Mother accused of child abuse for letting daughter wear a suit
Texas mother said a shop assistant accused her of child abuse when she tried to buy a suit for her daughter.
Rachel Giordano took her five year old daughter Maddie to Martha’s Miniatures in Denison, Texas to buy a new outfit for Easter. She was unsurprised when Maddie made a beeline for the boy’s suits.
Ms Giordano told DFW: “She’s a tom boy. She’s preferred to dress in boys clothes since she was about three-years-old. She just gets a suit every year. She looks forward to it.
“She just wants to wear a suit and tie, and Easter’s the perfect time for it because there’s always cute stuff out.”
However when the shop assistant realised the suit was for a little girl, Ms Giordano says she reacted extremely negatively: “The woman’s face was just a face of disgust. She told me that I was promoting wrong behaviour. That parent’s should not let their children choose the way that they dress if it’s cross-gendered.
“She just approached it in a very hostile manner and tells me that’s wrong, I should not be encouraging this behaviour, that it sounds like it’s more of an issue on my part, than my daughter’s.”
She says Maddie started to cry, so they left the shop. After encouraging friends to complain about the shop, the shop assistant apparently posted a statement on the shop’s Facebook page which has since been deleted.
It read: “I was so shocked she asked for a boys suit for the child. I asked her why she was encouraging this. This is child abuse for the mother. I am sorry, I did not say anything to the children, just to the mom. She is wrong to encourage this.”
Ms Giordano eventually bought a suit in another shop, and says: “People don’t need to pick on little kids for what they’re wearing.”
