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Grandmother and adoptive mom Michele Blair gives an impassioned testimony during a Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee hearing January 31.Virginia House of Delegates/LifeSite/Screenshot

RICHMOND, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — A landmark piece of legislation known as “Sage’s Law” (HB 2432) that would make it illegal for schools to hide a child’s alleged “gender identity” from parents progressed in the Virginia House of Delegates Tuesday following gut-wrenching testimony from the adoptive mother of the teenage girl for whom the bill was named.

Sage, who was adopted by her grandmother Michele Blair following the death of her father, was horrifically sex-trafficked and withheld from the custody of her family by ideologically-motivated officials who claimed that her parents failed to affirm her “transgender” identity, according to the Tuesday testimony given by her grandmother.

“Good morning. I am Sage’s mother, better known as Nana,” Blair said as she began her January 31 testimony before a subcommittee of the Virginia House, going on to recount her granddaughter’s horrific experiences at the hands of professionals who she said put affirmation of the confused girl’s “transgender” identity ahead of her physical and emotional safety.

“Sage said she doesn’t know who she was back then. She wasn’t a boy. She just wanted to have friends,” Blair said. “But her school, the judge, the attorney, and the doctor were all blinded by their ideology. The consequences for Sage were unspeakable. Please don’t let ideology harm another child. Let parents do our jobs. We know our children best, and we love them a million times more.”

LifeSiteNews previously reported that Sage allegedly began identifying as a boy named Draco while at school, something officials kept secret from her family. In August, 2021 the teen ran away from home and became the victim of rape and sex-trafficking.

READ: Trans ideology left runaway gender-confused teen prey to sex traffickers and rapists: report

Authorities rescued her nine days later, but a Baltimore court ordered that she not be returned to her family because they had “misgendered” her. The order came in spite of the fact that the family wasn’t even aware Sage had wanted to be called by a boy’s name and pronouns until they arrived at the courthouse.

“She was locked in a room, drugged, gang raped, and brutalized by countless men. It was night. The FBI told us to pick her up in Maryland the next morning. We packed our cars with blankets and stuffed animals and arrived by 8 a.m. But we were told we couldn’t see her,” Blair recounted, in tears.

Instead of returning the girl to her family, the judge adhered to the requests of the pro-transgender Baltimore Assistant Public Defender, who reportedly insisted that the girl was being abused by her family because they allegedly wouldn’t affirm the girl’s new identity.

“They didn’t even tell Sage that we came for her. We finally entered the courtroom and Sage appears on a huge Zoom screen from a prison cell. She looks tiny and broken, and I cry out, ‘I love you, Sage.’ Sage responds. ‘I love you, too, Nana,’” Blair said, adding that the public defender “rebuke[d]” her and her husband, claiming that Sage “is a he, and his name is Draco, not Sage.”

READ: New ‘Dead Name’ documentary exposes the tragic, deadly consequences of transgenderism

Blair said her husband struggled with remembering the new pronouns he was supposed to use to refer to Sage, and was ultimately removed from the courtroom by the bailiff.

Following the hearing, Sage was then housed in a children’s home with males, where according to Blair she was “given street drugs” and “repeatedly assaulted.”

Sage later escaped the center, reappearing in Texas where she had reportedly been sex-trafficked again. 

Following her court-ordered institutionalization in a Virginia mental health facility, where officials again attempted to “affirm” her “trans” identity, Sage finally went home. 

“The therapist began pressuring her to have her healthy breasts removed,” Blair said. “Sage was too scared to protest, but she asked me to secretly buy her girls clothes because she wanted to be a girl but keep them in the car. It took a kind lawyer, Josh Hessler, to secure her discharge after almost a year.”

Home safe, Sage still struggles with “nightmares, panic attacks, rape-related medical issues” for which she’s undergoing “professional trauma care.” 

She no longer identifies as male.

In her comments Tuesday, Blair said Sage had been a “joyful, lively girl who made music and art” before hitting puberty and contending with the COVID response, at which time she began treatment for “depression and anxiety.”

When she entered high school, Sage told her adoptive mother that “all the girls there were by trans, lesbian, emo, and she wanted to wear boys clothes and be emo.”

Blair said she assumed that the desire was “just a phase,” and permitted Sage to do so. However, she said that at school Sage went well beyond dressing in boys’ clothes, telling staff “[s]he was now a boy named Draco with male pronouns.”

“Sage asked the school not to tell me and they did not tell me,” Blair said. “Even though I informed them of her mental health history and medication, if I had known, this would be a much different story.”

The girl’s adoptive mother said that the first trafficker to have exploited Sage “has already been convicted.” 

According to Blair, regardless of everything Sage has been through, there still “hope.” She said she tells Sage “she’s not broken, she’s just scarred.”

“And part of that hope is that in courageously sharing her story, others will be saved,” she said.

READ: Human trafficking arises when we treat people as a ‘commodity’ for our own pleasure: US bishop

“Sage’s Law” was introduced January 19 by Republican Rep. Dave LaRock. The bill would require that parents be notified if their child is using a “transgender” identity at school, and forbids school staff from “encouraging or coercing” any child into keeping their alleged gender identity a secret from their parents.

In addition, the bill clarifies “that in no event shall referring to and raising the child in a manner consistent with the child’s biological sex, including related mental health or medical decisions, be considered abuse or neglect.”

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