16-year old trans teen in foster care after police interrupts Twitch stream
A 16-year old trans teen from Tennessee, who goes by the name Wynn and VioWynn on Twitch, is now in foster care after her Twitch Minecraft stream was interrupted by police.
Wynn was playing Minecraft at the time of the police’s arrival, and at the time it the recording was released via social media, the reason for her being taken away by the police had not yet been revealed.
Speaking to Motherboard via email, Wynn said she was “pressured to do online school rather than attend in person”. Motherboard writes that other school children outside of Wynn were also expected to do schooling online. However, Wynn refused, which led to her being considered “truant.”
In a recording of the Twitch stream, Wynn states that this may be their last stream. “[The police] are trying to get me to either kill myself, or go into foster care or something. Instead of just giving me an education! Honestly, I just want to go to school. But they don’t want me to go to school because I’m trans.”
Wynn tells Motherboard that they feel the reason the police were checking up on her was to do a wellness check, however she felt pressured by the authorities to enter into foster care. The police eventually remove her door, which had been blocked by a chair, and after a few minutes in the room they tell her father to cut the power – which is why the Twitch stream cuts off.
Just before the police enter her room, Wynn says to her viewers that she doesn’t “understand why the state of Tennessee would rather ruin a child’s life than just let her go to school, but it really shows where their priorities are.”
What already seemed to be a terrifying situation took a turn for the worse when the camera cut off. Wynn explains that the police turned her chair around and got mad at her for crying. “They made me leave my room and had an officer search it. After that, they told me I shouldn’t have put the chair against my door and then took my door off of its hinges. They asked if I was suicidal, I said no, and then they left.” Afterwards they came back to watch Wynn get taken to foster care.
Currently Wynn is in foster care, but according to what she told Motherboard, she is doing much better now. “The plan now is to try getting a new court date for the foster care people to tell a judge that I don’t need to be in foster care in hopes that I can be officially released from DCS custody.” Wynn also provided information that the school has agreed to let her attend summer school to catch up with work.
Tennessee has been plagued with anti-transgender laws for years now, with last year being a particularly heinous year due to to banning trans children from using multi-person bathrooms or locker rooms that do not “reflect their sex at birth”. The state also banned trans athletes from performing playing girls public high school or middle school sports.
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