it be that a trafficked runaway was kept from her parents because authorities were concerned that they would not support her transgender confusion?

From The Daily Wire. A 14-year-old transgender runaway from Virginia endured a six-month nightmare that saw her twice fall into the hands of sex traffickers, the second time after Baltimore bureaucrats refused to return her to her home state because they accused her adoptive parents of “misgendering” her, according to records reviewed by The Daily Wire.

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The child, identified in legal documents as Sage, was adopted by her biological grandmother, Michele Blair, after the death of her father. Long troubled, Sage began identifying as a male named “Draco” and ran away from their rural home in late August of 2021, only to end up on the mean streets of Baltimore, where authorities rescued her from a convicted sex offender, according to records. But instead of returning the child to her grandmother, Maryland officials put her in an inner-city group home. The reason: They thought her adoptive, blood-relative parents didn’t seem to sufficiently recognize her transgender identity.

“It is not possible to return the child to that home,” Judge Robert B. Kershaw wrote on Sept. 3, 2021, after an impassioned plea from Baltimore Assistant Public Defender Aneesa Khan.

Instead, the judge turned Sage over to the Baltimore City Department of Juvenile Services “for placement in a hardware secure therapeutic facility which makes reasonable accommodation for Respondent’s expressed male gender and desire to live as a trans male.” That meant housing the girl just rescued from a sex offender with some of Baltimore’s most troubled biological males.

“[Sage] has committed no juvenile offense in Maryland, is not a Maryland resident, and has no connections to Maryland… If he is located in another State there is no legal authority to return him to Maryland, much less for Maryland to assert legal custody over him.”

After months in Maryland institutions, Sage bolted, only to resurface in Texas, where she once again had been allegedly trafficked to pedophiles, according to records. Unlike their counterparts in Maryland, Lone Star officials returned her to her parents, according to an ethics complaint Blair filed against Khan. Khan allegedly told the girl to lie about being abused by her parents, seemingly in order to create a legal precedent allowing states—other than where a teen lives—to refuse to return a runaway teen if transgender issues are in play.

Being the subject of an interstate tug-of-war driven by an ideological, leftist bureaucracy was a new kind of exploitation for Sage, who had become accustomed to evil men seeking to use her for profit or gratification. Her grandmother recounted for police how the cruel spiral began for the child she still hopes to raise.

“I went to wake up my daughter,” Blair said, describing the morning of Aug. 25, 2021 in an Appomattox County Sheriff’s Office report. “She was gone and the [window] screen had been cut open! I immediately looked everywhere then drove to Appomattox Sheriff to report Sage missing.”

Sage would later reveal that she sneaked out to meet someone she thought was a 16-year-old boy who liked skateboarding. But the person was a sex offender who had been grooming her online and took her to Washington and then to Baltimore, Michele said. A frantic search that included the sheriff’s office, FBI, Virginia State Police, and the U.S. Marshals ended a week later, when Sage was found in Baltimore with Kenneth Fisher, a 36-year old convicted sex offender. In the week she had been missing, Sage experienced untold horror at his hands. …

After Sage was found, Blair drove all night to pick her up. But to the city of Baltimore said she was being held in jail as a defendant, apparently for running away. Her court-appointed lawyer was Khan. …

It was Khan who persuaded Judge Kershaw not to return Sage to her home in Virginia after her 72-year old grandfather, overcome by emotion, accidentally called her “she.” Ironically, Blair is a longtime court-appointed child advocate, ordinarily making her the ideal trusted parent. Yet the Maryland juvenile court maintained that her home was abusive even after a local Virginia agency’s investigation found no mistreatment. Blair believes Khan was intent on making her daughter a poster child in the fight for transgender rights above parental rights—no matter the cost. …

Kershaw ordered Sage fitted with a GPS monitor and sent to an institution called The Children’s Home. On Sept. 21, the court received a properly-filled out ICJ form, but three days later, Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services notified Virginia of allegations that Sage’s parents were abusive. …

Sage flees Maryland

If Maryland was holding Sage for her own good, she didn’t seem to feel that way. Within five days of the Nov. 10 ruling holding her in Maryland, Sage had cut off her GPS monitoring bracelet and fled the Maryland facility. On Nov. 15, 2021, the juvenile court issued a runaway warrant and revealed “efforts have been made to follow leads regarding his whereabouts in several states.”

Incredibly, the judge seemed to be contemplating essentially extraditing Sage back to Maryland for running away—a state she was only in to begin with because she had turned up there with a sex offender.

The Maryland juvenile agency again underscored to the judge that there was no legal basis for such a move. …

On January 24, 2022, the State Police of Texas Human Trafficking Division located Sage in Texas—after she allegedly was again beaten, raped, and trafficked. Unlike Maryland, Texas authorities immediately returned the frightened girl to her parents.

Homecoming

On the long trip back from Texas, Sage filled Blair in on all that had happened. Days later, Blair filed a complaint against Khan.

“She shared with me on Monday, January 31, 2022, that she was told to ‘lie’ by Attorney Aneesa Khan so that ‘she could win the case,’” Blair wrote in her complaint. “Sage stated, ‘Attorney Khan told me to tell the judge my parents hit me, starved me, then made to make my own dinner since I was 8 years old.’ This lie has caused great anguish to Sage. She was relieved to admit she had lied to the judge and the court.”

“Sage was 14 years old when she suffered the evil of minor commercial sex trafficking. Instead of competent juvenile attorneys who should understand the developing adolescent brain and that brain that has been traumatized and vulnerable, Sage was manipulated and coerced once again by those in charge of her,” Blair continued.

“Maryland did not comply with the interstate compact and the juvenile court did not address the sexual trafficking crime that had taken place,” she said. Sage was now “healing from physical abuse to her face and body” by her second, Texas trafficker, she wrote in her complaint against Khan. …

Justice

Still, Sage’s sad saga was not over.

Blair said her granddaughter was suffering from trauma that caused her to act out to begin with, and that she will now have lifelong trauma as the result of being repeatedly trafficked. She bitterly complained that Maryland, in her opinion, chose to make her daughter’s ordeal a test case on gender identity and state power over parents instead of helping a troubled child. …

She was released from treatment to her mother’s care in June 2021 and no longer believes she is a boy, according to discharge paperwork that shows no diagnosis of gender dysphoria. …

What do you think of Sage’s story? Share your thoughts and prayers below.

(Excerpt from The Daily Wire. Photo Credit: Erick Zajac on Unsplash)