"A Ukrainian family in California says Child Welfare removed their teenage daughter from their home and placed them on the child abuse registry after they declined to “affirm” her transgender identity. Speaking to Reduxx under the condition of anonymity, the parents say the removal followed a report filed by their daughter’s psychiatrist without their knowledge.
The mother, who will be referred to as Ellie, told Reduxx that a social worker from Shasta County Child Welfare Services arrived at the family’s home on June 3, 2024, without prior notice. According to Ellie, the worker accused the parents of emotional abuse and demanded access to their daughter, who will be referred to as Maya, without presenting a warrant or court order.
“She just kept saying, ‘You’re emotionally abusing your child,’” Ellie said. “But she had nothing in her hands. No paperwork. Nothing.”
The removal was a dramatic climax following years of instability that Ellie says began in early childhood. After the family immigrated to the United States in 2007, Maya began experiencing anxiety, anger issues, attention difficulties, and emotional dysregulation. Her mental health concerns, which once resulted in a temporary placement in a psychiatric facility, were made worse by the persistent bullying she experienced at school starting in first and second grade. She said the bullying came not only from other students but also from indifferent teachers, and that repeated complaints to school administrators were dismissed.
In an effort to protect their child, the family relocated multiple times, hoping to improve their daughter’s environment...
Maya became increasingly preoccupied with psychology and mental health. She began researching diagnoses, requesting testing for ADHD, and asking about psychiatric medications. Ellie believes it was her daughter’s attempt to better understand her difficulties at school.
“She was looking for an explanation,” Ellie said. “Perhaps something that would explain why she felt the way she did, why she was different, and why she had been bullied or difficulties making friends.”
In January of 2022, Maya suffered a head injury while being dropped off at school after another vehicle backed into her as she exited the car. Two months later, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder during a phone-based evaluation conducted by a psychologist after a single remote appointment. According to Ellie, the diagnosis was based largely on questionnaires with no in-person assessment.
Throughout that year, Ellie said Maya continued to pursue additional diagnoses and medications, often requesting specific prescriptions she had researched herself. Maya also began making gradual changes to her appearance. She cut her long hair shorter, shifted to androgynous clothing, and asked to be called by a unisex name. Ellie said she and her husband accommodated these changes in order to reduce conflict and support their daughter.
“We don’t speak English at home, and our native tongue is a very gendered language. But we even changed how we referred to her to try and keep her happy,” Ellie said. “We tried to be careful. I even used this new name in public for her.”
At the end of that year, the family visited Mercy Medical Center for a routine check-up that would change their fate forever. While speaking with the doctor, Maya requested a referral to see a psychiatrist. Believing she was just seeking more counseling for her difficulties at school, Ellie was initially supportive.
The girl was referred to Dr. Michelle Sager, who she began to see in early 2023. Dr. Sager worked through both Mercy Medical Center and a clinic called the Children’s Legacy Center for Resilience, a mental health facility in Redding described to the parents as being “trauma-focused.”...
Maya told her parents that she had joined an LGBTQ Discord server where she felt accepted.
“I did not suspect anything. I wanted her to be happy so badly. It had been so long since she was happy. So when I would walk by her bedroom and hear her laughing and playing games with her online friends, I was so happy for her. I thought maybe she had finally found her friends and we could have some peace,” Ellie recalls.
But the peace did not last long.
In April of 2023, Ellie says that Maya began making chilling comments during casual conversations.
“One day, she said ‘mama, did you know that in California there are laws that if you don’t affirm a trans child they can come and take the child from you?’ I instantly felt frozen,” Ellie says. “I replied ‘no, honey, I didn’t know that.’ And then she said, ‘well, I stand right with you guys right now.’ But it was like a black cloud was hovering over our heads from that moment. A cold feeling.”
Ellie says she believes Maya got this information from the LGBTQ Discord server where her daughter began spending so much of her time. Throughout the remainder of the year, Maya became increasingly isolated from her family, preferring to be in her bedroom speaking with her online friends.
By early 2024, the situation escalated further. Maya, then 14, began demanding hormone replacement therapy and spoke explicitly about wanting a hysterectomy. Her parents refused, asking her to wait until she was 18 before making serious medical decisions.
After this refusal, Ellie said Maya became entirely unmanageable. She stopped eating with the family, and accused her parents of abuse.
Desperate for help, Ellie repeatedly contacted Dr. Sager, describing the family as being in crisis and asking for family therapy.
“She said, ‘it sounds like you guys need a good family therapist. I’m taking it upon myself to find you a good family therapist.’ And I trusted her,” Ellie recalls. “I trusted her to help us. I thought she was on our side.”
Unbeknownst to Ellie, Dr. Sager was already in the process of filing a report with county child welfare services to have Maya removed from their custody.
On June 1, the family experienced an explosive argument. Maya demanded to be placed into foster care, telling her parents she would have an easier time accessing hormones and surgeries if she were in state custody.
Two days later, a social worker arrived at the family’s residence...
The woman introduced herself as being from Shasta County’s Department of Health and Human Services, and stated that a complaint of child emotional abuse had been filed against the family.
“She had no paperwork, no badge, no documents. Nothing. She just kept saying we had emotionally abused our child, and demanded we produce her immediately. I was so confused, I kept asking her ‘who did this?’ and she wouldn’t answer. She just kept asking to see my daughter,” Ellie said, noting that the blow was so sudden that she had an immediate physical reaction and became ill. Her husband then stepped in to speak with the case worker...
As the case worker left the house, Ellie says her daughter ran out behind her.
“She was barefoot. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. And I heard the case worker tell her ‘I can’t legally drive you, so just follow behind the car.’ She was going to let my child run behind her car, barefoot. I tried to throw her some flip-flops, at the very least. I was still worried about her feet and begged her to put the flip-flops on.”
Shortly after, eight police officers arrived to assist with the removal.
“My daughter had left everything in her room. All of her stuff. Her laptop, even. She had taken nothing with her, so focused on running away with the case worker,” Ellie says.
Because Maya had left her computer behind and unlocked, Ellie says she noticed the final thing she had been doing was chatting with one of her Discord friends.
“I could see the Discord chat up. She had been communicating with another user up until the moment she left,” Ellie recalls, adding that she saw chats where this other user had advised her daughter on how to successfully be removed from her family’s custody. According to Ellie, the messages contained instructions on how to accuse her parents of emotional abuse, what terminology to use with authorities, and how to ensure removal from the home.
“She was being instructed on how to better file emotional abuse claims. How to be removed from the home. How to ‘dig a grave for your parents.’ Me and my husband were so emotional seeing that. I completely broke down. I said to the officers, ‘ok, fine, she wants to go this badly – take her. Take her away.’ I will regret those words forever.”
From that moment, Ellie says her family was thrust into months of “hell.”
Constant hearings never resulted in any indication Maya would be returned to them, and, as the family finally got the chance to access reports and more information, they learned their cultural background had been cited by the state as being “in conflict” with the child’s gender identity.
Maya also routinely used self-harm as leverage, telling case workers she would harm herself if she was sent back to her parents. She has expressed concerns she would be isolated from her online friends, and has cited her family’s “transphobia” as a reason to stay in state care.
Ellie notes that she never had particularly strong opinions on gender ideology prior to her daughter being removed from her custody, but that she simply wanted Maya to wait until adulthood before making any irreversible medical decisions.
Following the custody battle, however, she began to research more into the subject and found community in a Facebook group of parents who had experienced similar familial upheavals as a result of a transgender-identifying child.
As a result of taking to social media to appeal for assistance in her case, Maya has told her case workers that her parents are “[spreading] so much hate about the LGBTQ+ and transgender community.”
Ellie also says that many of the claims cited by Child Protective Services were total fabrications or highly misrepresented.
One of the allegations she cites as an example is that CPS wrote that Maya had been forced to live in a “shed” by her family. But the building humorously referred to as the “shed” by the family is in fact a fully-finished suite on their 2.6 acre property. Ellie shared photos of the “shed” with Reduxx to evidence her statements.
“It has everything. Bedrooms, bathrooms, heating, Wi-Fi. It is not some dirty place. It is like a whole second house,” Ellie clarifies, adding that they had openly discussed using this separate property as a voluntary conflict resolution measure with Dr. Sager, believing that giving Maya some privacy and distance would help her de-escalate when she became volatile.
Maya has also reportedly told caseworkers that she was physically abused by her family, an allegation her mother strongly denies. Court records and medical reports reviewed by Reduxx contain no evidence supporting claims of physical abuse. A 2024 forensic psychiatric evaluation prepared for the court further indicates that Maya fabricated the sole incident in which she alleged her father was physically violent and could not recall any other instances in which her parents caused her physical harm.
That psychiatric evaluation, which can not be shared publicly due to the amount of sensitive medical information included, also confirms that Maya received “high levels of support and validation from the LGBT online communities in which she participated” after beginning to identify as transgender, and that her desire to leave her familial home only emerged after her otherwise supportive parents refused to allow her to medically transition...
A 2025 Detention Report also claimed that Maya’s family was “unwilling” to have her in the home, something Ellie dismisses as “a ridiculous lie” considering the extensive efforts and costs they have incurred to reunite their family. Part of reasoning cited by the report is the family’s unwillingness to sign off on a transgender-based case plan they would be required to comply with.
Shockingly, Ellie says that she and her husband have been entered into the California Child Abuse Central Index (CACI). This registry contains the names of individuals whom county Child Protective Services agencies have identified as suspected child abusers. Crucially, being listed on CACI does not require a criminal charge, arrest, or conviction. A person can be entered into the database solely based on a child welfare investigation and report. The abuse does not have to be physical, and “emotional abuse” is included as a justification for placement on the registry.
Being listed on CACI can have life-altering consequences, even without criminal charges, as those on the registry are generally barred from working with children and can fail routine vulnerable sector checks.
Ellie says this has impacted her ability to work as a teacher, and fears that it may impact her husband if he is ever required to produce a background check for his job.
“We are now registered child abusers and we have been unable to file a grievance against this. I have no idea how long it lasts, or if it can ever be removed at all,” Ellie says.
Since 2024, the family has also been gradually removed from any decision making authority with respect to their daughter’s care or education. Her school began refusing to allow them to have access to her records so they could review them, and medical decisions were assumed by Maya’s foster parents.
Ellie says they only became aware that their daughter was being prescribed medication after it was billed to their insurance – demonstrating that their daughter was taking the antidepressant Pristiq and had also been prescribed birth control pills. Ellie has expressed concern about this, noting that her daughter had not been sexually active prior to entering state care and that her daughter was being housed in the same room as a teenage boy because she identified as “male.”
Faced with conflicting messaging and urgent concerns about their daughter’s safety, the family filed a federal lawsuit in December of 2025.
According to documents from the case, on August 29, 2025, the judge preceding over the custody hearings had noted that Ellie and her husband had provided Maya with exceptional care, and that “no evidence suggests that the parents intentionally harmed the child.” Yet despite this, Maya remains in the custody of the state and Ellie and her husband are still classified as “child abusers” in the state’s registry...
Ellie’s story closely mirrors that of the Kolstad family in Montana, who lost custody of their teenage daughter in 2023 after opposing medical gender transition. In that case, the parents were accused of emotional abuse after refusing to consent to testosterone and puberty blockers, following their young daughter’s declaration of a transgender identity.
The Kolstads’ daughter was removed after the family sought help from clinicians, only to find those interactions later used as the basis for state intervention. Court records showed that the parents’ refusal to affirm a transgender identity was framed as psychological harm, despite testimony that they had always met their daughter’s needs. The parents were later barred from contact with their child under conditions tied to gender “affirmation.”"
Weird. The "fact checkers" claimed you wouldn't lose custody for not supporting your child's gender transition.
