Exclusive: Parents Who Don’t Want Their Children Mutilated Are Under Assault In Colorado
What happens when your ex-wife wants to convince your 12-year-old daughter that she isn’t really a girl? In the state of Colorado, if you don’t “affirm” that made-up gender identity, the state will start to take your child away from you.
That’s what is happening to father Robert Hernandez, whose ex-wife Abigail Sanderson has allegedly been working with a groomer school therapist to pursue the new “non-binary” gender status of their daughter. Sanderson has also been successful at using the Colorado court system and its current laws to begin stripping Hernandez of his rights to be a father to his own daughter.
“I’ve kind of faced the extent of the repercussions here — for me, every other weekend is honestly no different from not having it all,” Hernandez told The Federalist on Friday after Colorado magistrate Nicholas Campbell decided to cut his time with his daughter because he raised questions about the social transition regime Jefferson County Public Schools (Jeffco) and Sanderson have implemented for the pre-teen girl.
As The Federalist has reported, a “social transition” — changing names and pronouns, as well as using facilities like restrooms designated for the opposite sex — is a dangerous gateway toward children eventually taking chemical castration drugs to keep “transitioning,” eventually leading to mutilation surgeries. Schools have become an incubator for this kind of behavior, setting up a transition pipeline with the influence of teachers and counselors.
While Hernandez’s daughter, who currently goes by a different name, told him she would never “hurt herself” in that way, “social transitions,” are powerful tools used to convince children that mutilation will make them feel more comfortable.
“My ex has her captured and my daughter is stuck here. She believes I’m the enemy, and she believes my lack of affirmation is the problem,” Hernandez added. “It’s not just the court said something, it’s like, my daughter thinks I hate her because she’s non binary, which couldn’t be the furthest thing from the truth. But, you know, because I wasn’t brought into the conversation — after six months, after she made the decision — I was already the enemy.”
In order to protect the identity of the minor child, The Federalist has given her parents pseudonyms, and removed other information that could lead to identifying her. Sanderson did not return a request for comment.
Hernandez said that fathers, primarily, are under assault in Colorado, given how magistrates use an “affirmation only” framework to decide who gets to see their children more, and who apparently poses a threat to their child for wanting them to grow up without pressure to switch genders. As The Federalist reported, Hernandez’s case is far from the only one like it, and with a new law (HB25-1312) working its way through the state legislature, courts will have the statutes they need to completely shut out parents who do not want to see their children sterilized or mutilated.
While the new law does not target fathers specifically in custody battles, it seems to be that the mother is almost always the one pushing transition for their child (and using it as a weapon to cut the father out entirely), while the father is trying to protect their child from the inevitable harm that comes from the transgender interventions, according to Lori Gimelshteyn, executive director of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network (CPAN).
“I’m deeply troubled by what we’re seeing — and [Robert’s] story is, heartbreakingly, no longer rare,” Gimelshteyn told The Federalist. “Through our Incident Reporting Tool, families across Colorado — married, divorced, and everything in between — are reaching out with the same devastating pattern: Their children are being socially transitioned in school without their knowledge, and now the state wants to make that secrecy legal.”
Gimelshteyn works with many families in Colorado whose parental rights are being stripped — be it by an ex-spouse or by a school — and is currently circulating a petition to oppose Bill 1312, which she said garnered over 10,000 signatures in the first 24 hours and has been growing exponentially ever since.
‘It Started In The Schools’
Hernandez said his daughter began thinking she was “non-binary” at the age of 11, allegedly at the hands of Leslie Mecca, a K-8 student counselor at Bear Creek in Jeffco. According to Fox News, Mecca has a “methodical system” for transitioning children without parents knowing.
Jeffco Schools did not return a request for comment.
According to Hernandez, Sanderson said in court that she did not even know their daughter was considering this new “non-binary” identity for a considerable amount of time. He said he did not become aware of it until three months after Sanderson knew about it, too.
“She’s using this to take my daughter and my ex just went right along with it, because I asked questions, because I said ‘no’ — now they’re coming for me,” Hernandez said of Mecca’s “grooming.”
The night before Campbell’s decision Friday, Hernandez gave an impassioned speech in front of the Jeffco school board, describing the school system’s predatory and destructive behavior:
My daughter changed her identity, not after years of discussion or family dialog, not after joint input from both of her parents. No, this happened quickly. Secretly encouraged by a school-appointed therapist and a system that never thought to include me.
The school didn’t inform me, they didn’t include me, they didn’t even ask me — they replaced me. By the time I found out, I was already labeled the problem. My objections weren’t treated as concerns, they were treated as opposition. My voice was dismissed as hateful. My presence, undermined. The therapist, the school, and eventually the court-appointed investigator, all decided that, because I wouldn’t affirm something, I didn’t deserve to parent my daughter equally anymore.
They didn’t accuse me of abuse, they didn’t claim I’d caused harm. The only evidence against me was that I said I’m not ready to affirm this yet. That’s it. And now I’m at risk of losing parenting time, of being erased from my daughter’s life, not because I failed as a father, because I dared to ask questions.
It started in your schools: Your systems made it possible, and your silence made it permanent. You gave my ex all the tools she needed to take our daughter from me, tools that she couldn’t afford on her own. You gave her the therapist, you gave her the ideological support, and you never once thought, ‘Shouldn’t the father be involved too?’
Sanderson took the new identity and ran with it, Hernandez said. Sanderson is attempting to be a social media influencer on TikTok and, according to Hernandez, desperately seeks the approval of left-wing ideologues.
At first, Sanderson wanted their daughter to be lesbian. And then bi-sexual. But their daughter was just a normal girl, and also very young. “But as soon as she came out with, ‘Oh, I think I might be non-binary,’ she dove all in because it’s a way for her to get clout with the left,” Hernandez said.
Groomer mothers are unfortunately common in these kinds of situations. In a similar Colorado case, the mother allegedly tried to convince her children they they were gay from the age of five.
“[Sanderson] wants to take my daughter from me. She doesn’t like my influence. She wants to ensure she is the sole influence in her life,” Hernandez said.
‘State-Enabled Kidnapping’
Colorado is becoming a safe haven for this kind of behavior, which will only intensify if 1312 is signed into law.
That bill, which has been described as “state-enabled kidnapping,” would consider things like calling a gender-confused child by their actual name or pronouns “coercive control” (akin to threatening to murder someone as a means of coercion), and would require that magistrates weigh that in their custody decisions.
That bill, along with a slew of other radical bills being pushed at the same time, would turn Colorado into a transition and kidnapping mill for the whole country, as crazed parents could groom their child, take them to Colorado, and seize custody from their ex-spouse.
“This bill will make it easier for one parent to use gender identity as a weapon in custody battles — as mine has — with the full force of state law behind them,” Hernandez will say in upcoming state Senate testimony on 1312. “It takes something deeply personal, deeply complex, and turns it into a legal sledgehammer.”
Without the new law, as in Hernandez’s case, magistrates still need to jump through some legal hurdles in order to justify stripping parenting time.
Hernandez said his defense before the magistrate was that there is no evidence of harm, and that his parenting time should not be cut. While Campbell apparently admitted that as a fact, he also weaseled his reasoning to make “non-affirmation” akin to “harm.”
“Look, I’m not a perfect dad. I have my issues. I have my problems — I’ve never abused my kids or anything like that, but, you know, I’m not perfect. I’m human. Made a lot of mistakes,” Hernandez told The Federalist.
Hernandez said that Campbell used a two-month-old case called In re Marriage of Dale (which is currently being appealed) to concoct an argument about how lowering parenting time is merely “quantitative” but does not affect “qualitative” time, so, really, no parenting has been cut at all.
“This judge just proved that parents can manipulate their child into this ideology and steal them from the other parent,” Hernandez posted on X. He also said that, while in court, Sanderson brought up 1312 as part of her argument, but when Hernandez said it would not be signed, Campbell quietly muttered, “It will be signed.”
“[Robert] wasn’t neglectful. He wasn’t abusive. He simply asked questions — and for that, he is actively being cut out of his daughter’s life. HB25-1312 will turn more families into battlegrounds, punishing good parents for refusing to blindly affirm. It forces vulnerable children down one narrow path — that they were born in the wrong body — without room for exploration, caution, or care. That’s not protection. That’s coercion. And it’s cruel,” Gimelshteyn said. “This bill doesn’t protect kids. It protects a system that destroys families for loving their children in a way the state no longer tolerates.”
Hernandez said that while he is still trying to fight for his rights to see his own daughter, he is also motivated by his experience and wants to make sure this does not happen to any other families.
“Dads need a voice,” he told The Federalist. “I understand how scary it is. I understand how terrifying it can be to try to stand up to this. They don’t need to speak. They can just give me their story. I’ll be their voice.”
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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