A California mother says the government wrongfully took away her daughter, pushed the girl into transitioning to male and is to blame for his suicide age 19.
Andrew Martinez, born Yaeli, stepped in front of a train on September 4, 2019.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, bereaved mother Abigail Martinez accused her Los Angeles County school of encouraging Yaeli to take hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery as a child, while failing to properly treat her severe depression.
Martinez, a mother of four, claimed school staff told Yaeli not to speak to her mother about transgender issues, but secretly had her join an LGBTQ group that persuaded the girl that the only way to be happy was to transition.
The El Salvador-born mother said an older trans student ‘coached’ Yaeli on what to tell social workers to put her into foster care, so that the state would pay for her gender reassignment.
Abigail Martinez told DailyMail.com her daughter Yaeli (pictured before her transition to male) was ‘the girly girl in the house’ among her three daughters, but said she began questioning sexuality as a sophomore in high school
Martinez claims Los Angeles County is to blame for her daughter Yaeli’s suicide after her school allegedly pushed her to transition into a male instead of properly treating her depression.
Andrew Martinez, born Yaeli Galdamez, died by suicide at the age of 19 by stepping in front of a train in Los Angeles on September 4, 2019. She is pictured right as a young girl
And in a 2020 civil lawsuit filed against LA County and its Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS), Martinez claims the government is responsible for her child’s untimely death.
Martinez said among her three daughters, Yaeli was ‘the girly girl in the house’, dressing as a princess and talking about the boys she liked at pre-school.
She was bullied for her looks in middle school, and by eighth grade began showing signs of depression, her mother said.
‘Once she moved to high school, by the beginning of sophomore year things changed drastically,’ she said.
‘She talked to her sister about how she liked girls. She was questioning her sexuality. It was a shock, but she was trying to find out her identity. It’s normal, what children don’t go through that at that age?
‘But I never imagined what the school would do.
‘The school was telling her to go to these LGBT groups behind my back. She went from questioning her sexuality to her gender.
‘She had these peers at school two years older than her. They were the ones who brought these ideas – ‘Maybe you’re depressed because don’t you feel like you’re a boy?’ – and the school was supportive of that.
‘The school told her these groups were the place to go, and I didn’t need to know about it.
‘I asked her what was going on, and she tried to deny it, because she was told that if she talked about it at home, I would not support it.’
Martinez believed it was normal for teenagers to question their identity, but ‘never imagined’ the school would push her daughter to join LGBTQ groups behind her back and encourage her to transition. She is seen above celebrating Yaeli’s 17th birthday
Martinez claimed it was Yaeli’s depression that was the problem, not gender dysphoria. The teenager is seen above sporting a short blond haircut alongside her mom and siblings
Martinez said she agreed to her daughter’s request to be called ‘Jay’ and tried to help her change her appearance, buying her masculine clothes to go with a short haircut – which Yaeli later asked her to mask again with long hair extensions.
But the mother claimed it was Yaeli’s depression that was the problem, not gender dysphoria.
Yaeli had already tried to overdose on pills in eighth grade in 2014, and tried to jump off a bridge near the freeway in her hometown of Arcadia in her freshman year, shortly after she cut her hair short, attracting the attention of social workers.
‘I just wanted my daughter back. I didn’t want to be the mean mom to say ‘no no no.’ I wanted to give her the help she needed at that time. But I knew the haircut or whatever she was trying to do wouldn’t make her happy,’ Martinez said.
‘I didn’t like the idea [of transitioning]. But I just wanted her to find out what was leading her to go that way.
‘I explained to the social workers it’s not going to work. My daughter needs mental health help. You have to go from the inside out. If she’s happy with herself that’s all we need. Focus on that.’
Instead of proper treatment for mental illness, Martinez said her daughter was encouraged by the school and her LGBT support group to take hormones and pursue gender reassignment surgery, and cut Martinez out of the process.
Yaeli was allegedly told by her trans peers that the only way she could get it paid for by the state was if she was in foster care.
Martinez said she agreed to her daughter’s request to be called ‘Jay’ and tried to help her change her appearance, buying her masculine clothes to go with a short haircut
An LA family court judge ruled Yaeli – who now went by Andrew – would be placed in foster care with brief, monitored visitation rights by his mother. Martinez claims Yaeli’s trans friend ‘coached’ her to tell social workers she was abused so the state would pay for her gender reassignment
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Martinez said one trans friend and their parents ‘coached’ Yaeli, persuading her to run away from home in July 2016 and tell the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) that her mother had slapped her in the face.
‘I never was abusive to my children. I love my children,’ the mother said. ‘I never slapped her. But she was coached by this family what to tell the authorities so they cannot send her back home with me.’
Although Martinez kept custody of her three other children and continued to work as a nanny, an LA family court judge ruled Yaeli – who now went by Andrew – would be placed in foster care with brief, monitored visitation rights by his mother.
‘On the visit days, when she came to my house, I was told not to talk about God,’ Martinez said. ‘They told me if you do that, you’ll never see your daughter.
‘But I brought meals to share with her on Saturdays, and we prayed before eating. She would close her eyes and bow her head.’
When Andrew turned 19 in 2019 he was sent to an ‘independent house’, but was struggling to get by and was hospitalized after another overdose attempt, Martinez said.
‘She called me and said, “Mom, I don’t have any food, my last meal I’m giving it to a friend because she’s pregnant,” Martinez said.
‘I told her I’m going to Costco and dropping off food. She sent me a message, she said, “Mom, I wanted to cry because no matter what you’re always there for me.”
‘[Social workers] asked me not to call her by her first name. I just say “My child, I love you.” It was very hard.’
When Andrew turned 19 in 2019 he was sent to an ‘independent house’, but was struggling to get by and was hospitalized after another overdose attempt, Martinez said
One day in September that year, Martinez said she was filled with dread and didn’t know why.
‘I didn’t feel good, I felt a pain in my chest the whole day,’ she said. ‘I wanted to run and cry, it was a weird feeling I’d never felt before. I got a phone call, they said it was Pomona Police.
‘Around 9:30pm that night, she walked in front of the train tracks facing a train. She went on her knees, raised her arms up and just laid on the tracks.
‘I wasn’t able to recognize my daughter. I couldn’t see her for the last time. I was told if I wanted to see her I needed to sign a form because there was not much to see.’
Martinez said she and her family are now ‘broken’, and that although the state’s intervention in Andrew’s care was meant to protect her, in fact it had the opposite effect.
‘I knew that the hormones wouldn’t work,’ she said. ‘She was taken away from my house because they wanted to save her life. My question to all of them is where is my daughter now? Why did they play with her life?
‘I’m broken. My family life is not going to be the same ever again.’
A former civil rights director for the federal Department of Health and Human Services who helped Martinez with her case claimed that the Arcadia school district and LA County put politics before Andrew’s wellbeing.
Text messages shared with DailyMail.com showed Yaeli had a loving relationship with her mother despite claims Martinez was ‘abusive’
In an emotional message to Martinez months before her death, Yaeli told her mother she was the ‘best mom anyone could ask for’
Roger Severino told DailyMail.com that he believes district officials were afraid of losing funding and desperate to show their pro-trans credentials after being sued by the Obama administration in 2013 for discriminating against a trans boy, and inappropriately pushed gender reassignment on children as a result.
A July 2013 settlement between the Department of Justice and the district obligated schools to ‘promptly inform’ any gender-transitioning student of ‘their right to request a support team of appropriate individuals to ensure that the student has equal access to and equal opportunity to participate in the District’s programs and activities.’
‘The state got between a young girl in trouble and the person who loved her the most, her mother,’ said Severino.
‘Instead of working through the underlying depression, they put Abi’s daughter on a one-way track straight to transition and chemical interventions that would lead to permanent sterilization as a kid.
‘Because the state took Abi’s daughter away, her depression got worse. And without having her mother’s love, she took her own life.
‘I think the school district ultimately is responsible for her death.’
‘To them, my child was a number in the system. It’s all political,’ said Martinez.
‘I want them to change this broken system, not to play with our children’s lives, to give them what they really need. Not to go for what they believe. We are the parents, we raise these children.
‘I don’t want any other parent to suffer and go through what I’ve been going through. This pain doesn’t have a beginning or end.’
Source: Daily Mail
