In May of 2021, Wellington, Colorado art and homeroom teacher Jenna Riep invited a 12-year-old girl who was new to the school to attend an afterschool art club. The girl asked for and was given permission to attend the club from her mother. But the artful dodger Jenna Riep had misrepresented the afterschool club meeting. In other words, Riep had lied to the student. It was not an afterschool art club, and the meeting had nothing to do with art. It was a meeting of the school’s “Genders and Sexuality Alliance” (GSA) club, and the guest speaker was lesbian Kimberly Chambers, who identifies as an “educator, activist, and queer woman.”

Though the wildly inappropriate incident at Wellington Middle School happened a year ago, it has just become a national story in the past two weeks. Consequently, troubling details continue to emerge illuminating the ignorance and arrogance of leftists who are not only ideologically grooming other people’s children but also trying to hide their grooming from parents.

Erin Lee, the courageous mother of the student who was lied to by her trusted homeroom teacher, shares that queer activist Chambers told students the following (comments in red are mine):

• If a child is not 100% comfortable with her body, she’s “transgender.” (FALSE)

• If parents are not “safe,” it’s okay for children to lie to them in order to attend these club meetings. (FALSE)

• Whatever is discussed in the club must not be shared outside the club meetings, not even with parents. (UNETHICAL and INAPPROPRIATE)

• Heterosexuality and monogamy are not normal. (FALSE and INAPPROPRIATE)

• Chambers told students that she is “safe” and gave them “her personal contact information, and encouraged them to contact her on the social media platforms Discord and What’s App.” (UNETHICAL and INAPPROPRIATE)

• Chambers led students in the “Genderbread person activity,” which asks students who they are “physically attracted to: men, women, or other gender/s.” (CREEPY)

• Chambers told students about a Colorado law that “allows a minor 12 years of age or older to seek and obtain psychotherapy services … without the consent of the minor’s parent or guardian.” (INAPPROPRIATE)

Imagine if a man on a park bench invited a 12-year-old girl to an art club that turned out not to be an art club in which he asked her if she is physically attracted to men or women, told her that her parents weren’t safe but he is, told her not to tell anyone what he had said, and gave her information on how she could secretly contact him. How is what Riep and Chambers did less offensive? Why should anyone presume or trust that public school teachers or unknown speakers are safe?

Lee contacted Chambers who runs an “LGBTQ” activist organization geared toward minors called SPLASH. Chambers confirmed the content of her presentation, and then the busybody/buttinsky Chambers flew to her computer to send an email to Riep, school counselor Katie Delahunt (who uses the pronouns she/her), and “Charlie,” warning them to watch out for unsafe parent Erin Lee:

Tread lightly because this parent has HUGE potential to coming in to understanding or rejecting their child. … [C]an you politely remind their student that the room is a safe space and that she should not share the names of her friends in attendance? I’ll reply to the email with you all bcc’d. … Any conversation with this parent should have the impression in our minds as “evidence”, verbiage is everything.

“Evidence”? Evidence of what? The crime of wrongthink? Leftists who claim to love diversity are always on the prowl for anyone who thinks differently than they do.

Please note the false dichotomy implied in Chambers’ statement: Either parents “understand” their gender-confused children or they reject them. And by “understand,” Chambers means affirm and celebrate their “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices.

But there is a third possibility. Parents may understand their child, accept and love them, and yet reject “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices.

Chambers has been busy promoting her agenda for years, including bringing drag queen story hour to the Windsor-Severance Public Library in 2018. Chambers believes that children ages 2-8 are “exactly the age group that should be hearing” messages from drag queens.

Three days after the fake art club meeting, the untrustworthy busybody Chambers began agitating for the school to check on the student. At 9:19 a.m. on May 7, 2021, Chambers sent an email to collaborator Riep asking, “Have you been able to check in with [the student] to make sure she is okay?”

Chambers didn’t ask if Riep had checked in with the parents to make sure the student was okay. No, parents were excluded. In the inclusive world of leftists, parents who they suspect may be conservative are excluded.

At 4:00 p.m. on the same day, Chambers sent another email to Riep:

If [the student’s absence] persists, you’ll want to talk to admin about doing a well-child check.

Chambers recommended the school call in the government to check on a child for no reason other than the parents objected to her “trans” indoctrination.

What Chambers did not know and had no right to know was that Lee and her husband had removed their daughter from Wellington and placed her in a safe place—that is, a private Christian school.

Enquiring minds may be wondering why school counselor Katie Delahunt was included in the email from Chambers. As it turns out Delahunt, who is a co-sponsor of the GSA that identifies occasionally as an art club, spearheaded the effort to bring Chambers to Wellington Middle School.

On the morning of April 13, 2021, Delahunt had seen a presentation by Chambers that sent a thrill up her leg, so she emailed Chambers:

Thank you for your presentation this morning! I really appreciated learning more about SPLASH. I co-sponsor the GSA at Wellington Middle School and am excited to share your resources with our students, who are struggling to express their identities in a very conservative community.

Chambers responded equally excitedly that she had long wanted to get into the community of Wellington but needed a connection. A Zoom meeting was scheduled for Monday April 19 at 1:00 p.m. between Delahunt, Riep, Chambers, and the mysterious “Charlie,” during which Chambers’ visit to the school-sponsored GSA at Wellington was scheduled for May 4.

To be clear, Delahunt assumed the right to use her taxpayer-funded position to change the values of the “conservative community” that employs her. This means that Delahunt had already concluded that “trans” beliefs and practices are right and that dissenting conservative beliefs are wrong, which is her right as an individual. It is not, however, her right to impose her personal moral beliefs in her job as a government employee.

The mysterious “Charlie” is a young woman who calls herself “Silen Charlie Wellington,” pretends to be a man, goes by the pronouns “they/them,” and describes herself as, among other things, a “witch” and “genderqueer shapeshifter” and works with SPLASH. In a blog post, Wellington waxes positive about polyamory, Tinder “dating,” and kink dungeons, and here’s an excerpt from a poem written by the troubled Wellington that expresses her anarchical vision for the future:

When I look at my family tree

I want to see drag queens

I want to see gender f*ck aliens and pansy boy princes

I want to see men with crescent shape scars on their chest …

I want to see girls who … had to learn make-up in closets full of stale boy clothes …

I want to see women with 5 o’clock shadows who refuse to pass.

While she may be just the kind of person leftists believe should influence children, I’m not sure how many parents would agree.

After calling Chambers, Lee and her husband met with principal Kelby Benedict and asked to see all the materials presented in the indoctrination session. According to Lee, Benedict said that because all materials used belonged to the speaker, the school does not have access to them.

In addition, Benedict said the school’s failure to notify parents about the GSA club meeting was deliberate because the school has “to offer a safe space for kids,” and as Lee’s daughter learned from Chambers, families are no longer reliably safe.

Perhaps Benedict has never considered that promoting cross-sex impersonation may make kids less safe. Perhaps he should spend some time reading the stories of detransitioners, or reading about the side effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone-doping, or looking at photos of the carved-up bodies of young women.

When the scandal blew up nationally less than two weeks ago, several more troubling things happened. Superintendent Brian Kingsley released a video message with the usual cliché claptrap from the lemming-like world of education. Here is an excerpt:

[W]e have a duty to prepare each of our students for real life. This means providing information and resources about the real world. … To our LGBTQIA+ students and staff and your families: You will continue to be welcomed and celebrated in PSD as your authentic self. Every student is unique and deserves an education system that respects their uniqueness and individuality. To build that system, we have a shared responsibility between families and our school district to keep every student safe. … To achieve that, there must be trusting relationships between students, families and schools. Trust is built through listening, empathy, credibility and transparency. Trust is not built with hate.

Do Kingsley, Riep, Delahunt, and Chambers know the real world includes people who oppose the normalization of cross-sex impersonation, who believe that biological sex exists and has profound meaning, and who believe the shocking increase in adolescent girls who identify as “trans” suggests they have been infected with a social contagion?

Do Kingsley et al. know the real world includes people who think what they–Kingsley et al.–are doing with regard to sexuality is making children far less safe?

Do Kingsley et al. know the real world includes people who understand that adolescents often feel angry or hurt by truthful things adults say?

Do Kingsley et al. know the real world includes people who believe that neither love nor safety requires affirmation of everything people feel, think, and do?

If, however, love and safety do entail affirmation, approval, and celebration of everything people feel, think, and do, will Kingsley, Riep, Delahunt, and Chambers affirm and celebrate authentic Christian, Orthodox Jewish, and Muslim identities in exactly the same ways they affirm and celebrate “trans” identities?

Will Poudre School District provide “information and resources” about the real-world phenomena just listed?

Kingsley asserts that trust is built by transparency—not hate. Why then the lack of transparency? Why aren’t parents notified about club speakers and meeting content? Why did Riep tell Lee’s daughter that the meeting was an art club? Why are students told that what takes place in a school-sponsored club stays in the school-sponsored club?

And why did Kingsley refer to hate? Is he suggesting that Erin Lee’s opposition to non-transparent “trans” indoctrination is hateful?

After Kingsley’s video came out on May 13, 2022, the district’s communication director sent talking points to teachers telling them how to respond to any calls from community members, the most noteworthy of which says,

If they ask to submit a permission slip saying that their student cannot be in XYZ club, you can respond with: I appreciate that you want to do so, but parents do not opt their students in or out of clubs in [Poudre School District] so there is no option to do so.

That doesn’t sound like recognizing the rightful role of parents in their children’s lives, supporting parents’ roles in advocating for their own children, or partnering with parents—all things government schools purport to value. Rather, it sounds like appropriation of children for the goal of colonizing their minds and hearts with leftist beliefs.

Superintendent Kingsley had some chuckle-worthy and illuminating things to say in an interview with students. Kingsley asserted that “Humility is a huge aspect of me as a person.” Between his actions and his oxymoronic claim, I think his humility is huge in the same sense that Bruce Jenner is a woman.

Kingsley went on to talk about representation:

Some people [express themselves] through writing, the arts, athletics, I think really giving a solid look at how we’re giving young adults an opportunity to express themselves – and paying attention to that—so students feel like their identities are being affirmed. So, they see themselves in the curriculum.

I’m sure students do want their “identities” affirmed and represented in curricula. So, how about representing those who identify as zoophiles, sibling-lovers, nymphomaniacs, and polyamorists. What about young adults who identify as white supremacists and minor-attracted persons?

And then there are these words from the silly Kingsley, the man with colossal humility:

“I want school to feel like Disney World. It’s not just about exchange of knowledge. It’s about people feeling connected. 

Yep, the expansively humble Kingsley wants to turn the conservative community of Wellington into a hotbed of connectivity between “LGBTQ” activists and woke cartoon characters.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Colorado-School-Employees-Conspire-to-Change-a-Conservative-Community.mp3

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If Erin Lee had known what her 12-year-old daughter would be exposed to during an afterschool “art club” last May, she would have never allowed her to go.

It began innocently enough. Lee received a text from her daughter asking if she could stay late for an “art club” at Wellington Middle School near Fort Collins, Colorado.

What happened next, though, would change their lives forever.

The “art club” was actually a meeting of the school’s Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) club, a group dedicated to supporting homosexuality, transgenderism, and other nontraditional ideas about gender and sexuality.

When the leader told Amanda (name changed to protect the minor) she must be “queer” if she didn’t feel sexually attracted to anybody, and that she must be “transgender” if she didn’t feel fully comfortable in her own body, the shy little girl suspected something wasn’t right.

According to Amanda, that same leader told her not to tell her parents about what would be discussed that day.

The woman in charge, Kimberly Chambers, who works as a “health equity initiatives coordinator” for Larimer County and director of the pro-LGBT organization SPLASH Youth of Northern Colorado, also handed out her personal contact information to the children and urged them to contact her anytime.

Chambers’ organization has boasted of teaching children ages 12 to 16 about “polyamory”—relationships with multiple sexual partners simultaneously—and other controversial ideas.

During the afterschool GSA club, according to Amanda, Chambers explained to the children that their family homes may not be a “safe space,” but that there were “resources” available. She also handed out transgender flags and stickers that Amanda understood were supposed to represent the children in the club.

As soon as Lee picked up her daughter at school, it was clear that something was “off,” the mother told The Epoch Times in a series of interviews about the incident.

Amanda, looking confused, showed her mother the transgender paraphernalia she had received from Chambers. The transgender flag represented her, Amanda told her mom.

“My heart started racing and my mind blacked out,” Lee recounted. “I was in so much shock that I struggled to get out any words.”

Even though the GSA leader at school had told Amanda it was OK to lie to her parents, Amanda knew better. Over the days that followed, she told her parents everything, Lee said.

Amanda’s parents could hardly believe what they were hearing. Lee, who has described herself as an “ally of the LGBTQ community” and said she has a history of voting “pretty progressively on social issues,” was appalled.

But that would be just the beginning of an ordeal that continues to haunt the family.

The Fallout 

Amanda never went back to the school after that. Instead, her parents put her in a local Christian school, even though it meant Lee would have to work nights to afford it. But as Lee and her husband saw it, there was no other choice.

Despite being pulled out of Wellington Middle School, the family’s difficulties grew.

After the lesson, Amanda began to wonder whether she might truly be queer and transgender. Her mental state began to rapidly deteriorate, her mother said.

Multiple family members confirmed that prior to what Lee describes as the “grooming” of her daughter at school, Amanda never showed any signs of “gender dysphoria,” the term used by psychiatrists to describe discomfort with one’s biological sex.

Afterward, though, it was hard for the girl to shake the idea.

Lee and her husband, who was outraged by the ordeal, struggled for months with how to talk to their daughter about what had happened.

“We didn’t want to say something that would push her further into this dark hole or further into this transgender label,” Lee said. “And we did exactly what the trusted adults who indoctrinated her told her we would do. We played right into their narrative.”

Weeks after the incident, as her mental state got worse, the parents decided to take Amanda to a therapist. The therapist also ended up being “queer,” and sought to affirm the young girl’s confusion about her gender.

By December, between the COVID isolation and the questions surrounding her gender, Amanda’s mental state was spiraling downward, Lee said.

The pediatrician immediately prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs for depression—medications that she has since been weaned from—in an attempt to deal with the crisis.

“I don’t know if that fear will ever go away,” Lee said about her own concerns. “I don’t expect to ever stop being struck with sadness about what happened.”

Fighting Back 

The more she thought about the whole ordeal, the more Lee realized she had to do something.

First, she contacted Chambers, the woman who Lee says “groomed” her daughter and who also sometimes works as a substitute teacher for the district. “Her response was alarming,” Lee said. “It was delusional. She doubled down on her actions.”

Next she contacted the principal, who seemed empathetic but confirmed that secret GSA meetings with children were an intentional part of creating a “safe space” at school.

There are more than two dozen self-proclaimed LGBTQ children in the small middle school, according to social media posts by SPLASH. And the district is determined that they be “affirmed” without parental involvement, Lee said.

After all that, Lee spoke out at a school board meeting and contacted all its members by email. None responded. When she was finally able to sit down with two of them, they both “supported everything that transpired and refused to address any of my concerns.”

Finally, exasperated and realizing her first call would have been to the police if this had occurred on a playground or any other setting, Lee contacted the sheriff’s office.

While law enforcement was deeply sympathetic to her plight, and urged her to speak out loudly, there was nothing they could do from a legal perspective, Lee said.

District officials, meanwhile, saw nothing wrong with what had occurred, Lee said. Indeed, some expressed shock that a parent would be upset over the incident.

As Lee fought back, school officials were working on their next move.

Among other tactics, documents and communications obtained by The Epoch Times revealed a discussion about the possibility of reporting the parents to child-welfare authorities.

When Chambers was informed by the art teacher that Amanda’s parents had not been sending her to school since the incident, Chambers wrote back urging her to consider filing a report and have child-protection officials visit the home.

“If that persists, you’ll want to talk to admin about doing a well-child check or whatever is within the policies of the school,” Chambers wrote, describing upset parents as “barriers” and citing an “extreme case” in which a family did not allow their transgender child to leave the home unsupervised.

Lee was flabbergasted after receiving the documents.

“I knew this woman was evil, but I didn’t see this coming,” she said. “This teacher and Kimberly [Chambers] forced us to pull our child out of school by creating an unsafe environment, then discussed sending CPS into our home because we pulled her out, at our most vulnerable moment as a family—that they caused.”

“If my child had indicated that we were not affirming her pronouns and trans identity, I believe the authorities would’ve taken our child away,” Lee added. “And everyone involved knew this.”

District and LGBT Activists Respond 

The Epoch Times reached out to Chambers for comment, asking whether she considered non-affirmation of a child’s gender ideas to be abuse and seeking confirmation about the story details.

“Given the private nature of this specific youth and family’s needs, I’d like to share with you a couple of Colorado and National resources around gender identity to help inform your article rather than provide any comment,” she said before providing a number of links on transgenderism and legal issues.

Wellington Middle School referred inquiries to the district. A message left on the principal’s phone was not immediately returned.

Poudre School District Executive Director of Communications Madeline Noblett told The Epoch Times that the district couldn’t comment on “specific student matters.”

When asked about policies on getting child protection services involved in cases such as Amanda’s, Noblett noted that all district staff are “mandated reporters” under Colorado law. That means they are required to report suspected child abuse.

Noblett didn’t respond to follow-up questions about district policy on whether parents’ refusal to support their children transitioning to a new gender constitutes abuse.

“It is the role of the Department of Human Services to investigate the suspected/reported case; to determine whether the child is safe; to determine if abuse occurred; and to provide appropriate services to the family,” she said.

However, the district aims to “create and uphold equitable, inclusive, and rigorous educational opportunities, outcomes, and experiences for all students,” she said.

“As a district, we are committed to making our schools safe spaces in which all students can learn,” Noblett said, adding that the district has “a LGBTQIA+ coordinator who works to advance the resources, support, inclusion, and advocacy of LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and families.”

“Gay Straight Alliances were established as safe spaces for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, allies, and any individual to come together with the goals of ensuring inclusivity, safety, and support,” Noblett said.

When asked how GSA adult leaders were trained, the communications director said there were no training requirements to lead any club in the district. However, GSA leaders could use resources from the GSA network and from One Colorado, the network’s state affiliate.

Gillian Ford of One Colorado didn’t specifically address questions about how GSA adult leaders are trained, whether it’s standard practice to tell children not to talk to their parents about these issues, or whether the escalating parental outrage was appropriate.

“Schools are often places where LGBTQ+ young people don’t feel safe or included,” said Ford, whose pronouns are listed as “she, her, hers” in her email signature.

“Since 2011, One Colorado has worked with both statewide education associations, as well as local educators, parents, and students to create and sustain the Colorado Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) Network to support and empower LGBTQ+ young people and their allies against the bullying, harassment, homophobia, and transphobia in their schools.”

National and State Trends 

What happened to the Lee family in Northern Colorado is hardly an isolated incident, experts told The Epoch Times.

“At first, we wanted to believe it was an isolated incident,” Lee said. “We didn’t want to believe that there could be such evil in our public school system, in our local government, in our community.”

What happened to Lee’s family is part of an accelerating national trend. Numerous European nations are witnessing similar phenomena.

The Epoch Times spoke with other families across the nation who had similar experiences, but almost none were willing to go on record due to fears of retaliation by government officials and activists.

While the American College of Pediatricians describes teaching children that it’s normal or healthy to impersonate the opposite sex as “child abuse,” larger and more established associations have taken a different approach.

A new “puberty guide” for children between 9 and 12 published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) claims that boys can menstruate and that girls can experience erections.

“Most babies who are born with a penis grow up feeling like a boy on the inside too. That’s called being cisgender (cis- means ‘same’),” the guide states. “But there are some babies born with a penis who grow up feeling like a girl on the inside. That’s called being transgender (trans- means ‘cross’ or ‘opposite’).”

According to a recent report published in the journal Pediatrics, almost one in ten children surveyed now identify as “gender diverse,” far more than traditionally believed.

Other surveys show even higher numbers. One from UCLA found over one-fourth of California teens were viewed by peers as “gender non-conforming.”

Those numbers are rising rapidly.

Pam Benigno, director of the Education Policy Center at Colorado’s free-market think tank the Independence Institute, told The Epoch Times that she has heard numerous “disturbing stories” from parents across the state about their children coming home from school confused about their gender.

“I spoke with a dad who told me that without his knowledge, staff from his daughter’s middle school drafted a transition plan for his daughter to become a male,” Benigno said. “This is not uncommon. In fact, teachers have been ordered not to tell parents if students take on a new identity while at school.”

Districts across the state, under the guise of being “inclusive,” are “pushing a radical-left agenda on children” and have even “adopted the non-scientific theory that gender identity is fluid,” she said.

This includes hiring “queer” organizations to smash traditional notions of normalcy in the minds of students, she added.

A recently published paper by The Independence Institute aims at helping parents ensure transparency in school curricula. But parents must be vigilant and protect their children from “devastating emotional and sometimes physical harm,” Benigno said.

Conservative states are no exception to the trend. In Utah, state controlled-substance data revealed a 10,000 percent increase between 2015 and 2020 in the number of minor girls undergoing medical transitions.

In Ludlow, Massachusetts, a major lawsuit by parents against the school district is alleging that education officials encouraged children to experiment with alternate gender identities and hide it from their parents.

Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute who is involved in the case, is dealing with a surge in such cases in his state.

“We see the same aggressive attack on the integrity of the parent-child relationship here in Massachusetts,” he replied when asked about parallels between Lee’s story and what’s taking place there.

“Many of the LGBTQ activists want to brand traditional sexual morality as ‘child abuse,’ and their accomplices in child services terrorize families who won’t just go along with this agenda,” he said, calling these sorts of policies an “appalling and dangerous violation of the rights of parents.”

“What is happening in Ludlow is part of a larger national agenda to deliberately circumvent the authority of parents over the mental health and religious beliefs of their children,” Beckwith said. “School officials around the country are secretly affirming, or even promoting, discordant gender identities in young children.”

The Biden administration has started threatening legal action against local communities, schools, states, and other institutions that don’t submit to the transgender agenda.

Warning to Parents 

As a result of the ordeal, Lee has lost all trust in the media, the government, the medical profession, and the public school system.

“Now I don’t trust a single person in the public school system,” she told The Epoch Times. “Not a single one.”

Lee said she has been in contact with numerous attorneys about the case as she considers her legal options. She is still seeking counsel.

Today, Amanda is doing much better, her parents say.

But in an effort to help protect other families from similar situations, the family has decided to continue sounding the alarm while encouraging parents to become more aware and get more involved.

Among other suggestions, Lee is also urging parents to remove their children from public school.

“Get them into private schools if you can afford it,” she said. “Get them into homeschool co-ops or homeschool them yourself.”

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This article was originally published by The Epoch Times.

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