‘It Has Destroyed Our Lives’: Christian Parents Sue Over Accusation They Caused ‘Mental Injury’ for Refusing to ‘Affirm’ Daughter’s Transgender Identity
A Christian mom and her husband are fighting back in court after Oregon’s Department of Human Services determined that they caused “mental injury” to her daughter by refusing to “affirm” her transgender identity.
“It has destroyed our lives,” Nicole Calaway, the mother of two daughters who are now estranged because they both claim a transgender identity, told the Daily Signal in an interview Sunday.
Child Protective Services took custody of her then-15-year-old daughter, K.A., on July 18, 2024, one day after Calaway and K.A. terminated the services of K.A.’s therapist, Jennifer Forster. According to court documents, Forster filed the complaint that resulted in K.A.’s removal.
ODHS notified the Calaways that the agency considered them “responsible for the mental injury” of K.A. “Your adverse reactions to [K.A.] expressing their gender identity have caused serious harm to [K.A.’s] psychological functioning,” ODHS caseworker Rachel Woods wrote in a Sept. 13 letter.
Calaway’s older daughter had already moved out.
“I was so distraught, it felt like I was gutted,” the mother said. “Both my daughters were gone. I took myself to the hospital and admitted myself for a week because I couldn’t handle it.”
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The mother remains estranged from her daughters, and Oregon has ordered her not to contact K.A. Yet the state’s findings haven’t just affected her maternal relationship.
A Black Mark on the Parents’ Records
The “mental injury” finding constitutes a child abuse ruling on Calaway’s permanent record and on the record of her husband, David. The stigma of a state agency finding the two guilty of child abuse has followed them across state lines after their move to Florida in July 2025.
“In Oregon, if they were to do a background check, I could have lost my notary license, I still cannot—even here—volunteer with the church, anything to do with children,” the mother told the Daily Signal.
The stigma may be even worse for her husband. Months after the two moved to Florida, the Oregon Department of Human Services determined that David Calaway had “exhibited a pattern of inappropriate grooming behaviors to include making inappropriate sexual comments while [K.A.] was in his care.” The husband vehemently contested the claims, saying he is innocent and was not given an opportunity to appeal. While the office made the determination in December 2025, he did not receive notification of it until May 12.
The husband told the Daily Signal that his employment has yet to be affected by the matter, but he highlighted this message from the notice: “This abuse finding could have an impact on David Calaway’s ability to volunteer or to obtain or retain a professional license or certain types of employment.”
“If I was being accused of sexual abuse, wouldn’t there be a police record? Wouldn’t I be arrested? Wouldn’t I be in jail?” the husband asked.
“It’s like we’re guilty until proven innocent,” the mother said.
The couple filed a lawsuit earlier this month, accusing the therapist, Forster, and ODHS agents of violating their rights under the First and 14th Amendments.
Dissent From Transgender Orthodoxy Is ‘Mental Injury’
The lawsuit states that ODHS had previously screened out one child abuse referral against the Calaways and found a second referral unfounded, both in 2023. K.A.’s father, Keith Allison, who sought custody of the daughter, claimed that K.A. was in immediate danger, but the court denied two of his motions in 2024.
“On essentially the same facts later used to remove K.A., a neutral court had twice declined to find immediate danger, and ODHS had already once found the mental-injury allegation unfounded,” the lawsuit states.
On May 23, 2024, K.A. left school with a friend and did not notify her mother. She told school staff that she did not feel safe at home because her mother had showed her videos opposing transgender ideology the night before. School staff insisted she be taken to a stabilization center. Later, K.A. apologized to her mother and thanked her for helping her “acknowledge reality.”
On July 17, Nicole Calaway and K.A. spoke on the phone with Forster, and terminated her services. Both K.A. and her mother accused the therapist of hiding information from the mother.
According to the lawsuit, Woods, the ODHS caseworker, recommended that Forster call the Child Protective Services hotline shortly after this call. Forster called the hotline the next morning and made many claims the lawsuit describes as false.
The therapist said that the mother had “presented as aggressive and angry,” and that she said K.A. “would no longer have support.” Forster would also write that the mother terminated counseling out of a “desire to manage client’s mental health without counseling support.”
The lawsuit claims these statements were false but gave ODHS a “fabricated appearance of urgency.” On July 18, ODHS and law enforcement officers removed K.A. from the Calaways’ home for “mental injury.”
According to the lawsuit, ODHS concluded that Nicole Calaway’s decision to show her daughter videos presenting arguments against transgender ideology harmed her daughter’s psychological functioning. The Calaways dispute this, saying the agency treated disagreement with the ideology as child abuse.
“When did the truth become mental injury?” David Calaway asked in an interview with the Daily Signal.
The Calaways appealed the decisions, but ODHS stood by the finding.
In November 2024, ODHS voluntarily withdrew the dependency petition, by which the department had removed K.A. from the Calaways’ home. While the department had dismissed the underlying claim, it nonetheless maintained the child-abuse findings against the Calaways. The plaintiffs argue the dismissal undercuts the state’s justification for removing K.A. from their home.
“It began with them accusing us because we’re conservative Christians, and we don’t affirm her transgender ideology, that we provided hours of lectures to teach her daughter that this ideology isn’t right for her, and isn’t healthy for her, and they come and remove her from the home, and that was their reasoning,” the husband told the Daily Signal.
Why Oppose Transgender Ideology?
According to the lawsuit, the Calaways refused to “affirm” K.A. as “transgender” due to their conservative Christian convictions that “a person cannot change from one sex to the other” and their view “that so-called ‘gender-affirming care’—including ‘social transition’—is harmful to children and teens and has never been proven safe or effective.”
The lawsuit cites the United Kingdom’s Cass Review and the Department of Health and Human Services’ study finding little evidence for positive impacts from sex-rejecting procedures.
The lawsuit accuses Forster of engaging in therapeutic malpractice because she “knew, or in the exercise of reasonable professional care should have known, that so-called ‘gender-affirming care,’ including social transition, is not a proven, safe, or effective treatment for an adolescent girl and is psychologically harmful.”
Nicole Calaway told the Daily Signal she presented multiple videos to her daughter, including testimonials of detransitioners, “because I wanted her to make an informed decision. I did not want her to ruin her body. I still do not want her to ruin her body.”
The Lawsuit
The Calaways’ lawsuit cited 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming deprivation of rights under the color of law. They claim that the therapist and ODHS official conspired to use the power of the state to interfere with Nicole Calaway’s right to direct the care, custody, and upbringing of her child under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Calaways also claim defendants violated their rights to free speech and religious freedom under the First Amendment by attempting to force them to support transgender ideology.
The lawsuit also claims that ODHS directed school officials to deny Nicole Calaway access to her daughter’s educational records, even though no court order restricted her parental rights.
The Daily Signal reached out to Forster, to ODHS, and to K.A.’s school district for comment and did not receive responses by publication time.
The Christian couple seeks compensatory and general damages of at least $5 million, special and economic damages, punitive damages, a declaratory judgment in their favor, attorney’s fees, and an injunction removing them from a child abuse registry or a sex offender registry.
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