This week, the story of Adam Vena, a father from California who lost custody of his five-year-old son, Aidan, for refusing to affirm his supposed “transgender identity” went viral.
According to what the father has reported to local and national media, he has spent the last two years without seeing his son, who has been undergoing a gender transition forced upon him by his mother over the previous three years.
According to the father’s version, Aidan’s mother began dressing her son in women’s clothing from age two and changing his pronouns. Vena, who refused to accept the mother’s impositions, lost full custody of his son after California courts declared that he was “abusive” for not accepting Aidan’s forced gender transition.
“This is crazy. The parent who wants to change the child’s perfect body is abusive,” Vena said last June at a protest in front of the California Capitol. “My personal beliefs and my First Amendment rights were squashed because I didn’t want my 3-year-old son to wear a dress.”
Vena’s story was overlooked for a long time, but now it has become national news thanks to a viral interview with conservative activist Billboard Chris.
This is Adam Vena. He has lost custody of his son in California, because the mother decided the boy was really a girl. At the age of 2.
Adam spoke out against this, and the authorities consider that abuse. He now has a 5-year restraining order forbidding him from talking to his… pic.twitter.com/VrzGZeKNzr
— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) December 17, 2023
Chris reported that Vena, in addition to losing custody, also has a five-year restraining order that prevents him from having contact with his son.
Vena revealed that this situation has him truly terrified because at the age of ten, the boy’s mother could start giving Aidan the controversial puberty blockers.
“I am terrified for my son,” the father said. “I am terrified of what they’ve been pumping inside my son’s head.”
According to the website of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, Vena denounced that all the elements involved in the legal battle for his son in California have been openly supportive of gender ideology, including the judge in the case.
“They refer to my son as a girl in court,” Vena said indignantly.
According to his version, the judge who oversaw the case in the beginning, Harvey Silberman, had ordered that Aidan undergo a gender evaluation that only the child’s mother could attend, not Adam himself.
“I was denied the ability to attend the gender assessment, was denied the ability to ask my own questions as the father of Aidan,” Vena said. “Not one time was I ever sat down and asked about what I thought was going on with my son.”
The doctors, according to Vena, established that Aidan did not have gender dysphoria but rather gender curiosity. However, the mother still decided to change her little son’s pronouns and continue dressing him in girl’s clothes.
To continue with the grooming process, Vena reported that the mother finally wrote an email to the private school where Aidan attended to have them recognize his “trans identity.”
“I’m sure you all know Aidan, the boy who wears dresses (…) Aidan has come out as transgender and is ready for the world to accept her for who she truly is. She fully identifies as female, uses female pronouns, and uses the girl’s restroom,” the email said.
“Aidan knows the word she will use if and when any of her peers question the fact that they have always known her as a boy,” the email continued. “Aidan is a girl who was born in a boy’s body. To me, she says, ‘every single part of me is a girl, except I have a (anatomically correct word for male genitalia).’”
Father Adam only found out about the email when another concerned father told him what Aidan’s mother had done.
According to Turning Point, since Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the controversial bill AB957, which set a precedent for revoking custody of a “non-affirming” parent, Adam Vena is raising funds through GiveSendGo to hire a lawyer and continue fighting to have access to his son.
