A Canadian judge sentenced Rob Hoogland to six months in prison and fined him $30,000. His crime? He violated a court gag order and spoke out against testosterone shots being given – under court order – to his daughter, who was only 14 years old when a court approved the experimental, body-damaging treatment.

Hoogland, known as “C.D.” in the court papers, had refused to call his biological daughter by a male name, opposed her “transition” to look like a boy, and named doctors responsible for prescribing and administering male hormones to the young girl.

Hoogland entered the court last Wednesday, April 14, ready to plead guilty and receive sentencing under a plea agreement with the British Columbia (B.C.) Attorney General. The plea agreement would have given him 18 months’ probation and credit for one month already spent in custody. However, the judge threw out that deal, had three days of hearings on the case and gave Hoogland the longer sentence and the fine.

In an online YouTube interview, Hoogland tells how the story began when his daughter was in fourth or fifth grade, and she began having some difficulties in school. He began working with the school counselor on a safety plan for his daughter – helping her deal with depression and other mental health issues.

In seventh grade, she discovered transgender videos and films. School counselors and officials also pushed transgender ideology onto the youngster – without Hoogland’s knowledge. At the time, her dad thought she would “snap out of” this “phase,” eventually embracing her bodily reality. He had no idea how much educators and health care professionals were pushing the transgender agenda.

Then he found out she’d changed her name at school – by reading her yearbook. School officials never notified him about the girl’s “social transition” toward living as a boy.

The school put Hoogland’s wife – the two are divorced – in touch with a psychologist, Dr. Wallace Wong. According to TransCare BC, the doctor works at the Ministry of Children and Family Development – Child and Youth Mental Health, as a clinical psychologist of the Gender Health Program, and the Children and Adolescence Sexual Health Program (ACSH). 

Wong also has a private practice, the Diversity and Emotional Wellness Centre, and is the author of three LGBT books for children: When Kathy is Keith, It’s So Gay and It’s Okay, and My Positive Uncle. In a talk with a parents group at a library, Wong said that his gender clinic started in 2010 with four clients, but that now he sees more than 1,000 children through his private practice and the Ministry.” Some of these children are orphans or in foster care. He said his youngest patient is “two-and-three-quarters years old.”

When she was in eighth grade, Hoogland’s daughter had a crush on a male teacher who appropriately, rejected her advances. She was moved to another class and became suicidal. In a consultation with the family, Wong explained to Hoogland that the crush only meant that she was “actually not a girl, she’s a boy, but a gay boy.”

When the girl was 13, she told her father that she had a referral from Wong to B.C. Children’s Hospital for testosterone treatment, to suppress her body’s normal production of estrogen and masculinize her body. After an hour’s consultation – without her father’s presence – the endocrinologist prescribed testosterone. This was in August 2018.

Hoogland was horrified when he read the “Informed Consent Form” for “Testosterone Therapy For Gender Dysphoria,” which his wife and daughter had signed. It includes warnings like:

• I understand that the effect of this on me means that, even though I think of myself partially or completely as male, I am genetically, biologically and physically female.
• The following changes will likely be permanent, even if testosterone is discontinued: lower voice pitch; increased growth of hair, with thicker/coarser hairs, on arms, legs, chest, back, and abdomen; gradual growth of mustache/beard hair; hair loss at the temples and crown of the head, with the possibility of becoming completely bald.
• It is not known what the effects of testosterone are on fertility. Even if you stop taking testosterone, you may or may not be able to get pregnant in the future.
• The medical effects and safety of testosterone are not fully understood, and there may be long-term risks that are not yet known.

Other risks for girls and women taking testosterone, also detailed on the consent form, include heart disease, increased blood pressure, lower good cholesterol, higher bad cholesterol, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, headaches, migraines, acne, and increased anger and irritability.

After Hoogland refused to sign the consent and received months of harassment from a social worker, the hospital told Hoogland, in December 2018, that they didn’t need his approval.

Under the B.C. Infants Act, a minor can consent to health care if the health care provider explains the risks and “has been satisfied that the infant [i.e., minor] understands the nature and consequences and the reasonably foreseeable benefits and risks of the health care, and has made reasonable efforts to determine and has concluded that the health care is in the infant’s best interests.”

Hoogland filed for a restraining order, and the case finally landed before Supreme Court of British Columbia Justice Gregory Bowden. He ruled that the then 14-year-old girl could receive testosterone injections and that she could legally change her name and “gender.” He also decreed that Hoogland must affirm her new identity and use male pronouns when talking about her. To do otherwise would be considered “family violence.” In addition, the names of the girl and her parents were not to be publicized.

The justice basically stripped Hoogland of his parental rights and set his daughter on an experimental medical journey with permanent, damaging effects to her body.

To warn other parents and protest the decision, Hoogland gave interviews with numerous outlets, including The Federalist, in March 2019. Giving him the pseudonym “Clark,” the outlet wrote, “Throughout our interview, Clark continued to refer to his daughter as a girl, ‘because she is a girl. Her DNA will not change through all these experiments that they do.’”

The next month, Justice Francesca Marzari of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, declared Hoogland guilty of ‘family violence” for violating Bowden’s order. The judge issued a protection order against him, saying he could not address the girl by her birth name, use female pronouns in referring to her, attempt to persuade her to abandon treatment or share with others anything about the case.

The court later issued an additional order, stating that Hoogland would “be subject to arrest, immediately and ‘without warrant’ if any police officer has ‘reasonable’ grounds to believe that he has in any way referred to his daughter as a girl in public or in private,” as The Federalist reported.

Hoogland continued his court battles and continued to defy court orders, speaking out about his efforts to protect his child. In January 2020, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia ruled that he could not stop his daughter from receiving injections and indefinitely banning publication of the names of those involved in the case.

He continued to give interviews, however, while Canadian courts ordered them taken off social media sites. Some videos of Hoogland still remain available, where Canadian authorities could not remove the content. and they show his passion for his daughter – and for other parents who could face this situation.

Hoogland was finally arrested and jailed on March 16, and held without bail for “criminal contempt,” for violating the gag order. The Vancouver Police Department composed a 22-page report of Hoogland’s “Cybercrimes,” listing the number of times he refers to his daughter or uses female pronouns – rather than court-mandated language. The documents also lists his GoGetFunding page, which says, “C.D. has incurred enormous losses and expenses in this process, and has been dragged through a kind of legal hell that now includes jail.” 

Bringing us to where we are today. A father is found guilty of speaking out about his daughter’s impossible attempt to become the opposite sex. If you’re thinking, “Well that’s Canada – it couldn’t happen here,” that’s not the case.

The U.S. is on the same trajectory. Schools are teaching children gender ideology and helping children socially and medically “transition” – without informing parents. Entertainment and media push the transgender narrative. Doctors are colluding with courts to override parents who want to protect their children. States are elevating “gender identity” to a protected status and removing gender-confused children from parents’ custody.

Now, more than ever, Christians must courageously speak the truth – with love and wisdom – about God’s good design of humanity as male and female, uniquely created to bear His image. Parents must work to protect their children from gender ideology in education and from negative entertainment, media and social media influences. And the church must stand strong for free speech, religious freedom and parental rights in the cultural and political square.

In addition, please pray for Rob Hoogland and his daughter, and for the parents of gender-confused children, adolescents, teens and young adults. For whatever reason, the blurring and erasing of God-given male-female distinctions is one of the key issues of our time. We need prayer for those dealing with this in their families as well as in the broader culture.