A biologically female Virginia teenager ran away from home after transitioning genders — allegedly with the help of high school officials who kept it from a legal guardian — and reportedly fell into the hands of sex traffickers.

In August 2021, the teen — whose given name was Sage but apparently went by Draco — began attending Appomattox County High School in Virginia. By the second day of school, the teen was being bullied by boys on the school bus for looking like a boy, according to the New York Post.

The teen subsequently shared with two school counselors a desire to identify as a boy. With the school counselors’ alleged encouragement, the young student began using the boys’ bathrooms at school. Before long, the bullying caused the teenager to suffer a “psychotic breakdown” and run away from home.

A note left for the teen’s grandmother and adoptive mother, Michele Blair, read, “You’ve done your job, Jesus loves you. … I’m afraid of what is to come if I stayed. Be on your guard. There are bad people around here,” per the New York Post.

But the runaway teenager reportedly fell prey to sex traffickers and was drugged and raped while being transported through Washington, D.C., and Maryland before being rescued by federal authorities in Baltimore.

Blair then attempted to recover custody of the child. However, Maryland authorities, advised by Baltimore public defender Aneesa Khan, found Blair insufficiently supportive of the teen’s gender transition, so the state took custody instead.

The teen reportedly endured more abuse while at a state juvenile facility for boys. After running away from the facility in November 2021, the child was apparently picked up by an alleged pedophile and taken to Texas, again being “raped, drugged, starved, and tortured,” according to a lawsuit filed by Blair against Appomattox County’s school board, the school system’s superintendent, two school counselors, and Khan, the Post reported.

Texas authorities rescued the child in January 2022 and sent her back to family in Virginia.

According to the lawsuit, the school did not tell Blair about the teen’s “gender confusion” or that school counselors were “affirming her as a male.” The events reportedly resulted in PTSD.

Blair’s lawyer, Mary McAlister, told the New York Post, “All of this could have been prevented if Sage’s parents had been fully apprised of her mental state and given the opportunity to provide the necessary mental health counseling when she first began questioning her identity.”

“Instead both the school district and public defender’s office decided they knew better than the parents. As a result of their arrogance, Sage was victimized multiple times over,” McAlister added.

The ordeal inspired a bill in the Virginia Legislature that would have required schools to notify parents if their child expresses a desire to identify as a different gender than his or her sex assigned at birth, prevented school counselors from withholding information or encouraging minors to withhold such information from parents, and asserted that raising a child according to his or her biological sex cannot be construed as abuse.

The bill passed in the Republican-controlled Virginia House, but the Democrat-controlled Virginia Senate killed it in committee, according to The Washington Times.

The Dallas Express reached out to the Appomattox County Public Schools superintendent for comment but did not receive a reply before publication.

Despite this teen’s story, researchers with Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry have argued that supporting gender transitions can save lives.

“It is well documented that [transgender and nonbinary (TGNB)] adolescents and young adults experience anxiety and depression, as well as suicidal ideation, at a much higher rate than their cisgender peers.

“According to The Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 54 percent of young people who identified as transgender or nonbinary reported having seriously considered suicide in the last year, and 29 percent have made an attempt to end their lives. In contrast, numerous research studies have found that gender-affirming care leads to improved mental health among TGNB youth.”