by James A. Bacon
Prostitution, it is commonly said, is the world’s oldest profession. If that’s true, then sex trafficking may be the second oldest. The enslavement and sexual exploitation of women has been a feature of most recorded history. But sex trafficking has taken on novel forms, as the story of Sage “Draco” Blair makes clear. As another old saying goes, “Only in America.”
What follows is a synopsis of a story of a teenage girl from an unnamed Virginia community who experienced abuse in early childhood, declared herself a boy as a teenager, ran away, was raped, was sucked into the Baltimore sex trade, and was rescued. It is also the story of how her grandparents (who were also her adopted parents) tried to recover custody of her, only to have the judge accuse them of abuse for failing to fully embrace her transgenderism.
The article upon which this post is based was written by Lisa Selin Davis, the author of “Tomboy: The surprising history and future of girls who dare to be different.” From what I can tell from online materials, Davis comes from a left-of-center perspective. But she acknowledges the “complexity, mess, and murk” of sex and gender today. Davis bases her story primarily upon input from the grandmother, identified as “Michele.” She has verified “aspects” of the story and viewed court documents that support it.
This story is like a Rohrschach test: Everyone will extract different meaning from it. I see it as another sign of social disintegration stemming from the relentless erosion of roles and rules that once held society together. Hell on earth used to come from grinding material poverty. Now, in our affluent society, hell is something we create ourselves.
Sage’s father had died when she was six months old, and her mother was in jail. By the time her biological grandmother Michelle was able to adopt her, Sage had lived in six different foster homes. By Michelle’s reckoning, Sage thereafter grew up “healthy, joyous and sweet.” When she went through puberty around age 12, though, things changed.
“All the kids at that point were, you know, ‘I’m trans and I’m gay and I’m bi and I’m this and I’m that,” Michele said. “So she did start to question her gender. At almost 14, she did want to be a boy.”
Although her parents didn’t understand it, they humored her by buying her boy’s clothes, allowing her to dye her hair purple, and letting her switch from Christian school to public school. At some point she began undergoing therapy.
Sage started her first day at the new school dressed as a boy. Teachers and counselors facilitated her gender transition, changing her name to Draco and pronouns to he/him — without the knowledge of her parents. Sage/Draco began experiencing bullying, however, on the school bus and when she tried to use the boy’s bathroom. As the bullying intensified, she “just broke,” said Michele, and ran away.
What transpired next is cloudy, but Michele believes that Sage was groomed by adults online who identified as transgender and promised to be her new family. One of them picked her up and took her to Baltimore. That man shot up heroin in front of her, then raped her in the backseat of the car. He kept her in a locked room in a house in Baltimore, where she was raped repeatedly by partying men.
Eventually, Sage/Draco was rescued by the FBI. Michele and her husband tried to regain custody. Two school counselors from her Virginia school took the stand and testified that Michele was abusive for not affirming her gender transition. Michele and her husband made the mistake of continuing to refer to their daughter as Sage, not Draco, which angered the judge. Michele repeatedly pleaded that her daughter was not a transgender case but a trauma case. This, too, angered the judge. Michele and her husband were put under investigation for abuse by both Maryland and Virginia authorities, and were denied the right to bring their daughter home.
Sage was sent to a children’s home in Maryland, where she was housed with the boys. “Here’s this kid on the boys’ unit with a female body. So they start abusing her there,” Michele said. At length she was given a private room.
Sage went to public school in Maryland, wearing a GPS tracking device on her legs. Growing increasingly despondent, she started taking drugs. Then she went missing. As it turns out, she had taken the GPS off her leg and boarded a bus to Texas. There she was trafficked again. A man created pornographic images of her, sexually abused her, and sold her body for sex. Law enforcement authorities rescued her once again, and sent her back to Virginia. She now resides in a therapeutic home working on her complex trauma issues. The abuse charges against Michele and her husband were dropped, and daughter and parents are rebuilding their relationship.
Davis sums up the saga this way: “Sage’s horrific tale is simply another example of an ideology blinding the adults who are supposed to be — and want to be — helping children, rendering them unable to treat trauma because all they see is transgender identity, committing more to serving a political idea of gender than treating individuals.”
Rampant broken families. Early childhood trauma. Mental health issues. Gender and sexual identity up for grabs. School authorities colluding against parents. The use of drugs to control and exploit vulnerable girls and women. Men willing to degrade and traffic the women. Men willing to rape girls while “partying.” A legal system that accuses loving parents of abuse for failing to get with the transgender program.
This is the hell we live in.
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