A mother has filed a legal case against a California school district claiming teachers secretly persuaded her then-11-year-old daughter to change her gender identity and name.
Jessica Konen said two middle school teachers at Spreckels Union School District who ran an Equality Club — later renamed to UBU (You Be You) — suggested to her daughter that she was bisexual in 6th grade, and then subsequently manipulated her into believing that she was transgender.
Spreckels Union School District was responsible for “extreme and outrageous conduct” that placed the girl on a path toward medical transition and incited conflict between the mother and her child, according to the claim filed Wednesday by conservative group The Center for American Liberty (CAL).
Konen had not known her daughter had begun identifying as a boy and using a male name until she was called to a meeting at the Buena Vista Middle School principal’s office in December 2019. At the time, her daughter was in 7th grade.
Konen was also not informed of the reason for the meeting until her daughter entered the room and her teacher, Lori Caldeira, broke the news.
“I literally was caught off guard. I was blindsided,” Konen said. “I didn’t even know what to feel like because I didn’t even know where it came from.”
Konen said she began to cry, and that her daughter was also taken by surprise. The girl had notified teachers that she wanted to tell her mother about her decision, but had not been made aware of the meeting until she was called to attend.
Konen said her daughter began returning to her “old self” when schools implemented remote learning during March 2020, and now uses her given name.
However, Konen had not questioned how her daughter was being influenced by staff and teachers until Abigail Shrier published the contents of a leaked recording of a California Teachers Association conference.
In the recording, her daughter’s teacher Lori Caldeira and another teacher named Kelly Baraki were discussing their tactics for keeping UBU meetings private and described how they “stalked” students to recruit.
“When we were doing our virtual learning — we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing school work,” Baraki said. “One of them was googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”
After their comments were made public, Caldeira told the San Francisco Chronicle the quotes were misrepresented and that the “stalking” comment was intended as a joke.
In the lawsuit, the two teachers were accused of keeping club UBU, along with its policies and roster, hidden from parents.
“Ms. Caldiera and Ms. Baraki: (1) instructed students that they should not tell their parents about their new LGBT+ identities and expression; (2) failed to keep Equality Club rosters or records so that parents could not discover their children’s participation in the club or new LGBT+ identities through a review of school records; and (3) held Equality Club meetings during lunch—as opposed to after school—so that students, who were too young to drive, could better hide their participation in the club and their new LGBT+ identities and expression from their parents,” claims the lawsuit.
The legal claim alleges that the school put a “Parental Secrecy Policy” into place. According to the document, “Under the Parental Secrecy Policy, Buena Vista teachers and staff would keep secret from parents that their children had articulated confusion about their gender identity, evinced a desire to change their gender identity, or assumed or expressed a new gender identity, unless the student expressly authorized the parents to be informed.”
The suit also alleges deliberate infliction of emotional distress against the student, known only as A.G, and the mother:
“Respondents’ acts have driven a wedge between Ms. Konen and her daughter, sending the message to A.G. that her mother cannot be trusted and does not support her. By cutting Ms. Konen out of the decision-making process for A.G. on matters relating to her gender expression and identity, Ms. Konen and A.G. have both suffered and are continuing to suffer severe emotional distress, mental anguish, psychological damage, and damage to their family dynamic of such a substantial or enduring quality that no reasonable person in a civilized society should be expected to endure it and reasonable people would be unable adequately to cope with it.”
Teachers Caldeira and Baraki were placed on administrative leave in November. The school district has hired a professional law firm to investigate, which is ongoing, and the UBU club has been suspended.
In December of 2021, Konen went viral after a video recording of her tearing into the school board at a district meeting was published on the internet.
In the recording, Konen is audibly upset, and asserts that her daughter almost “lost her life” because of the emotional manipulation of the teachers and the damage it did to her self-perception.
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