A Massachusetts family has drawn national attention after the state Department of Children and Families took custody of their transgender teenager amid a dispute involving the child’s gender identity, the parents’ objections to aspects of the transition, and allegations of abuse and neglect within the home. The parents, Joseph and Arlene Kutzko, have argued publicly that state and school officials interfered with their parental rights and facilitated their child’s transition without their consent. A Fox News Lighthouse Faith report stated outright that DCF removed the teenager “because” the parents would not recognize their child as a boy, while a New York Post report centered its headline and opening on allegations that the school secretly helped the teenager transition without the parents’ knowledge. CBN News similarly characterized the dispute as a parental rights battle arising after the Catholic parents refused to affirm the teenager’s gender identity.
Conservative commentators amplified that framing on social media. Popular conservative influencer and vocal anti-trans advocate Riley Gains posted on X, “State taking ownership of a child is a communists dream. In a just society, there would be a societal uproar. Parents should NEVER have to coparent with the government. Please help this family and their daughter”, in reaction to the story.
Another conservative influencer, Gunther Eagleman posted on X: “🚨 HOLY CRAP! A devout Catholic family in Massachusetts is locked in a legal war to stop the state from transitioning their teen daughter without their consent. Joseph and Arline have not spoken to Sophie since 2024, after family services ripped her from their home because they would not affirm her as a boy. This can’t happen! YOUR KIDS ARE NOT THE STATE’S PROPERTY.”
So was this transgender teenager removed from their parents simply because of the religious parents refusing to accept them for their gender identity? Are these news sources and conservative influencers correct in their allegations that the state is allowed to remove children over disputes about gender identity? Well, when you actually look into the case itself, these allegations couldn’t be further from the truth. Further investigations into the case have found that the child was not removed over just a gender identity dispute, but rather they were removed from the home due to substantial abuse and neglect from the parents, as well as the parents’ attempt to cover it up.
According to WBUR’s review of Westborough District Court records, the teenager reported to a school consular that their father, Joseph Kutzko, of physically assaulting and threatening them at the family’s Southborough home on January 28, 2025. A police detective wrote that Kutzko allegedly punched the teenager in the shoulder, repeatedly pulled their hair, raised a clenched fist while threatening to punch them, and threatened to kill them during an argument connected to a birthday celebration. The teenager reported the incident to school personnel the following day, after which police became involved and Kutzko was arrested and charged with assault-related offenses and threatening to commit a crime. He pleaded not guilty, and the case was later resolved through pretrial probation rather than a conviction, with conditions including anger-management treatment, staying away from the teenager, and complying with a restraining order.
The teenager’s mother, Arlene Kutzko, was also charged in connection with the incident. WBUR reported that she was charged with witness intimidation after pressuring the teenager to minimize or retract what had been reported to school officials, including telling the child to say they had been “exaggerating and being stupid.” Along with the abuse allegations, the Boston Globe later reported that the DCF further substantiated allegations of neglect against both parents. The following police report of the incident lists the allegations against Joseph in detail:
Regarding the incident, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has publicly said: “DCF did not remove the child because of a health issue or a gender-affirming care issue. DCF removed the child after there were criminal charges filed against the parents.”
Because juvenile records are very restricted and private, there are many details that are unknown about the case. However, reporting based on the court proceedings also mentions that after roughly a year in DCF custody, the teenager sought out and obtained a restraining order against their parents. The Kutzkos’ attorney disputes the circumstances and says an unidentified adult assisted the teenager in obtaining counsel and seeking the order. The fact that, either way, the teenager reportedly obtained a restraining order out of their own free will to avoid having contact with their parents shows clearly that the teenager did not want to remain in their parents’ custody.
Looking at all of the evidence together, rather than just the biased reporting from conservative sources, the true story becomes clear. This most likely started with the teenager coming out as transgender to their family (or their gender identity being discovered from privacy violations), which their parents did not approve of for religious reasons. The parents then most likely became neglectful, and the father became physically and emotionally abusive towards the teenager while the mother supported this abuse and worked to silence the teenager. Due to this abuse, the teenager reported it to their school, causing the arrest of the father, and the removal of the teenager from the home, where they later sought out a restraining order to remain safe from their abusers. The teenager was not removed from the home due to their parents refusing to affirm their gender identity, they were removed from the home because their parents became abusive towards them because of it. This is an extremely clear cut example of a young person struggling with parental oppression and parental discrimination against their queer identity.
Many individuals don’t want to believe the child, and instead insist that the teenager must be lying about the abuse allegations in order to escape the parents’ rejection of their gender identity. However, it is actually more common than most would want to believe that parents will become physically abusive of queer and transgender youth upon learning about their identity. For example, in Them’s reporting on corporal punishment and LGBTQ youth, Jesse, a gay and nonbinary survivor from an evangelical community, described being beaten by their father and said the violence escalated when they came out. Jesse said that on the night they told their dad they were gay, the situation turned into a physical altercation in which their father beat them severely enough to leave them with a black eye and a busted lip. Their story is especially striking because it shows how parental violence can become more severe when a child’s gender non-conforming identity becomes explicit. This type of situation is most likely what occurred with the teenager in the Kutzko family.
However, conservative influencers, news outlets and multiple media sources continue to ignore or understate the abusive circumstances the teenager was allegedly living with, instead opting to blame the DCF’s entire decision on the conflict over the teenager’s gender identity being rejected by their religious parents. First of all, this is extremely disingenuous and harmful for conservatives to parade around these lies and misinformation in order to bring outrage in their culture war against youth autonomy. Second of all, this shows a much darker truth about the conservative influencers such as Riley Gains who spread hate like this: Conservatives are pro child abuse when it comes to queer children. This is not a matter of ignorance; the information on the case is publicly available and anybody who is actually invested in it would do the research to find out the truth. They know they’re lying; they know their lies will stir up a parental-rights outrage—causing backlash against the schools, the state, and transgender people in general. They don’t actually care about “protecting children” from harm like they claim to. Instead, they’re actively supporting parents who have been arrested for abuse and attempting to cover up that abuse.
These types of people value the rights of the parents’ to control every aspect of a child’s life, more than the safety of the actual child in question. They have no respect for the basic rights and autonomy of a young person who wants to be able to express themselves freely, without being unfairly treated by their parents because of it. These people cause uproar over children getting removed from the abusive homes, saying that it’s evidence that the state takes “ownership” of children, and that “in a just society” this would never occur. Yet they are silent when the parents exert an unfair level of control and “ownership” over children that directly contributes to their declining mental and physical health. To them, it’s okay for parents to treat children like property, but when the state tries to intervene, it’s communism.
This is especially dangerous when it comes to queer youth facing discriminatory, homophobic, transphobic or abusive religious parents. These types of parents have been known to become abusive towards their children after learning that their child has an LGBTQ identity. Parents have reacted with kicking children out of their homes, extreme isolation, severe beatings, forcible institution into “Conversion Therapy”, and even torture and murder of their queer children. This behavior has been known to cause devestating consequences on the mental health of youth, and has even resulted in the suicide of queer children.
These stories are in and of themselves reasons for the state to take allegations of religiously motivated abuse against queer children very seriously. It would be much safer for a state to intervene prematurely, especially in a situation where the child is requesting intervention, rather than automatically siding with the parents, leaving the teenager without support, and then ending up severely abused. Anytime a child protective services agency removes a child who has reported discriminatory abuse by their parents regarding their gender identity, they are doing the right thing to cut off the parents.
Despite it being a known fact that queer children face some of the harshest abuse from parents, we still see people taking the sides of the parents in these scenarios which will undoubtedly have the effect of empowering abusive parents to continue to treat their children like this in the future. This is what happens when conservative influencers throw all their support behind these thinly veiled “parental rights” movements that just boil down to a parent’s rights to abuse a child without having to face consequences. More children will get abused, more queer youth will be harmed, and the conservative influencers will stay silent, because they have achieved their goal.
Even when the abuse isn’t physical, it can have devastating effects. Emotional abuse, constant rejection and religious guilt enforced by parents over a child’s queer identity can hurt them just as badly. For example, Leelah Alcorn was a transgender teenager in Ohio whose story became one of the most widely known examples of parental rejection of a child’s LGBTQ identity. After she came out to her parents, she wrote that they responded by telling her it was a phase, that she would never truly be a girl, and that “God doesn’t make mistakes.” According to reporting on her suicide note, her parents then sent her to Christian therapists intended to change her and later isolated her from friends and support. Before her death at 17, Leelah wrote that the rejection and forced treatment deepened her depression and hopelessness. Her story became a national symbol of how parental anti-LGBTQ rejection can turn into profound psychological harm.
Stories like this illustrate just how important it is for parents to be supportive of their queer children, even if they disagree with gender-identity and LGBTQ as a concept. This is also why emotional abuse of queer children should be taken just as seriously as physical abuse, and child protective services also have a responsibility to intervene and protect children in these scenarios. Cases like this get so much backlash and uproar because oppressive parents always frame it as “I didn’t affirm my child’s transgender identity, and then the state removed my child”, but what they are failing to mention is that them “not affirming” their child’s identity consisted of constant emotional abuse, belittling, guilt tripping, religious trauma and oftentimes physical assault/intimidation. All of these types of behaviors by parents towards queer youth devastate their mental health, when they are already in a challenging time in their lives. The last thing they need is an unsupportive parent, who believes it is their legal “right” to get away with constant emotional abuse and parental oppression.
Despite what conservatives may think, child protective services have a responsibility to protect children from homes that are an active risk to their mental health, even when physical abuse isn’t occurring. This responsibility trumps “parental rights”. It is especially important to recognize this considering how oftentimes, child protective services fail to intervene in parental emotional abuse cases. For example, in a recent NYRA podcast episode, NYRA member Bailey McCoy describes a situation where she attempted to contact CPS on behalf of her friend facing abuse, and nothing came of it.
According to Bailey’s story, her friend was subject to constant emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his mother, due to her hostility towards his gender identity. This culminated in incidents where she would physically strike him, one time hitting him in the head with a roll of wrapping paper. The police were called and child abuse were reported, but when they arrived and the situation was explained, they took the side of the mother, and berated the child for attempting to seek help. But this wasn’t the end of the situation, after the police had left, the mother continued to treat the child worse, berate him and punish him for attempting to get help. Along with this, when Bailey’s friend compiled a list of abusive incidents by his mother, and gave it to Bailey to contact child protective services, this didn’t end much better. According to Bailey, all CPS did was have one conversation with him at school, then refused to follow up, never even opening an investigation into the abuse that was occurring. In this situation, both the police, and child protective services didn’t take the concerns of the child seriously, despite clear issues being present and him even stating that he’d prefer to run away rather than continue living with his abusive mother.
One of the main reasons why child protective services often have such a hesitancy to intervene in cases like these is because of the backlash they receive from conservative media, who believe that parents should own children like property and have the “parental rights” to treat them however they’d like without consequences. A story of child protective services removing a child from a home who was facing discriminatory abuse from parents regarding their gender identity can easily be framed as poor vulnerable parents having their precious child ripped away from them because they didn’t want to use correct pronouns of their child. Realistically, this is never the case—there’s always more to the story—and it usually involves physical abuse, psychological control and oppression.
Another factor that absolutely needs to be examined in this case is the role the school played in the incident. According to the reports, the father was only arrested for the alleged abuse after the teenager informed a school counselor of the mistreatment they had been facing from their parents. Not so coincidentally, the parents’ lawsuit then accused the school of facilitating the child’s gender transition without their consent, and leading to the child’s removal. Think about it… the teenager felt comfortable enough to seek help from a school consular, who then helped report the abuse and get the teenager removed from the dangerous environment, and now conservatives are actively pushing back against the school for doing this. This type of anti-youth mental health sentiment has been previously expressed throughout many parental rights related legislation and movements. For example, Texas’ recent parental bill of rights allows parents to opt their children out of being able to speak with school counselors.
What is the purpose of a regulation like this? The obvious outcome is that vulnerable minors in dangerous situations will be cut off from the one place they can turn to, in order to seek support for what they’re dealing with. The story with the Kutzko family puts it into perspective completely. Conservatives want to ban youth from being able to see school counselors without parental consent, because they’re afraid of what the kids will say. They want to specifically cut off kids from being able to report abuse by parents, in order to empower abusive parents to treat children however they want without consequences. There is no other reason for this, besides their scapegoat excuse that school counselors will help “facilitate gender transitions” of minors.
Whenever oppressive and transphobic parents allege that a school “assisted” or “facilitated” a minor in their gender transition, that is more often than not a disingenuous claim. Someone reading that would most likely assume that the school provided the minor with gender affirming care, or resources to aid their transition. However, this is almost never the case. What actually occurs in cases with these allegations, is that school staff members simply referred to the student, using their preferred gender identity and pronouns, without the parent’s consent. This definition of “assisting social transitioning” is actually even used by many anti-LGBTQ bills across the US. Texas’ parental bill of rights requires every Texas public school district to adopt a policy prohibiting district employees from assisting a student with what the statute calls “social transitioning.” The law defines social transitioning as moving from a person’s biological sex at birth to the opposite biological sex through the use of a different name, different pronouns, or other expressions of gender that deny or encourage denial of the person’s biological sex at birth.
So when lawsuits allege a school was assisting in a gender transition, all that means is that the teacher was simply respecting a students’ preferred pronouns or name. This isn’t “assisting” in their transition, this isn’t doing anything wrong or harmful, this is simple respect and support for a student who is obviously already in a vulnerable state. Teachers should not be punished for being respectful and attempting to support their students—they should be rewarded for such behavior. And parents attempting to shut down teachers and school staff members’ ability to support students in this way is directly showing how conservative parents want worse outcomes for queer youth by cutting off their support systems.
This situation also reflects just how deadly the misinformation spread by conservatives can be for queer youth and any young person in a vulnerable situation. In incidents like these—where homophobic and transphobic parents are abusive towards their children, the child reports it to the school (which recognizes their gender identity), the school reports it to the police and the child gets removed—conservatives twist the facts to fit their narrative. They will blast stories about a child being transitioned into another gender by their school, and then being ripped away from the parents because the parents didn’t support it. This is framed as a parental rights violation, and people are outraged, which further increases support for legislation like there is in Texas, which increases “parental rights” by taking away the rights of young people—such as their right to see a school consular, under the guise of preventing a young person from being socially transitioned by a corrupt school. However, the measurable effect of this is that vulnerable youth are cut off from life-saving support and are further forced to be at the mercy of abusive parents. Conservatives are actively manipulating anti-trans and anti-gender-identity outrage into a movement to strip youth of their rights while cutting them off from support systems and mental health resources put in place to keep them safe.
Queer youth deserve to have access to support in the same way that any other young person does, and they deserve to be in a safe home environment, where they are not subject to abuse, even if their lifestyle is against their parents’ wishes. Parents should not have ownership over their kids in a way where they are legally expected to get away with abuse when it comes to discrimination against gender identity or sexual orientation. As we have just seen, school counselors are instrumental in the process of vulnerable young people being able to report abuse and seek support if they’re in a dangerous home situation. Therefore, any legislative attempt to restrict minors’ access to school counselors is openly pro-abuse of children, by empowering the “parental rights” of abusive parents. Child protective services made the right call in removing this transgender teenager from their abusive home environment, and conservative influencers acting like this is a violation of parental rights are, once again, directly supporting the abuse of queer youth.
The National Youth Rights Association
If you’re interested in Youth Rights, consider volunteering with us. We are always looking for new members and would love to have you on board. If you have a personal story to share about facing parental discrimination against an LGBTQ identity, or about a general youth rights violation you’ve experienced, consider sending us an email at nyra@youthrights.org. We’d love to help get your story out to the world.
The text of Conservatives Express Support for Abusive Parents Whose Transgender Child Was Removed from them © 2026 by Zane Miller is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
