Last week, a horrifying report revealed that a young girl in Virginia had been sexually assaulted and trafficked while in the custody of the state. The reason Sage was in state custody in the first place is just as troubling: State officials refused to return her to the care of her grandparents, who are her legal guardians, because they hadn’t affirmed Sage’s new male identity.

Sage began identifying as a boy at school when she was 14 years old and suffered severe bullying from her male peers as a result. Instead of informing Sage’s grandmother, Michele, and grandfather about her mental health struggles, Appomattox County High School kept Michele in the dark. The school did not tell her that Sage was going by a new name and using the boys’ restroom. And even when it called to inform Michele of the bullying Sage had been experiencing, it made sure not to mention Sage’s new “gender identity.”

Distraught, Sage left her grandparents’ home one night to meet up with some online friends who were actually sexual predators. She was trafficked into Washington, D.C., and Maryland, where she suffered horrible abuse for nine days.

After Sage was found, Michele and her husband Roger were instructed to appear at a court hearing before Judge Robert Kershaw. During the hearing, Sage’s assigned public defender, Aneesa Khan, told the court that Sage did not wish to return home and that she had been “emotionally and physically abused by his parents in connection with [his] expressed male gender identity and desire to live as a trans male.”

The state then took custody of Sage and put her in the Catonsville Children’s Home, where she was housed as a boy because of her male “gender identity.” She suffered further abuse as a result and eventually ran away again to meet up with another online “friend” in Texas. She was once again trafficked — this time for months.

Sage’s story is a reminder that putting ideology ahead of the well-being of children has devastating consequences. Her school should never have hidden the information about her “gender identity” and ailing mental health from her grandparents. The court should never have taken temporary custody of Sage, and it certainly should not have placed her in a male dormitory. All of this could have been prevented, but the state’s relentless desire to force gender ideology onto the public left it blind to a child’s suffering and the ways in which they were contributing to it.

In response to Sage’s testimony, Virginia Republicans introduced Sage’s Law (also known as HB 2432), which requires anyone “licensed as administrative or instructional personnel by the Board of Education and employed by a local school board” to inform “at least one parent” of a student’s gender confusion and to “ask whether such parent is aware of the student's mental state and whether the parent wishes to obtain or has already obtained counseling for such student.” The bill also makes it clear that declining to use a minor’s preferred name or pronouns cannot be construed as child abuse.

Unsurprisingly, Virginia Democrats , who control the state Senate, have vowed to kill the legislation. Their reason for doing so? “Even more children will be put in danger if the government interjects itself into the most personal of family discussions like this, regardless of whether it’s safe for the child to be out,” said Democratic Del. Danica Roem.

Anyone who thinks a child is safer or better off in the hands of the state need only recall Sage’s story and how every single government official, from her school counselor to the county superintendent to a sitting judge, failed to identify Sage’s gender confusion as a cry for help and instead encouraged her to go down a path that would eventually bring unspeakable trauma. The two people who could have actually helped, her guardians, were forcibly cut off from Sage, both physically and emotionally. They had no say in the treatment of their granddaughter. Indeed, they didn’t even know she needed help at all until it was already too late.

Sage’s Law is one way the state can begin righting its wrongs in this case. It would also guarantee that parents aren’t cut off from their children or cut out of critical decisions about their children’s well-being. It’s a commonsense reform, and those who oppose it should be forced to answer a simple question: Why?

Kaylee McGhee White is the deputy editor of Restoring America for the Washington Examiner and a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.