A Leawood mother worries hot-button transgender politics mean 'it's not safe' for her son at...

Her son is out of the hospital now, she said, but her family and other families with transitioning kids continue to face educational, bureaucratic and political minefields.
“Trey” is a 12-year-old boy who started middle school this year. Hard enough for anyone at an age when kids are trying to fit in.

But when surreptitious videos of him walking to and from school surfaced on TikTok, things went from terrifying to worse.

Trey – his family asked KCUR to change his name for this story – is transgender. His mother says his life has been “hell” since he began the year at Leawood Middle School.

“My kid tried to take his life last week,” Virginia Franzese said recently in the den of her Leawood home, where she can see the school out her back door. “He's sitting in a mental institution and the doctors there don't want him going back to school because it's not safe for him.”