(intense music) My six year old daughter,
Bella, is smart, she's very independent.
She's really sassy.
Sassy lady.
She marches to the beat of her own drum.
And she was born as my son James.
By three years old, James was showing a preference
for things that were pink, sparkly, hearts, dolls.
Which one do you want?
The pink one.
The pink one?
Can we add some accessories?
Yeah.
James verbalized that he wanted to be a girl,
and that it was time to let him change his name.
He said, "I wanna be called Isabella."
Did you like being a boy?
No.
Did you ever feel comfortable being a boy?
No.
I do not believe that this is a phase for Bella.
We have always had consistent, persistent, verbalization,
of this is who I am, and this is who I wanna be.
You want the boa or anything?
Boa.
Can use it as my hair.
The hardest part is that my parents and my brother
refuse to accept that James is now Bella.
Well Carly says she hasn't seen her family in 10 months
because they just won't accept Bella with pink hair,
pink dresses, or pink nail polish.
Now Carly says they've even called CPS
on her and her husband Bradley, screaming child abuse.
My parents and my brother believe
that allowing her to transition is child abuse.
My brother says that I am brainwashing James
into believing that he is a girl.
As soon as I mentioned, he could be gay,
it started to become an issue for my parents and my brother.
My mother took away all dolls.
Your mother started to realize that
I was changing sides.
Yeah.
And she took it away from me,
and it was really not nice.
At age four I dyed Bella's hair pink,
and they forcibly held him down
and scrubbed the color out of his hair.
They told Bella when they scrubbed the color out of his hair
that he was hurting Jesus.
My parents and my brother have released statements to CPS
that it sickens them to watch what I have done to him.
They have suggested to CPS that Bella is removed
from my custody.
My parents and my brother have traumatized Bella,
and tried to take her away from me,
so I decided to cut my parents and my brother
out of our life, until they can change.
OK, thanks for being here.
At this point there is a big fracture
between you and the family, right?
Yes, a huge one.
And, tell me what you think the basis of this is?
They think that I have brainwashed my child
into believing that, you know, that he is a girl.
You know, they think that I created this.
The words that they have used is,
I had a secret agenda to feminize my son.
Mm-hmm, and what would be your motive for that?
What do they attribute that,
why do they think you would want to do that?
I honestly don't know.
I don't know--
Well, why would you care one way or the other,
boy, girl, why would you care one way or the other?
We don't. What's their theory?
You know, that's the problem, that we don't care,
we just wanted to love the kid for who she was,
and I don't know why they think
that we have agenda to somehow persuade it either way.
But they have to be attributing some motive to it.
Why do they think that you would want to do this?
Maybe for attention.
All right, and so your brother Daniel, and he's here,
and he'll be out in a little bit,
and he's listening to everything we're talking about,
so he'll be up to speed.
But, he tells us that he thinks you're grooming your child.
So not just that you're recognizing this,
but that you're actually grooming him,
programming the boy to want to be a girl.
Bella has always been the way that she is,
since she's been able to, you know,
verbalize what it is that, you know,
that she liked, and we have always just supported her,
and for the longest time my family just kind of,
you know, pretended that it wasn't real,
that it wasn't there,
but when they couldn't deny it anymore, you know,
then it was, you know, you caused it to be this way.