Stephanie Brown was filming from across the mat, the way she always did at her daughter Kallie’s wrestling matches. Then she saw Kallie’s face. Something was wrong, but she could not tell what. “I don’t know what she said or why her face looked like that,” Stephanie can be heard saying on the recording. What she did not know was that the opponent her 15-year-old daughter was facing was actually a male athlete—and that he was sexually assaulting Kallie in the middle of the match.
This wasn’t a wrestling move gone wrong. Kallie had been wrestling since she was four and had never experienced the violation she felt in the moment. It was sexual assault. And when she found the courage to report it, the adults in charge—her coaches, her school, and the officials who run girls sports in Washington—did nothing for nearly two months.
Kallie’s assault was not a fluke. It was the product of bad policy. The state of Washington requires schools to let males who identify as female compete in girls sports, and it bars school staff from telling parents, so Stephanie had no warning and no way to keep her daughter off that mat.
Now, Kallie and her mother are asking a federal court to hold Washington officials accountable and to make girls sports safe again.
Wrestling has always been Kallie’s sport
Kallie Keeler is a sophomore at Rogers High School in the Puyallup School District in Washington. Wrestling runs in her family. Her three older brothers wrestled, and she fell in love with the sport watching them compete. She began wrestling at age four and has stayed with it for more than a decade.
Heading into the 2025-2026 season, she ranked first on her junior varsity team in the 190-pound weight class, one spot away from varsity. She also plays soccer, but wrestling is her favorite. She was 15 at the time of the December tournament and has since turned 16. Her mother, Stephanie, has stood beside her throughout, recording her matches and, now, fighting to get the adults in charge to do their jobs.
Sexual assault leads to silence from Washington officials
Kallie’s first tournament of the season was a girls-only event sponsored by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) and the district. For her final match, coaches and a tournament official directed her to the mat against an opponent from another school. Kallie and her mother assumed her opponent was a girl.
During the match, the male athlete sexually assaulted her, putting his fingers through Kallie’s spandex to penetrate her private areas. Such an act has no place in any context, let alone wrestling, and Washington law treats this as a serious crime.
Visibly distressed, Kallie let herself be pinned so the match would end, then ran to her mother in tears. Only afterward did a coach from another team tell her that her opponent was male, adding to her feeling of being violated.
Two days later, Kallie’s mother reported the assault in writing to the coaches and gave them video of the match. A coach replied that she had not known the opponent was male and said she would follow up. Days went by. Then weeks passed. They hadn’t heard anything. Under Washington law, school personnel must report assault complaints to law enforcement within 48 hours. As it turned out, the district did not notify law enforcement for nearly two months, and only after a journalist contacted the school for comment.
In other words, despite mandatory reporter laws, officials ignored the incident until it became a national news story weeks later. Even now, they refuse to take it seriously and deal with the assault, to reserve girls sports for girls, or even to give parents the necessary notice so they can keep their daughters safe.
Holding Washington officials accountable
Behind this assault are Washington policies that made it possible. State and WIAA rules require schools to let males who identify as female compete in girls sports, and the district interprets its policies to prohibit staff from telling parents when a daughter will face a male opponent. That left Stephanie with no notice and no chance to opt her daughter out. Even after the assault, the district declined to change that policy or to promise Kallie she would not be matched against a male again.
Faced with no guarantee of her safety, Kallie and Stephanie made the difficult decision to withdraw Kallie from wrestling for the rest of the season.
But now, they are filing a lawsuit to hold Washington officials accountable. By putting a male in a girls match, then treating her report of assault as something they could ignore, these officials denied Kallie the protection she deserves. In addition, Washington policy sidelines parents from being able to make decisions about their own children’s safety. When the district hid from Stephanie that her daughter would be matched against a male and refused to let her opt out, it took that decision away from her.
The bottom line
Kallie was sexually assaulted, and Washington officials did nothing because of political cowardice. A boy can’t be a girl, but Washington state officials insist on pushing the lie of gender ideology over girls’ safety and privacy. Kallie’s story is proof that the lies and cowardice must end. Otherwise, girls get hurt.
Case Timeline
- December 2025: Kallie unknowingly wrestles a male athlete at a WIAA-sponsored girls tournament and is sexually assaulted during the match. Within two days, her mother reports the assault in writing to coaches and provides video.
- January 2026: Kallie does not rejoin the team because the district will not ensure her safety. With still no action from the district, officials report the assault to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office for the first time at the end of January, nearly two months after the family’s report and only after a journalist sought comment.
- February 2026: Kallie’s story is made public and goes viral. The U.S. Department of Education opens a Title IX investigation into the school district.
- June 2026: Kallie and her mother file a federal lawsuit against Washington officials.
