LEHIGH VALLEY, Pennsylvania (LifeSiteNews) — A Pennsylvania middle school reportedly told teachers to hide a student’s “gender identity” from parents, according to an email obtained by The Daily Caller.
The October 7, 2021, email, released in an article on Tuesday, “instructed educators to not inform a student’s parents about their child’s perceived gender identity,” the news outlet reported. The email went to employees of Southern Lehigh School District’s Intermediate School.
“If a student shares with you that they are either questioning their gender identity or would prefer you to call them a name or pronoun that does not appear to match their biological sex, you should do this,” the email reads.
“If a student shares with you that they are homosexual, transgender, bisexual, or questioning, they are doing this in confidence, just as much as they would with our guidance staff,” the email states. “This is not something you should report to parents, and definitely something you should share with our guidance staff.”
The memo also instructs staff to coordinate with students on how to hide “gender identity” from parents. “A good question to ask the student before you call is ‘What name, or how would you like me to refer to you when I call home,'” the email stated.
“The idea that a principal is requiring teachers to take direction from students as young as nine years old on how to communicate with parents is patently absurd,” a parent anonymously told The Daily Caller. “This is a ridiculous abdication of responsibility.”
Isolating children from parents and discussing sexual orientation and activity is a classic red flag for grooming, according to Professor Charol Shakeshaft, who has extensively studied and written on this topic.
“Grooming is rarely perceived as a violent act. Instead, it consists of actions that bond the target to the offender such as time spent together, secrets, gifts, special attention,” the paper states. “The process presents the offender to the child as kind, gentle, understanding, caring, generous, charming, and accessible. A goal of the offender is to be desirable, needed, and wanted by the child.”
Teachers will often abuse the child on school grounds, the researchers wrote.
“Most grooming and sexual misconduct toward students by adults occurs right in the school: in empty classrooms, in hallways, in offices,” the research team wrote. “Sometimes the abuse is played out in front of other students.”