After a fight that lasted over a year, a judge has ruled that a 17-year-old transgender teen has the right to pursue hormone therapy, and has placed him in the care of his maternal grandparents, rather than with his parents, who oppose his transition.
Sylvia Hendon, a visiting Juvenile Court judge, issued a ruling Friday granting legal custody to the teen’s grandparents, who according to a prosecutor "accept their grandson for who he is.”
Hendon also called on state lawmakers to craft legislation that would give the juvenile courts a framework to evaluate a juvenile’s right to consent to gender therapy.
The student, who was assigned female at birth (AFAB), and who is not being named beyond the initials “JNS,” first asserted gender dysphoria in 2016, and landed on the radar of county officials early last year.
The Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services first sought custody of the teen in early 2017 after he emailed a crisis hotline and said one of his parents had told him to kill himself and that he could only receive Christian-based therapy, a complaint filed by the agency in Juvenile Court said. Within a few days of the complaint being filed, the parents agreed he should continue living with his grandparents and receiving therapy at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
The teen told authorities his parents once forced him to sit in a room and listen to Bible scriptures for six hours and refused to allow him to adopt a male appearance, the county said. His parents denied the allegations.
While conversion therapy is dangerous, fake science, it’s also worth noting that in Cincinnati, it’s also illegal. In 2015, the ‘Nati became the second U.S. city to ban conversion therapy after the 2014 suicide of Leelah Alcorn.
JNS’s parents, through their lawyer, did agree that the child continuing to live with his grandparents was the best path forward, and were providing for his financial support, but disputed that he was capable of making decisions about gender for himself.
In her written closing argument, their attorney, Karen Brinkman...acknowledged that if the parents are granted custody, they want the child to continue to live with the maternal grandparents, “not in an effort to avoid parenting their child, but because they believe that the current living arrangement is in (the teen’s) best interest.”
Citing the teen’s mental state, Brinkman said, “it does not appear that this child is even close to being able to make such a life-altering decision at this time. [The] Parents believe custody of the child should be restored to them, so they can make the medical decisions they believe are in their child’s best interest until [the child] turns 18 years of age.”
The team for JNS tells a different story.
“Father testified that any kind of transition at all would go against his core beliefs and allowing the child to transition would be akin to him taking his heart out of his chest and placing it on the table,” according to a transcript of Donald Clancy’s (of the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office) closing argument.
Clancy said that although the father testified he “fully accepts” his child, he also testified that having the teen come home would “warp” his siblings’ perception of reality.
In November 2016, the teen reported that his father told him to kill himself, because he was “going to hell anyway,” according to a transcript of the closing arguments.
The complaint further states that an investigation found that the parents temporarily stopped their child’s mental health counseling.
The grandparents’ attorney added more to that picture:
"The child has stated, 'I don't want to go back home,'” the grandparents' attorney, Jeffrey Cutcher, said. "'When I was home, dad chased me around the house. When I was home, I lived in terror in that home.'"
Gender dysphoria, sadly, is highly stigmatized in our current climate; when left unacknowledged and untreated, it can end lives, as GD exacerbates feelings of anxiety and depression. Over 40 percent of transgender people report attempting suicide at some point in their lives. Repeat: 2 out of 5 trans people have tried to end their lives.
Trans youth are also disproportionately more likely to suffer from eating disorders. Transgender people also are frequent targets of violence, including sexual assault in particular, and far too many murders, which are on the rise since the 2016 election made hate speech presidential policy. And transgender folks and their rights are a constant target of conservatives and those who consider themselves liberals alike, from the military ban to bathrooms, and EVERYTHING in between.
Religious leaders condemn them freely. Unfortunately, responses like those of JNS’s parents are common, and can only escalate the pain of what’s already a challenging time in the trans person’s life.
New studies indicate that the trans population is larger than anyone estimated, and young people are refusing to remain in the closet.
The earlier numbers of transgender population "have been underestimated by orders of magnitude," said Dr. Daniel Shumer, who specializes in transgender medicine at the University of Michigan, in an opinion article that accompanied the study in Pediatrics. "Youth are rejecting this binary thinking and are asking adults to keep up."
By respecting trans folks, by not misgendering them, by not calling them by their deadname, by trusting that they know their own bodies better than we do, we can help change those numbers, and change those norms. Living authentic lives leads to brighter futures for transgender folks, and vast improvements in mental health.
As for JNS’s plans for the future, he’s hoping for college.
"What we want to in the coming months around May is plan for a high school graduation, throughout the summer and fall plan for an entrance into college," (the grandparents' attorney, Jeffrey Cutcher) said. "We don't want to be planning a funeral."
Read the full decision here.