Written by Kathy Clubb
31st August 2023
How long has it been since you discovered that your daughter wanted to become a boy?
My daughter was raped at 15 by a school friend in 2016 and although she didn’t tell us, we knew something was very wrong. We sent her to a psychologist to deal with what we thought was some sort of depression. This period led to her declaring a variety of things. Firstly that she was a lesbian because she liked a boy who was transitioning to female (so classified him as a female) and then that she was a male trapped in a female body in early October 2016.
What was the first indication that your daughter wanted to change her gender?
There were lots of little steps which we later learned was fairly common for these teens. Suddenly stopping her previous ‘female’ interests, in her case dancing, then a gradual change of preferred clothing, moving to more gender neutral or male clothes. Then suddenly deciding to chop off her much prized long hair. I knew something was wrong when she became very upset at the fact that I tried to explain that although the boy she liked thought he was a girl, he was in fact still male and always will be. At this point she tried to tell me that I had ‘old biology’ and that I was wrong about people changing to the opposite sex. In the end, she came out and said it outright.
Back in 2016, no one had really heard of transgender, so I thought she meant that she thought she was what they now call intersex. I thought she meant that she had male and female body parts; something that very much confused me.
What was your daughter’s response when you tried to give her another point of view?
I was really shocked with her response. We had been close and had a pretty open, honest relationship. She knew I’d worked in the past in various occupations where human biology was important.
She completely flew off the handle and was raging and completely irrational. She wouldn’t let me try to explain.
Ironically, after she had run away from home and started cross sex hormones, on one of the vary rare occasions that I was able to spend time with her, she had commented on a news story where someone overseas had decided he was another race and how crazy that was to think that someone could change race and have surgery to look like another race. I wasn’t able to keep my mouth shut at this point and explained that there might be some similarities to thinking you could change race and changing sex, that it was a bit crazy in both situations and that you had to learn to be happy in the skin you’re in. She then explained to me that gender dysphoria was a diagnosed mental illness and I simply agreed with her.
What kind of response did you receive from your daughter’s school when you made inquiries?
In my case it was complicated, because it involved a rogue teacher who’d been grooming the students in the class for some time. He was a same sex attracted teacher in a Christian School who was teaching the children that Christians were terrible because they didn’t accept homosexuality. He was also teaching them that it was perfectly normal and healthy to experiment sexually and that it was no big deal if they caught an STD as they could just get some sort of medication to clear it up. This led the boys in the class to getting together and having sex with each other during ‘gaming nights’ at each other’s houses. Poor parental supervision allowed them to become very sexually active at a very early age. These experiences were discussed during class time. I believe that this also led to my daughter being raped by one of these boys later.
My daughter had reported the rape to the teacher soon after it happened. He apparently told her to put it behind her and to treat it as a life experience and forgive the rapist.
I didn’t find out about the rape for 5 months and even then it was quite by accident. I’d mistaken a journal that my daughter had been writing in an exercise book as school work and read it. The first words were ‘its been 7 days since THEY raped me….’ I was completely horrified, thinking it was a gang rape with multiple rapists, but she later told me it was a boy who’s preferred pronouns were ‘they’. This was my introduction to preferred pronouns.
I did read other journal entries and each page explained more and more what had been happening over the months with my daughter.
We decided that as she was not coping with school anyway and since the boy who raped her was in most classes to pull her out of school and get her into full time TAFE.
I called the school and explained the situation. I told them what had been happening. Although the rape did not occur at school, I thought it was important for other’s safety to know that this boy had raped my daughter and had almost raped another boy in the school also. I was also disgusted at the teacher in question who was well loved by the students and apparently the other staff.
While the staff member I spoke to on the phone sounded shocked at what had been happening, they were more concerned that I told them I would not be paying the extra term of school fees in advance (for lack of enough notice). I expected a call from the principal or someone in charge, but no one actually got back to me. The school did however report me to the education department for pulling my daughter out of full time school, despite giving them the transcripts necessary to show she was moving to full time TAFE.
I was too busy trying to cope myself and trying to get my daughter the rape trauma counselling she needed as the previous psychologist she’d seen had got nowhere with her. My daughter hadn’t even opened up about the rape.
Have you met other parents from your school/parish/community whose children experienced gender dysphoria around the same time as your daughter?
Yes. I knew the parents of the boy who’d almost been raped and he’d already decided to start transitioning. Unfortunately for everyone involved, they celebrated the announcement from their son. They had him put onto puberty blockers soon after his declaration. Another boy in the class also transitioned. That’s 3 out of a class of around 20 teens.
The teacher was also a youth leader at a local church. I met the parents of one son who had dealings with this teacher through the church. Other teens in the congregation had also transitioned apparently.
Back in 2016, it was not something that was openly talked about. There were no posts on Facebook or news articles about famous people transitioning their children.
What is the status of your daughter at the moment? Do you have regular contact with her?
Sadly, I have no contact with my daughter. It’s something that completely breaks my heart.
A local trans support organisation with financial help from Centrelink allowed her to run away from home. She was able to get a new Medicare card in her new name and gender (before she’d legally changed it) and without any identification documents to open a bank account and set up a “runaway from home account.”
With the backing of the transgender support organisation, they sent someone who posed as a child protection officer to forcibly try to remove her from our home when she was 16. The person rang the door bell and my daughter allowed him into the house where he proceeded to tell me that my son was in danger and that he was taking him to live elsewhere. I have a younger son, so initially thought that this person was trying to take him. The person had no court order, no identification documents, nothing to give the person any authority to take a dependant child from their family home. Only after questioning and demanding to show me proof that he had the authority to come into my house, did the person finally admit he was from the local trans organisation that I was able to work out that he meant my daughter.
After the first attempt was eventually thwarted, she eventually disappeared a few months later. We found out that she’d moved in with the trans activist who’d come into our home and that because she was very difficult (with depression etc), they had dumped her into a youth hostel after a couple of weeks.
Just before her 18th birthday she suddenly called me and wanted to see me, which I was overjoyed at. From there I saw her only when she needed something, money or help moving into yet another living situation. I used to send her phone messages and the odd photo of her pets she’d left behind, but she rarely replied.
She started testosterone just after her 18th birthday. She called me a few weeks after and I was shocked at the change in her voice. I thought someone had found her phone and was playing tricks on me.
She stopped all contact with me just after she turned 19. I kept messaging her and it looked as if the messages hadn’t been read. I was extremely worried as she’d been in and out of high security mental health facilities due to being suicidal. She messaged me out of the blue one day, completely unexpectedly and told me that I was a terrible parent and that I was emotionally abusing her by asking if she was ok. She sent me a link to a website she’d created which had all sorts of details about her. How she wanted to be treated, how she saw herself and detailing that she was part alien and had several different disabilities.
I came across a GoFundMe account where she was raising money to have her breasts amputated. In the campaign details, she’d mentioned the surgeon, who I wrote to, begging for her to be treated for the rape trauma she desperately needed rather than surgical amputation of healthy body tissue. I sent him links to the website and details of the rape and the report of the gender clinic we’d been to, saying that rape trauma had nothing to do with gender dysphoria and they felt there wasn’t a need to have counselling for that.
Unfortunately, the doctor printed the emails I’d written and gave them all to my daughter. She was angry at me for trying to stop her and messaged me to tell me that I was no longer her mother.
A group of friends and I also wrote to the local hospitals discussing why this type of surgery was not helpful for anyone and trying to get them to re-think surgeons using their facilities to perform this medical malpractice.
I’ve heard nothing from her since.
I know that she didn’t finish the TAFE course we were forced to continue to pay for by the education department until she turned 18, despite her not attending and not even knowing where she was living at the time.
I know that she was able to doctor shop as so many of these teens do, to get some sort of diagnosis of a disability which along with the trans label allows them to be on a disability pension so they don’t have to look for work. I know that despite her still having her room at our house, she was able to be classified as homeless and was eligible for state housing accommodation, fully furnished, despite the huge housing shortage at the moment.
What has been the effect of this crisis on your family?
Put yourself in my position. My beloved daughter was raped, something most mothers would almost blame themselves for. I failed to be able to protect her. The police were not interested at all initially in looking into the rape and later, when they did, they purposely destroyed the journal evidence stating it was of no monetary value.
We were working hard to pay school fees where a predator teacher was working and had access to our daughter. We were completely and totally oblivious and blindsided about what was happening in this class and in the school. That feels like a failure.
I had an activist in my house forcibly trying to take my very vulnerable child out of my home. When I called the police for help (the only time I’d ever called 000) they told me I was breaking the law by trying to stop her leaving. I was literally feeling like I was fighting for our lives to get this stranger out of our home and I was doing it on my own. The fear during this time is indescribable. I was hysterical in front of my young son as well as my daughter, scaring him. I have PTSD from that episode. I live in fear constantly that someone is going to try to come and take my other child, or do something to me in retaliation.
The activist coming into our home led to a series of actions which have had lasting consequences. Because I was able to push the activist intruder out our front door, where he tripped on the way out, he called the police who came for his call and tried to have me charged with assault. The police questioned us and my daughter who then stated she was suicidal, so they took her to our local hospital for a psych exam, where they found her to not be suicidal. It’s interesting to note, that the activists teach these troubled teens to blackmail everyone by saying they are suicidal. There is even a reality game type website to help them become believable and convincing with these statements. During the long wait for the psych exam, my husband and I were questioned extensively by a couple of hospital social workers who told us that we were abusive parents as we were still using her birth name (dead naming her) and her proper she/her pronouns. We were told ‘better a live son, than a dead daughter’, something repeated numerous times during our journey. It’s something all parents in my situation are told as a way to blackmailing us into going along with the child’s delusion to stop them suiciding. It’s also important to note that there are absolutely no studies to back up this claim, that in fact suicidality increases AFTER transitioning. They organised for someone to come to our home a few days later to question us.
We were allowed to take our daughter home because she wasn’t suicidal on the proviso that we would not punish her for anything and that we would not take away her phone or other devices under any circumstances. These children apparently have a right to a certain level of privilege and parents have to respect that.
The person that came to our house literally interrogated us for 7 hours. They confirmed that we were terrible, abusive parents because we hadn’t repainted our daughter’s bedroom and that we still had baby photos of her on our wall. We were told that person is dead now, we have another son.
What happens when an official declares that you’re an abusive parent? You have to do what you’re told to do because not only are you worried about the teen who wants to transition, but we were fearful our much younger son would be taken out of our custody. That puts a level of fear into a parent that is unimaginable. You live in fear of a knock on the door EVERY SINGLE DAY. As he got older, while his peers were left at home while the mum went to the shop quickly, I was too scared to leave mine at home. I was petrified that someone else would classify me as abusive so it changed the way I dealt even with teachers at school. It puts a person into a constant state of hyper-vigilance. My son was taught police were not to be trusted, that the government was not to be trusted, that the medical community was not to be trusted. As he got older, we were overly careful and conscious of not upsetting him in case he went and spoke to a school counsellor or similar about some ‘wrong’ we’d done. He was taught never to answer the door or to even go near the door in case he was seen if left alone at home. I have been advised to not bother to try to reapply for a Working With Children Check as I likely wouldn’t get one now due to my abusive status.
When something like this happens, it sets you apart from others in every way. You feel like you’re living in complete isolation and on a slightly different parallel universe to others. You see signs and clues and fears everywhere. I often describe myself as identifying with Alice (In Wonderland), a fairy tale I absolutely hated as a child because of the ongoing nightmarish theme of nothing making sense in the world and not being able to escape the nightmare.
None of my family has had counselling because of our trauma. We no longer trust psychotherapists. Despite issues with anger, excessive reliance on us from my son, we didn’t want him to speak to someone who would tell him that his thoughts about the transgender movement are wrong. I’ve met parents with multiple children transitioning and I was constantly fearful that he might go down this path too.
I don’t trust police. They let us down in my time of absolute need and then proceeded to destroy the evidence we would have used to try and get some justice for my daughter. I don’t trust the medical profession. Where is the ‘first do no harm’ code of practice that doctors are supposed to follow. How can I trust a so called medical professional who thinks someone can change from female to male and vice versa? I don’t trust the government, who have such over-reach in the day to day lives of our families and take custody of children when parents express concern about them transitioning. I don’t trust pharmaceutical companies. They make lifelong patients in order to make profits. They’re not here to help us.
We lost most friends and family along the way. The grief was too much for some. The fears and ‘conspiracy theories’ for others. I was judged harshly for allowing my daughter into a situation where she was raped. Then we were judged for not supporting our daughter becoming her ‘true, authentic self’, by becoming male, even though she’d never shown any sign of being anything other than female growing up and until the rape.
I started a parent support group for parents in my situation, the first in Australia. Since then I’ve talked to hundreds, maybe thousands of parents here and overseas and our stories are all very similar. I’m often re-traumatised listening to parents wondering how they’re going to go on living if their child ends up transitioning.
I’ve become quite an activist myself, talking to anyone who’ll listen about what’s happening here and around the world. It’s become almost a full time (unpaid) job for me. I regularly speak to politicians and spend hours doing various submissions etc. Even this has taken a huge toll on our family financially as it’s long ago used all our savings and resources while I struggle to try and do even part time work around the other work I do.
My son has also lost his sibling who he was extremely close to and has a mother who is constantly on the phone or travelling somewhere or going to a meeting or other and who he feels spends too much time with everyone else.
Are there any protections for parents in the state where you live?
No. There are no protections. A child can be declared a mature minor by the school or a counsellor and start their journey to medicalisation without parents being told. Government organisations such as Headspace also push this agenda along.
What can parents do to help prevent their children from taking this path?
While it seems extreme, homeschooling your children is the best protection. No school whatsoever, Christian, Catholic, Private is safe. They have all been infiltrated. It comes in via text books, teachers, relief teachers and auxiliary staff.
Educate your children. If you must send them to school, make sure you tell them at the very earliest age that they are a male or female and that nothing will ever change that. Teach them the biology, using correct terminology about their organs.
Schools are using concepts from a very young age that there is such a thing as a ‘safe secret’. Teach your child that anyone who encourages the child to keep a secret from their parents is wrong and that they should tell their parents immediately.
Teach children that in a world openly hostile to biological truth, that they don’t have to come out and correct their teachers or others who are teaching them this ideology and to come and tell their parents immediately.
At school on compulsory days where outside organisations come and talk to children, keep them home! Have a mental health day instead. Wear it Purple Day? No, take some time off school so it doesn’t pressure them to conform until they are old enough and strong enough to understand and make a stand.
Keep children away from devices. If your child has separation anxiety, talk to the school and organise with the school that your child will be able to call you if necessary. Every smart device is a portal to letting a predator get to your child.
Make your children a priority. Does your child really need to do 3 different sports and music lessons? Could one or two of these things be dropped saving you money so you can work out a way to be more present with them? Yes, it’s time consuming and often difficult, but sit with them while they do their homework. Check suggested websites they need to use for homework and make sure they’re appropriate. Just because it’s educational, doesn’t mean it’s safe.
If your children have friends over who have phones or devices, take them off the children when they’re in your home. Explain you don’t have devices in your house and they’ll get it back when they go home. Tell their parents first if you feel you have to. I’ve recently spoken to one mum of a very young child whose friend had a porn app on their phone. No social media. No TikTok, no Youtube, no Snap Chat, no Anime. We have found that children studying Japanese in school often watch anime during school time. Anime often is very sexual and has huge amounts of gender ideology running though it. School internet filters do not seem to be able to capture the anime porn.
Don’t trust that other parents will supervise your children as well as you might. This was my downfall and if I had been more careful, my daughter would not have been raped. Make your house the cool house where the teens like to hang out. Have plenty of snacks etc so there’s no need for them to wander the streets.
One recent thing I’ve found is that mid to late teens don’t seem to know about reproduction. They don’t seem to know or understand basic reproductive biology. They don’t know that sex is determined at conception and that’s why they’re more likely to believe the ‘sex ASSIGNED at birth’ lie rather than the sex OBSERVED at birth’.
Educate yourself. Understand what’s happening in the world by watching alternative media. Mainstream media does not provide balanced information about these issues. Watch videos by people like Jordan Peterson, read Substack articles by Bernard Lane.
Things are slowly changing. Countries like the UK have court cases coming up by parents who are taking their schools to court for harming their children due to these ideologies being taught. Here in Australia, there are currently court cases with detransitioners (those people who transitioned and then want to go back to their natal sex) who have been harmed by the ideology. Over 20 States in the US have now banned the transitioning of children. The UK has recommended not to allow preferred pronouns or socially transitioning in schools as it’s now been proven this puts children onto a pathway of medicalisation and surgery that lasts a lifetime.
Teach your children that they are all incredible individuals and that their hobbies and likes and dislikes don’t determine their sex. Girls can love football and cricket, boys can love music and arts.
