Maine Social Worker May or May Not Have Provided Binder to Teen

Amber Lavigne of Damariscotta, ME believes a social worker provided a binder to her child. In the right wing press her unconfirmed allegations have been repeated as fact.

by Evan Urquhart

It’s not entirely clear what happened in Damariscotta, ME before Amber Lavigne pulled her 13-year-old out of Great Salt Bay Community School and began homeschooling him*. In video of Lavigne addressing the Great Salt Bay school board, she says she discovered that her son had a chest binder on December 2, 2022. Lavigne believes a social worker who her son was seeing for counseling, Samuel Roy, provided him with the binder in October, and that child then hid the garment from his family for months. However, this and other details about the situation are all unconfirmed. The earliest coverage of Lavigne’s allegations showed up in December on the Maine Wire, a right wing website, after the school board meeting on Wednesday, December 14.

According to their public statements, school officials have been unable to comment publicly on the details of this case because it involves confidential communications between the young man and his school counselor. Indirectly, they have suggested on multuple occasions that the story Lavigne is telling may not be true.

The story has seen wide coverage in the right wing press, including yesterday in the New York Post. These outlets have largely presented Lavigne’s allegations as fact. The Maine mom has also been interviewed for some of these stories, including one for the National Review where she confirmed that her son has continued to persistently identify as a transgender boy while being homeschooled.

screenshot from the National Review

Great Salt Bay Community School has recieved bomb threats over the incident, twice forcing the school to close according to the Lincoln County News. In response to one of these incidents the board issued a statement referring to a “false narrative” which resulted in the threats.

One thing that is clear is that the right wing press is once again inflaming passions over an unverified story, pushing the most inflammatory version of events, and continuing to do so in the wake of bomb threats targeting children at a public school. That this insane state of affairs has become commonplace speaks to the state of the rhetoric over trans rights in America today.

*While Assigned typically uses non-gendered nouns and they/them pronouns to refer to subjects of news stories whose gender is unclear or disputed, in this case the child’s mother has said her son continues to identify as a boy at home. We are therefore using male nouns and he/him pronouns, as it seems unambiguous that is what the child himself continues to prefer.