Family Loses Custody of Teen after Denying Child’s Gender Identity
Two Montana parents lost custody of their 14-year-old daughter after opposing her gender transition, and now, the couple is accusing the state’s Child and Family Services (CFS) of “kidnapping” their child.
Their 14-year-old daughter had experienced trouble at school, prompting her father, Todd Kolstad to pull her from one school district and enroll her in another in an attempt to address these issues. She also exhibited some “attention-seeking” behavior, according to her step-mother, Krista Kolstad.
Krista told Reduxx that their daughter “always had problems at school,” but it wasn’t until a CFS case worker arrived at their home one evening that the Kolstads took their daughter in for a psychiatric evaluation after the teen claimed to have consumed toxic substances in an attempt to commit suicide.
The teen’s stepmother told Reduxx that she felt her claim was “highly unlikely,” because she did not have access to the substance “unmonitored” and said that her stepdaughter had “expressed no symptoms of imminent illness that day.” The parents took her to a local hospital to have emergency blood work, which later confirmed that she had not consumed any poisonous substances. They later shared her medical paperwork with Reduxx which “confirms that there were no abnormalities detected” in the teen’s system “and that her overall physical health was good.”
The medical paperwork did however repeatedly refer to their daughter as “male” who wishes to be called “Leo.”
“We were very clear to the emergency room staff as well as [CFS] that this goes against our values, morals, and our religious beliefs,” Krista told the outlet.“They told me to call their lawyer if I have an issue as they will do what the patient tells them.”
Despite gender-affirming medical care being outlawed in the state, doctors told the two parents that “social transitioning” was a “grey” area, and proceeded to call their daughter by her preferred male name and pronouns.
Krista said that while her step-daughter was on a 24/7 suicide watch at the hospital for expressing the possibility of self-harm, a hospital aide was “talking about having top surgery and being non-binary.” She told the doctor on duty about the conversation but said that her concerns were dismissed. “He told me, ‘why are not you more concerned that your daughter is trying to harm herself, then what [the aide] is talking about?’”
“[H]ospital staff refused to abide by any other requests [made by the Kolstads], such as limiting Jennifer’s TV and phone time, encouraging her to do her school work, and not allowing her to have copious amounts of junk food,” Reduxx reported.
CFS and their daughter’s doctors agreed that the teen would benefit from “specialized residential care for treatment and counseling,” which would result in their daughter being forcibly taken to Wyoming for treatment.
“They called and told us that a bed had opened up in Wyoming and that Jennifer needed to go. [The Doctor] said ‘she has to go. she’s not doing any good here,’ and we were really blown away,” Krista claimed. “No one talked to us about the name of the facility — we had no one to answer our questions. We told them we wanted our questions answered before we accepted the bed.”
The stepmother told the outlet that shortly after learning this, CFS “showed up at our home to serve us with papers to take Jennifer out of our care.”
She said that the case workers “told [the family] the reason [for their daughter’s removal from their custody] was that we were ‘unable or refusing to provide medical care.’ That’s just not true.”
Their daughter was taken to Wyoming for a month before being returned to Montana to live in a group home. After several months of legal back-and-forth, their daughter was permanently removed from the couple’s custody on January 19, 2024.
“We were told that letting Jennifer transition and live as a boy was in her ‘therapeutic best interest’ and because we aren’t willing to follow that recommendation, the court gave CFS custody of Jennifer for six months,” Krista explained. “CFS is now going to place Jennifer in the care of her birth mother in Canada, who has never really been apart of her life. The judge said to us ‘[Y]ou need to expect that reunification with your family may not be what you are expecting.’”
