Daily Caller, Reduxx Inject Accusations of “Kidnapping” Into Tricky Child Welfare Case
A trans boy struggled with suicidal thoughts in an unaffirming family. Right-wing media wants you to be outraged about what happened next.
UPDATE: On January 31, a story on this case was published by the Montana Free Press, an independent non-profit news organization serving Montana. Reporter Mara Silvers verified the broad details of the story, none of which contradicted our story below. Silver’s reporting added additional context, including statements by Montana’s Republican governor, and corrected right-wing misinformation about youth medical transition.
Leo is a 14-year-old transgender boy with a history of suicidal ideation who is currently living in a group home in his home state of Montana. When he first entered treatment for his suicidal thoughts Leo’s father and stepmother, Todd and Krista, vehemently objected to medical staff using his chosen name and treating him as a transgender boy. Fueled by anti-trans paranoia, Todd and Krista’s relationship with Leo’s medical team seems to have grown increasingly combative, spiraling into a situation where they eventually lost custody of their son, something they have been widely quoted describing with the word “kidnapping.” This has been portrayed in right-wing media as government interference in Todd and Krista’s parenting. In some outlets it has been falsely portrayed as a case of a child being given gender-affirming treatments without the parents’ consent.
All public information about Leo’s story to date comes to us via Reduxx, a website dedicated to trans panic content. As a result of their ideological committments, Reduxx’s story by Editor-in-Chief Anna Slatz, makes some strange choices, chief among them to use a pseudonymous girl’s name, “Jennifer,” to protect Leo’s privacy, while reporting his real chosen name and his parents’ real last name, likely exposing his identity as a result. (Assigned considered choosing a new, fake boy’s name to refer to Leo, but decided this would confuse the story with negligible benefit to Leo himself. However, we have choosen not to include the family’s last name.)
Todd and Krista’s perspective on how they lost custody of Leo, as told to Reduxx, has been amplified by Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok Twitter account, as well as right-wing media outlets such as the Daily Caller, Gateway Pundit, Concerned Patriot, and the Publica. The Gateway Pundit’s story falsely claims that Leo was allowed to medically transition while in state custody, but this detail does not appear in the original Reduxx story, and appears to be a fabrication.
While Reduxx does not hew to best journalistic practices and thus cannot be fully relied on as a source, the outlines of the story seem reasonably straightforward and based partially on medical records Todd and Krista shared with Reduxx, which means they’re likely accurate in their broad strokes.
The story describes how Leo first expressed thoughts of suicide at school in August, after which a social worker visited the family’s home. Leo told the worker he’d ingested toilet bown cleaner and painkillers earlier that day in an attempt to kill himself and was then taken to the hospital by Todd and Krista, but no trace of the drugs were found in his system. However, his suicidal statements were serious enough that the family and emergency room staff agreed Leo needed 24-hour supervision and inpatient mental health care before returning home.
While waiting for an adolescent psychiatric bed, tensions between Todd and Krista and Leo’s treatment team began. They objected to hospital staff using Leo’s preferred nickname and pronouns, as well as to the routines of an adolescent psychiatric patient being temporarily warehoused in a non-psychiatric hospital bed (Leo was reportedly watching a lot of TV, eating junk food, chatting with trans friendly aides, and not doing his schoolwork).
Here’s Reduxx describing the parents’ non-gender related concerns during this portion of Leo’s hospital stay. Reduxx is using a pseudonym, Jennifer, to refer to the trans boy.
screenshot from Reduxx
As providers searched for an adolescent psychiatric bed (which are notoriously scarce), the parents became paranoid when a bed in neighboring Wyoming was floated as an option. They feared Wyoming would offer gender-affirming medical care to Leo without their consent. Outlets such as Reduxx and other right-wing sites have stoked a moral panic over transgender youth that may have contributed to these parents’ developing such ungrounded fears. When a bed opened up in Wyoming Todd and Krista attempted to insist that Leo wait for a bed to open up in a facility in Montana, where gender-affirming care for youth is banned. At this point the hospital and Child and Family Services insisted on transferring Leo to Wyoming against the parents’ consent. Leo was returned to Montana in September, after about a month later, for a longer stay in a residential treatment facility closer to home. According to Todd and Krista, court hearings with CFS began at this time to determine the next steps. The parents now say that Leo is likely to be released not to their custody but to that of his birth mother, who lives in Ontario, Canada and who they accuse of being unfit.
Some of the stories portray Leo as a victim, claiming he was forced or brainwashed into transitioning by medical personnel, but the Reduxx piece frames the story more as a manipulative and untrustworthy teen being helped by affirming medical providers and CFS to defy his parents’ will. Reading very slightly between the lines, the issue seems to be that the child is actively suicidal and CFS believe returning him to Todd and Krista would present a danger to his life.
This story represents a continuation of a wider trend in trans panic stories that portray child welfare systems as a threat to traditional parenting. Conservative personalities and opinion writers have made a habit of falsely claiming that the government of certain states are seeking to remove trans children from conservative parents merely because the parents are not affirming, but none of the stories have fit that narrative thus far. Instead, the stories have attempted to portray this as having happened in families where treating serious, life-threatening behavioral or mental-health issues wound up being complicated by parents’ ideological opposition to their child’s trans identity.
These sorts of difficult stories often have no simple answers, and child welfare systems that take a punitive and paternalistic approach to families are not necessarily the good guys here. However, the ongoing trans panic seems likely to increase the tensions between child welfare systems and traditional parents, stoking paranoia and suspicion among parents afraid that medical treatments will be given to their children against their will. This in turn could lead parents under the sway of right-wing media to escalate situations with child welfare authorities rather than finding compromises that can allow them to bring their children home.