(LifeSiteNews) — The parents of a gender-confused Los Angeles teenager who died by suicide are suing his school district over the gender “secrecy policy” that they say withheld from them vital information about their son’s ordeal that they could have acted upon to save his life.
Over the weekend, the New York Post covered the story of Dylan Parke, a troubled, potentially autistic student at Palisades Charter High School who was being treated for depression. During his sophomore year in 2019-2020, he told teachers he wished to be called “Aria” and referred to with female pronouns. School staff withheld the development from his parents Kathleen Mulligan and Andrew Parke, even when they caught wind themselves and his mother made inquiries about it, which staffers ignored.
“If I thought Dylan was really trans I would have a different mindset but I know my son better than anyone and I know he is struggling and I want what is best for him. He has so much potential and I worry about his mental health,” Mulligan wrote. The lawsuit says she relayed the school her “belief that Dylan was particularly vulnerable to social contagion related to gender identity, as his ‘trans identity’ appeared to provide him with a sense of belonging and validation from peers who were being celebrated for similar disclosures.”
Parke eventually killed himself in March 2024 at age 19.
California, one of the most far-left states in the Union, passed a law in 2024 signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom forbidding schools from sharing students’ “gender identity” information without their permission. It was struck down in last December by a federal district court.
In their lawsuit, which also names Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Alberto Caravlho as a defendant, Parke’s parents maintain that LAUSD “denied them the opportunity to participate in the care of their minor son,” treating Dylan’s “transition” “as an absolute directive and affirmed and reinforced it enthusiastically and with praise and support” as well as LGBT resource information, not only keeping his parents out of the loop but driving a wedge between them and their son, even as they ignored the parents’ informed perspective that their son was “easily influenced and preoccupied with how others perceived him.”
“In schools, parents must give permission for nearly everything, including receiving medicine, school trips … yet the secrecy policy at issue excluded parents from the incredibly consequential decision to transition their child,” said the family’s attorney, Aaron Siri. The school district is declining to comment on pending litigation.
“It is every parents’ nightmare,” the parents say. “There are no more birthdays to celebrate, there is an empty seat at the Thanksgiving table, [they] will never see Dylan graduate from college, have a family, or watch him reach his full potential.”
The tragedy echoes the story of Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old to whom “gender transitioning” was touted as a possible cure for her depression in high school, supported by a high school counselor who withheld what she was going through from her mother. The troubled girl killed herself in 2019 after trying to live as a man for three years.
In January, the U.S. Department of Education notified California that several of its schools had been found to be non-compliant with the federal Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act, putting their federal funding at risk unless they made changes such as permitting localities to adopt “pro-parental notification approaches.”
A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “reassignment” procedures fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners, individuals who attempted “transitioning” before regretting it and returning to life as their actual sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion in favor of “transitioning.”
