A California mother is accusing the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) and the Arcadia Unified School District of contributing to the death of her daughter from an apparent suicide. Abigail Martinez claims that staff at Arcadia High School encouraged her daughter Yaeli to attend an LGBTQ club, and coached her on how to get hormone treatments and get into foster care and away from her “unsupportive” mother.
Abigail Martinez, 53, called it “brainwashing.”
“They were doing all this secretly,” Martinez told The Epoch Times. “I didn’t even realize that my daughter was going to this club because they don’t report to you what they’re doing at school to keep them ‘safe’ from their parents, according to them.”
Yaeli had attempted suicide, apparently over some bullying incidents at Foothills Middle School. According to Martinez, this bullying may have been the catalyst to her daughter beginning to question her sexuality and her gender, which began in high school.
And in high school, Yaeli found the “help and support” she needed to begin the process of becoming a boy.
“When she started high school, the doors opened to what she was talking about, like transgender, going to meetings, going to all the support that they think they have for these children … which is not,” Martinez said at a Heritage Foundation panel discussion.
“The school counselor was involved, DCFS was involved, LGBT was in there too, trying to ‘help’ my daughter on the transition of being transgender,” Martinez said. “I was accused that I didn’t want to open my eyes since she felt since she was a little girl that she was a boy which was not true. She was not even close to a tomboy … she was the girlie girl in the house.”
Meeting with school staff only complicated matters for the family, as instead of insisting on treatment for Yaeli’s obvious depression, the staff instead harangued Martinez about helping the girl’s “transition” into a boy. The school and the DCFS advocated for Yaeli to be removed from the home and placed in foster care, which occurred after another suicide attempt.
“The school psychology and LGBT told DCFS that my daughter would be better off out of the house,” Martinez said. “They took away my daughter when she was 16-years-old. I tried my best to get her back … going to court every single month.”
In addition to trying to get her daughter back from the intrusive government activists, Martinez also begged the judge in charge of the case to get Yaeli a psychiatric evaluation. Instead, after the social worker involved insisted that Martinez acknowledge her daughter was transgendered, which she refused to do, the judge denied the request for a pysch evaluation.
Transgender activists encouraged Yaeli to complete her transition immediately since, as a minor, the State of California would pay for all of the therapy included. As her mother, Martinez wanted Yaeli to concentrate on her psychiatric issues prior to engaging in any physical therapies, including hormone replacement.
Instead of helping with her psychiatric issues, the school system plied Yaeli with gender-bending vocabulary and encouraged her to adopt a new male name. Yaeli eventually chose the name “Andrew.” Martinez accused the transgender activists of forcing her into simply accepting her daughter’s new situation.
“They were pushing me,” Martinez said.
Eventually, a social worker suggested the ghastly idea that Martinez hold a funeral for her daughter and then “adopt” her new “son.”
“I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Did you hear what you just said?’ … and I said, ‘How dare you tell me to bury my daughter!’” Martinez said.
Martinez was also told that she shouldn’t talk about God in front of Yaeli on the one day of the week she was allowed to visit her family.
“On the visit days, when she came to my house, I was told not to talk about God,” the bereaved mother stated. “They told me if you do that, you’ll never see your daughter.”
In the end, Yaeli never completed her “transition” into a boy. In September of 2019, she knelt in front of an oncoming train, an apparent suicide.
What’s well known but rarely talked about in transgender circles, is that the gender dysphoria experienced by transgendered individuals is closely connected with depression. For reasons that are mainly political, that depression widely goes untreated and is replaced with hormone treatments and sex-change operations.
It’s also well known but little talked about that many children who experience gender dysphoria outgrow it by adulthood. Unfortunately, to say so out loud is considered “transphobic.”
