Sam Roy is school counsellor with a conditional licence to practice social work in Maine. It has just been revealed Roy facilitated the transition of a 13-year-old girl without her parents knowledge or consent.

Amber Lavigne, the mother of the young girl, revealed at a school board meeting Wednesday that she discovered a chest binder in her daughter’s bedroom several weeks ago. Her daughter told her the binder was provided by a social worker at the public school who encouraged her to keep it secret from her parents, she said.

School staff were also using male pronouns for the child without her knowledge or consent.

The tearful mother addressed school officials, describing the harm to her family as a result of the secret grooming.

“A social worker at the school encouraged a student to keep a secret from her parents,” she said.

“This is the very definition of child predatory sexual grooming,” she said. “Predators work to gain a victims’ trust by driving a wedge between them and their parents.”

“Laws, policies, and parental trust were broken,” she said. “No other parent should have to go through the trauma and distress this has caused my family.”

Her daughter is no longer in the public school system.

Binary spokeswoman Kirralie Smith said it was every parents’ worst nightmare.

“Schools were once a place of trust and integrity,” she said.

“Now they have become hotbeds for activism of all kinds. School staff should never have been given permission to enable students to make life altering decisions that can negatively impact their health without parental knowledge or consent.

“Schools should be for education, not indoctrination.”