AUSTIN, TX- On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that child abuse investigations against parents of transgender children can move forward in the Lone Star State, striking down an injunction issued by a lower court that had banned the practice, the Wall Street Journal reports.
In February, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services started investigations into families where transgender adolescents had received so-called “gender-affirming” medical care. Those investigations came in response to an order from Gov. Greg Abbott in February defining such “care” as abuse. In March, a state judge ruled Abbott’s directive as unconstitutional and halted all such investigations statewide.
The Friday decision in Texas’s high court overturns the temporary injunction put in place by the Third Court of Appeals while the case was appealed. The court ruled the injunction could remain in place, but only for the family which filed the lawsuit as the case moves forward, however said it was overly broad otherwise.
The opinion ruled that Abbott alone doesn’t have authority to order DFPS to initiate investigations, and said the agency was not obligated to follow his order. “DFPS alone bears legal responsibility for its decisions,” the court wrote.
Texas Standard reported the court as writing:
We are directed to no source of law obligating DFPS to base its investigatory decisions on the Governor’s letter or the Attorney General’s Opinion. The Governor and Attorney General were certainly well within their right to state their legal and policy views on this topic, but DFPS was not compelled by law to follow them.”
The Journal reached out to DFPS for comment, however it wasn’t immediately returned. However Paul Castillo, senior counsel with Lambda Legal, who is representing the family that filed the lawsuit, declared Friday’s opinion a win.
He noted the opinion makes it clear that the investigation is harmful to his client, and the DFPS should not look to Abbott to make its decisions, the Wall Street Journal wrote.
“That the injunction remains in place as far as [our client] means that any other family subject to these types of investigations have the same strong merit to fight and DFPS will risk further liability,” Castillo said.
The case was remanded back to the lower courts which will have to answer the question of whether rights of families were violated by the Abbott-ordered investigations.
In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a non-binding opinion where he said some medical care for transgender children, including puberty-delaying medications, could cause physical and emotional harm to children. That opinion led Abbott to issue his order.
Conversely, medical groups such as the liberal American Academy of Pediatrics claim that gender dysphoria is a “serious medical condition” which they claim can result in depression and other harm, and argue that delaying puberty in some patients leads to better long-term outcomes.
The lawsuit came about after an employee of the Department of Family and Protective services was placed on leave and investigated after putting her 16-year-old transgender daughter under treatment from doctors and therapists.
The mother, who was identified in court documents as Jane Doe, testified in March that the investigation allegedly caused “extreme distress and anxiety for her daughter,” an honor roll student and caused her to cease wanting to attend school.
Meanwhile an attorney for the state said at the court hearing that prescribing medication to youth which are classified as a controlled substance, such as some hormones and ADHD medications, could be potentially abusive. Attorneys from the state added that nobody had yet been harmed by the investigations, the Wall Street Journal reported.
For more on the whole trans thing, we invite you to:
DIG DEEPER
FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, NJ – A stomach-turning case of child sexual exploitation out of New Jersey has concluded with four people receiving prison sentences.
Assistant Somerset County Prosecutor Brian Stack said the four, who were roommates who had formed a sadistic, depraved “family unit” that produced transgender pornography specializing in BDSM, fetish and taboo content, were incapable of redemption.
Stack said none of the defendants had taken responsibility for the harm they had caused an innocent child and said, simply:
“They’re bad people.”
Marina E. Volz, 30, formerly known as Matthew Volz before transitioning to becoming a woman, is the child victim’s father. The others were Ashley D. Romero, 26, formerly known as Adam D. Romero; Sean F. Allen, 51; and Dulcinea Gnecco, 19.
Volz and the others were arrested in 2019 after the New Jersey Department of Child Protection became aware that they were creating pornography in a home in which a child resided.
A search warrant was executed at the property on Coburn Lane after it was found the child had likely been exposed to sexually explicit material. Electronic items, including all cell phones and computers, were seized for forensic examination. Police also seized firearms, a high-capacity magazine and cocaine from the residence.
The child was removed from the home by the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in January 2019.
Somerset County Prosecutor Michael H. Robertson stated that during the examination and analysis of the electronic devices, several sexually explicit photos and videos of the 7-year old victim were located and criminal complaints were signed against the four residents of the home.
The four had run what was described as a “family-owned” transgender pornography production company, according to a report in Reduxx.
“You all got off lightly.”
During the trial, prosecutors described a “vortex of darkness” that the youngster had been subjected to upon being taken from her mother.
Transgender child rapist celebrated as hero by media, who either missed or ignored his criminal past
January 13, 2022
The following contains editorial content which is the opinion of the author.
—
KANSAS – The Post Millennial reports that a man who thinks he’s a woman is being held up as a hero by many in the liberal media for his complaints about the hardships so-called trans inmates face in American prisons. But the media ignore the reason he’s in prison in the first place — sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl.
Likewise, nobody affiliated with the prison which he now calls home back up his claims.
My local NPR posted this story, including some sobbing about "Rayne Bennett's" treatment in prison. Why were they there? Article didn't say, so I looked it up. Sexual assaulting a girl of fourteen. Yeah, I see why they left that out. https://t.co/mWgBk1Ep79
— Founder of the Pantsuit Coven (@Alias_Rosie) January 4, 2022
Rayne Bennett (we’ll call him by the name he was born with, Jacob Lawrence Pina) was convicted in 2016 of sexually abusing a child, and was placed on a sex offender registry for 25 years.
KSN reported that Pina held the victim against her will and raped her.
While he was awaiting trial, Pina started to claim that he was a she and adopted his pseudonym of Rayne Aloysius Constantine Rose Pina.”
Upon being sentenced, Pina was placed in a man’s prison, where he belonged.
Shortly after being incarcerated, Pina found a mental health professional in order to receive a gender dysphoria diagnosis in order to transfer to a women’s prison, where he would likely be safer since even among prisoners, pedophiles aren’t held in high regard.
However Pina’s claims went unanswered by prison staff who didn’t buy his claim that he was now a she.
As liberal media is wont to do, some sources began holding Pina up as some kind of martyr and was profiled by NPR (our tax dollars at work), the Topeka Capital-Journal, and the Leavenworth Times in stories highlighting the “hardships” faced by trans-identifying inmates in Kansas prisons.
Transgender inmates say they're being put in danger by the Kansas prison system. Many say they've been vulnerable to violence, and some have considered or attempted suicide.
Hear more on this morning's episode of Kansas City Today. 🎧 https://t.co/XCms6tKeQ7
— KCUR (@kcur) January 11, 2022
According to 4W, none of the publications spoke of the crime Pina was accused of committing, only printing “gushing” pieces about him while ignoring his victim.
Also, despite the fact that Pina has not been diagnosed for gender dysphoria, the media outlets all identify him by his preferred pronouns of she/her.
Basically, the liberal media outlets all let Pina go on a rant about how he’s been receiving poor treatment from Kansas correctional staff, and basically made the claim that merely because he decided to “identify” as a woman, that in and of itself should allow him to transfer into a female facility.
Pina claimed in a number of the pieces that he had allegedly filed multiple complaints against prison staff for misconduct, and included “misgendering” among his grievances. According to the Kansas Department of Corrections, they have no such copies of any complaints from Pina.
Pina also falsely claimed that Corizon Health, which at one time held Kansas’s prison medical care contract, told its staff not to diagnose inmates with alleged gender dysphoria. His statement was backed up by some former Corizon workers, however the company denies it.
Charles Seigel, a spokesman for Corizon said that it knows of 145 inmates with gender dysphoria inside Michigan prisons. In addition, he said the company has a process for people who wish to seek out another opinion if they feel they were diagnosed improperly. Seigel said:
“If we found someone was doing the opposite of our policy, we would certainly take some kinds of actions depending on what that was.”
Pina actually gave away the true basis for his claims in the piece written for the Topeka Capital-Journal:
“Every day is the day where I have to worry about: Is this person going to hurt me? Are they gonna kill me? [Prison] broke me. It destroyed a part of me. A good part of me.”
Clearly, Pina is using his gender crisis as a means to get out of the men’s prison where he is probably not held very highly within the prison hierarchy.
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