Investigating families of trans kids gets personal
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2022
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered child abuse investigations of the parents of transgender children, Morgan Davis – a trans man with Child Protective Services in Austin – was assigned two cases. They didn’t go as planned.
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Morgan Davis used to believe that his workplace – the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services – had a noble mission: to remove children from abusive situations.
But when he was asked to comply with a new mandate from Gov. Greg Abbott – one that required his office to “conduct a prompt and thorough investigation” of families with transgender children – that changed.
As a trans man with the support of his small team, he thought he could comfort the flagged families and close investigations quickly. “I was told that I would go into the home, I would assess it, I would come out, and we would be done.”
But that’s not what happened. Casey Parks reports.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Earlier this year, Texas implemented a new policy. |
| 0:07.0 | The state's Attorney General had found that allowing children to transition genders |
| 0:13.2 | medically is a form of child abuse. |
| 0:16.1 | And from here on out, investigators should look into any families who have trans kids |
| 0:21.6 | and look to see if they're abusing their children by allowing them to transition. |
| 0:25.8 | This is Casey Parks. She covers gender and family issues for the post. |
| 0:30.6 | And recently, she started talking to one of the people responsible for carrying out this |
| 0:35.4 | new mandate in Texas. |
| 0:37.4 | This has just gotten crazy, Casey, honestly, just gotten this sort of insane is it become |
| 0:42.4 | the inevitable. |
| 0:43.8 | That's Morgan Davis. |
| 0:45.3 | When this change happened in Texas, he was working as an investigator for child protective |
| 0:50.4 | services. |
| 0:51.6 | So what that means is he, if someone reported child abuse, he would go out and investigate |
| 0:57.6 | it. |
| 0:58.6 | The day after Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced this new policy about trans kids and their |
| 1:03.8 | parents, Morgan's supervisor called him and said, we have the first case and your name |
| 1:10.0 | is on it, which was complicated for Morgan because about the time I started as an investigator, |
| 1:16.9 | I started transitioning. |
| 1:22.2 | His supervisor kind of eased into it with him because she knew that the year before, Morgan |
| 1:28.8 | had come out as transgender. |
| 1:31.0 | So she knew that investigating a family who has a trans kid was going to be really difficult |
... |
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