I’m the mother of an estranged, gender-confused minor child.
I haven’t seen her for years, and Oregon state law has allowed and enabled it. I’m far from the only one to whom it has happened, but here is a glimpse into the state machinery and how it has unfolded for so many of us.
First, the worst part about losing your child to this scandalous system is that it profits off them. The next worst part is defending your reputation to everyone involved. Then comes trying to explain what’s happening to someone — anyone — and watching their eyes glaze over like you’ve just claimed that the CIA is tracking you through your ceiling fan.
But this isn’t a conspiracy. This is real. It’s supposedly legal.
Oregon allows minors to be placed in host homes or foster programs, without parental consent, if they report feeling unsafe at home. Not abused. Not neglected. Just emotionally uncomfortable or unsupported. That’s all it takes.
How do kids even learn to say the right words? They talk to a 20-something-year-old “peer support” worker at one of these youth centers, someone with a deficient frontal cortex, and say, “My parents are so mean. They won’t call me the opposite sex. They make me do homework before I get my phone.” And that underdeveloped frontal cortex haver will respond with the following: “That’s not safe. That’s actually abusive.”
These peer support workers follow your kid on Instagram. They host weekly Twitch streams. Their bios on the organization’s website proudly share how they were once suicidal because their parents didn’t affirm them, framing their current job as some kind of rescue mission. These aren’t just stories. They’re seeds. And they get planted in your child’s mind long before you ever realize they’re gone.
It seems as though under ORS 419B.150 and ORS 419B.152, if a child tells a school counselor, DHS worker, youth center peer support, or police officer that they “feel unsafe” or say they might harm themselves if forced to return home, they can be placed into protective custody immediately. No court order. No hearing. No founded CPS case. And apparently, no requirement to notify the parent right away, or at all.
From what I’ve been able to gather, once state agents have (or seem to have) temporary custody, they become the ones who decide what “safety” means, what “affirming” looks like, and what kind of home your child should be placed in — even if that ends up cutting you out completely.
And these aren’t fringe groups. They are established, state-connected organizations, like QUEST – Oregon Community Programs, a foster care placement service specifically designed to serve LGBT youth, and Fostering Pride – Unicorn Solutions & Basic Rights Oregon, a DHS-partnered host home model for youth who identify as transgender or nonbinary.
These programs are marketed as safe havens. But for many families, they amount to locked doors. No information, no updates, no due process is granted to us. Just a child who disappears into a state-sanctioned system that has already predetermined that you are the problem.
If you’re wondering how a parent could go weeks, months, or even years without knowing where their child is, this is how it happens in the shadows. All it takes is your child saying you’re emotionally unsafe, or threatening suicide if they have to live with you. From that moment on, everything shifts.
CPS may never formally revoke your parental rights. They might have no legal reason to do so, but they also will not help you bring your child home and will not enforce a return. They won’t open a missing person report. They won’t even tell you where your child is.
Once your child is labeled an “unaccompanied youth,” they qualify for an entire system of services: food stamps, free medical insurance, cell phones, legal aid, clothing vouchers, housing assistance, and gender-affirming programs offering hormones, binders, voice training, therapy, surgeries, and more.
Your concern becomes “harassment.” Your grief becomes “stalking.” Your worry becomes “proof” that you’re unsafe.
In many cases, the police already know where your child is because they’ve spoken to her. But they’ll lie and tell you they don’t know. They’ll say a “program” is looking after her. They’ll refuse to file a report. And if they don’t start the process, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children won’t step in either.
I know this because I’ve lived it. And I’ve spoken to others who have too.
I spoke with a foster parent who works with one of these programs. She didn’t know the full legal backstory and thought she was helping a child in crisis. She wasn’t sure whether the teens placed with her had been removed or were just runaways. She didn’t ask. She may not have even been allowed to ask. But she accepted them, at $3,000 per month, per child.
And the accusations these teens made? Nearly identical to the ones angry, confused, trans-identified youth often make. They use the same language, the same story, like reading from a script.
And when these youth turn 18? They then become eligible for housing vouchers, government-funded apartments, and ongoing support. They’re locked into a pipeline of state care, social services, and identity-affirming clinics that continue to turn a profit long after the original “crisis.”
Media attention to our plight has been extremely scant. Lest anyone think I’m making this up because it sounds so crazy, journalist Abigail Shrier documented the very phenomenon I’m living through in a 2021 City-Journal investigative article called “When the State Comes for Your Kids,” wherein she recounted cases strikingly similar to mine and many other West Coast parents with whom I’ve spoken.
And here’s what no one wants to say out loud: This is a business model. This is a type of trafficking in a new form.
‘Transfliction’ (trans + affliction) and bureaucratic trafficking
I call this “transfliction,” a manufactured affliction of children, rebranded, medicalized, and monetized. It’s a system that creates a false sense of danger at home and then “rescues” the child into a profitable identity pipeline.
Government-sanctioned, diagnosis-driven removal of minors for institutional gain is what’s occurring. It is legalized abduction funded by grants, insurance billing, and identity politics.
Foster parents receive stipends. Therapists are paid per session. Programs receive grants and donations based on how many youth they serve. Doctors get paid to prescribe SSRIs, antipsychotics, and cross-sex hormones, sometimes after just one intake form. Each diagnosis is a billable code, and each prescription and procedure is another insurance claim. Each side effect opens the door to even more revenue. These youngsters become erased sons and daughters, reduced to nothing more than numbers in an income stream.
Trans-identified youth are especially profitable because they require long-term medical treatment, multiple providers, and interventions that often last for life. They are system-dependent, and the more kids who enter that system, the more people get paid.
It’s not about “safety.” It’s about sustainability, for the system, not the child, not the family.
And while the system thrives, parents are destroyed. We’re left with trauma. We face accusations we can’t fight. With reputations we can’t un-destroy. With systems that ignore us and friends who don’t know what to say.
Worst of all? When you finally do speak up, when you try to tell the truth, people look at you like you’re crazy, as though you just said the devil is sending messages through your microwave. Your so-called friends whisper about you with the soccer moms while their children come home from school every single day.
Some parents try to fight. If they have the money. If they’re not too shattered. Some go public. But most can’t.
Some of us are drowning in grief. Others are frozen in a state of psychological paralysis, not knowing what to do. Yet others of us are furious, ready to go to war, but we have jobs and other children. We’ve been turned into suspects. We’ve become paranoid community members, instead of parents.
And in trans sanctuary states like Oregon, there is no one coming to help us. There are no investigations, no media coverage, no pro bono legal support — nothing.
This is what it looks like to have your child taken, not because of abuse, but because your values don’t match what the state calls “affirming.” This is what it looks like when laws protect programs, not parents. When your child becomes a funding source — a bed filled, a grant secured, a statistic that pays.
And yes — this is all apparently legal. ORS 419B.150 and ORS 419B.152 permit it. The nonprofits and community programs implement it. And almost no one is willing to talk about it. Because maybe, just maybe, our children might come back to us.
* In order to protect the identity of the author and her family, we published this op-ed under a pseudonym.
Alyssa Johnson is the mother of a trans-identified teen in Oregon.
