Family of bullied transgender Oklahoma 7th grader starts GoFundMe
(ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
The family of a 12-year-old transgender girl are fundraising to move away from Oklahoma after receiving threats from fellow parents in her school.
Vicious posts were made against Maddie on a viral Facebook post complaining about the teenager using the school’s female bathrooms.
Messages referred to the 7th grader as “it,” “this thing,” “half baked maggot” and “the transgender,” and one person even threatened to use a “good sharp knife” to slice her genitals.
The abuse led police to shutting down schools for two days in Achille, Oklahoma in order to investigate and contain the problem.
Now the family are trying to move away from the area and through the kindness of a stranger, have a GoFundMe page dedicated to them which has currently raised over $17,000.
Maddie and her family moved to Achille, Oklahoma from Sherman, Texas, after Maddie was bullied in Texas, and will now try to rebuild their lives once more.
“We actually moved here from Sherman hoping to have a fresh start for Maddie, because she was severely bullied there, and taunted to commit suicide, and assaulted in the bathroom. Unfortunately, her fresh start did not last long,” Maddie’s mother Brandy wrote on the fundraiser.
The page explains that they want to move to be closer to family in Houston, Texas but prior to fundraising they didn’t have the financial means.
(ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
“If we had the financial means to actually move, and get set up there, close to our family, and in a city that has so many more resources for Maddie, it would literally be life changing,” Brandy said.
After the threats Maddie’s mother said the girl and her siblings had been sent to stay with relatives for a few days because of the fears of violence.
She said: “Even when Maddie returned home she was too scared to sleep alone, she slept with us.
“To see her be afraid really broke my heart because Maddie’s not afraid of stuff, she lets things roll off her shoulders.
“There’s a lot more love than hate and that seems to help her to be less fearful now, she’s excited to be back at school.”
LGBT activists laid the blame for the incident at the door of Republican leaders who have stoked fears about transgender people in bathrooms.
Ellen Kahn, Director of the HRC Foundation’s Children, Youth and Families Programs, said: “The hateful and violent rhetoric of these adults is despicable, disgusting and completely dehumanizing.
“No student should face threats of violence or harassment from anyone in their school community, let alone from their peers’ parents.
