VA: The Difficult Story of Sage’s Law

A harrowing story of a teenager who was allegedly a victim of sex-trafficking is being used to support a law which would force schools in Virginia to inform parents if their child identifies as transgender.

by Evan Urquhart

Michele Blair scoffs when she mentions LGBTQ+ youth. “At Appomattox High School… all the kids were bi and trans and emo and gay, and, and, and goth,” she says, dramatically rolling her eyes heavenward, during a press conference to introduce Sage’s Law, a proposed piece of legislation named after Blair’s grandchild. This air of no-nonsense incredulity returns many times when Blair references the period of time her grandchild (who Blair legally adopted at the age of two), identified as a trans boy. That child, who according to Blair has returned to using she/her pronouns and birth name, is the Sage who is referenced in Sage’s Law.

The proposed legislation itself is relatively straightforward. It would force schools in Virginia to immediately contact parents as soon as a child indicates they might be transgender. It also clarifies that a parent failing to affirm a trans child’s identity cannot, on its own, be considered child abuse. (As a reminder, Assigned has long agreed with the latter, and urged against separating children from their families in cases where the parents refuse to affirm a child’s trans identity.) However, the way that one story, concerning a family struggling to recover from numerous traumas, is being used to support the law is far more complex.

Some aspects of the story are clear. Blair is the paternal grandmother and adopted parent of Sage, a female-assigned youth. Sage began struggling with mental health issues in middle school, at or near the onset of puberty. The child started 9th grade at Appomattox High School in 2021, but by late August had run away from home. During the approximately two weeks when Sage attended Appomattox the 14-year-old came out as a trans boy at school, and went by the name Draco.

The rest is more difficult to pin down. Thus far the story has only seen coverage in the right wing press, which our readers will know is not known for accuracy, ethics, or careful reporting practice. (Here’s the story as covered by the Daily Wire and the Federalist.)

Here’s how the child’s grandmother describes events: Blair claims her child (who went by Draco and used he/him pronouns throughout this period), was sex trafficked to Maryland and sexually assaulted multiple times by adult men, before being rescued by the FBI 9 days after having run away. The child then became the center of a difficult and protracted child welfare case in Maryland, which eventually resulted in no finding of abuse on the part of the grandparents. The child was supposed to be moved to a treatment center in Virginia appropriate for a trans boy, but before this could happen the child ran away again, and was again allegedly sex-trafficked, this time winding up in Texas. When the child was found, authorities in Texas returned the child to the treatment center in Virginia. While in treatment in Virginia, Blair says, the child began asking for girls’ clothing and re-identifying as a girl. Blair was eventually able to sign the child out against medical advice, with the help of conservative lawyers who had, by this point, become involved in the case.

You can watch Blair telling the full story on YouTube, in a press conference for the Family Foundation, a conservative Christian organization in Virginia that advocates for “policies based on Biblical principles.”

Regardless of the details, which again have yet to be verified by a legitimate news outlet, it seems clear that both Sage and her grandmother were deeply traumatized. Blair seems to believe that, if the high school had only informed her that Sage was presenting as a boy, all of the trauma she and Sage went through during that period could have been avoided. Without more information or mainstream reporting it’s difficult to evaluate or even fully understand the reasons for that belief. Assigned did make attempts to contact individuals closer to the story, but considering the trauma this family has been through and the sensitivity of the topic, we were not surprised that our efforts did not result in any new information. News reports and social media posts substantiate the child having gone missing twice.

What should we make of Sage’s Law? As mentioned above, the provision to clarify that misgendering or failing to affirm a child’s gender identity on its own should not be considered child abuse is perfectly fine. It’s probably unnecessary, as Virginia has never removed children from their parents for that reason, but it’s something we should all agree should never happen. The child welfare system is brutal and traumatizing, and even very imperfect families are better for children than group homes or foster care.

However, the requirement that schools immediately notify parents if a child says they’re trans is a very bad idea, as we’ve written more than once. You don’t even have to take our word for it! The very trans-skeptical New York Times Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg also agrees.

In this specific case, it’s impossible to know whether or not Michele Blair learning her child was going by the name Draco at school, during the very brief window when this was happening, would have protected Sage or her family from harm. Certainly the specific chain of events that ended with Sage running away would have happened differently if her grandmother hadn’t just found out Sage went by Draco at school earlier that same day, but who knows if the child would still have run away or not. It’s common for people coping with trauma to fixate on some small detail that, if it had happened differently, would have changed the outcome of events. Sage’s grandmother’s belief that, if she’d only known Sage was using a different name at school, all the family’s problems would have been avoided may be best understood through that lens.

On the other hand, there is likely some truth in the idea that Sage was made more vulnerable to predators by identifying as trans online. Trans youth are vulnerable, though the one thing that is believed to improve their outcomes is having affirming parents at home. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that forcibly outing children to conservative parents will improve their safety. It’s easy to imagine many scenarios where the opposite could be true. For example, a child whose parents grew angry and forbade them from identifying as trans at school might suddenly become far more vulnerable to online predators in the wake of such a disclosure. The LGBTQ+ community has innumerable stories where children run away or are kicked out by their parents and then come to terrible harm, and the social science data has numerous results supporting the idea that unsupportive families place LGBTQ+ youth at higher risk.

The use of Sage’s story to support the forced outing of children to unsupportive conservative parents is unfortunate. It’s not obvious that the proposed law would even have helped Sage, but it seems certain that it would hurt other vulnerable children, ironically putting them more at risk for the exact types of harm that befell Sage. Luckily, it seems to have little or no chance of passing the Virginia legislature at this time.