John Russell (He/Him)July 20, 2026, 1:00 pm EDTThe parents of a transgender teen who died by suicide earlier this year are speaking out about the toll Idaho’s anti-trans laws and the Trump administration’s anti-trans crusade took on their daughter.
“You worry about that hatred being internalized, and that’s what happened to my kid,” Elyse Thorpe told NBC News in a recent profile. “It got inside.”
Thorpe and ex-husband Joseph Pollard describe their late daughter, May Pollard, as an energetic and curious child who loved sloths, video games, and writing poetry. She just wanted to live her life and experience the same things any teen does. But she was also keenly aware of the wave of anti-trans laws and sentiment that have swept Idaho and much of the U.S. in recent years.
According to NBC News, May, who had also been diagnosed with autism, came out as trans when she was in eighth grade. She began receiving gender-affirming medical care in ninth grade. But due to Idaho’s ban on such care for minors, passed in 2022 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2024, her parents were forced to travel to Portland, Oregon, every six months to get May the care she needed. Following President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025, Thorpe began making the 13-hour round trip by car to avoid creating a flight record amid the administration’s relentless crackdown on gender-affirming care for young people.
While the treatment improved things for May, the obstacles placed between her and the care she needed by anti-trans legislators continued to weigh on her.
Then, in July 2023, Idaho’s law banning trans students from accessing single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity took effect. Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of Boise High School’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance, and in July 2025, May joined the lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe. In court filings, May described feeling stigmatized by being forced to use her campus’s two single-occupancy restrooms, which came to be referred to as the “trans bathrooms.”
“It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender,” she said. “I don’t want people to know I am transgender without my consent — even students who might be friendly. For me, it is not a part of myself I talk about or that I feel is the most important part of my identity.”
Her parents told NBC News that May would avoid eating and drinking during the school day, hoping to not have to use the school’s bathrooms. “I just want to fit in,” she wrote in her affidavit in the Lambda Legal case. “It is upsetting to think that I may have to go through the rest of high school without access to something as basic as the ability to use the same restroom as everyone else.”
May’s parents say she became more troubled last fall and winter, according to NBC News. She attempted to run away to Oregon, and at least one of her poems seemed to reference self-harm. Then on the morning of January 27, Thorpe woke to find May missing from her bedroom. She later found her daughter’s body in a downstairs bedroom. May was just 16 years old.
When a detective asked her parents whether anyone might have wanted to harm May, Thorpe responded that “A lot of America” did.
“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” an angry and grieving Pollard told the detective. “The whole f**king country. The whole f**king administration, every single f**king day.”
As NBC News notes, over the last few years, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) has signed 15 anti-LGBTQ+ laws. In April, Little signed a pair of bills, one of which made it a criminal offense for trans people to use the bathroom associated with their gender, while the other banned Pride flags on government buildings.
As for Lambda Legal’s challenge to the state’s school bathroom ban, at the time of May’s death, she was one of just two plaintiffs left in the case, as all the others had graduated high school and no longer held standing. Earlier this spring, Lambda Legal moved to dismiss the case after the final plaintiff graduated.
But Thorpe has continued to protest Idaho’s anti-trans laws. According to NBC News, she stood outside Gov. Little’s office during a March 31 protest holding a photo of her daughter.
“I wanted to support the protesters and remind everyone, including the governor,” Thorpe told the outlet, “that the stakes are real.”
“The parents go and testify, and we say, ‘Children are going to die,’” she said. “We tell the legislators that, and they dismiss it. I guess they think it’s hyperbole, or they think it’s hysteria, or they think it’s an acceptable outcome, probably some mix of those things. So I don’t understand why there is an unwillingness to connect these laws to these outcomes. It was right there from the start.”
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Parents speak out after their teen died by suicide: Idaho’s anti-trans extremism took a toll
Scottie's Playtime 
In a world gone crazy, the non-solution is to lay low, stay out of sight, and hope no one ever sees you.
But how can you be yourself when only 1 or 2 people even know “you” are there. How anyone who does not conform to a very strict set of social guidelines can survive, especially an “innocent child” who never did anything to hurt anyone but still they are bullied and castigated by everyone, shunned by those who might potentially have been friends and allies, what can he or she expect? It would be easy to see suicide as the best outcome. Though it is not an outcome because it is The End of a living person, I cannot hold them accountable for their actions.
The people who need to be held accountable are everyone who pressed May and others into a corner they could not get out of. They are all murderers.
I cannot know what trans or even gay kids had to go through, I am heterosexual. My affliction was not my gender. It was partially my race, my native blood; but it was much more than that. I say this without ego, without pride, just as a fact of my life. I was born with an IQ only certain people will ever have. I stood out in the classroom, being best or 2nd best student in every grade. Being a male halfbreed in a dominant white society, I was supposed to be subservient to others, a savage among civilized people, a non-person to make them feel better than me, better about who and what they were. My teachers all whites, never tried to sharpen my intellect like they did others around me. My classmates were sure I was showing off, making them feel like the morons they were in comparison to me. So they hated on me, bullied me, shunned me, and basically treated me then as LGBQT2S+ students are being treated today. There were no laws against me, no religions or politics that said I could not be me. But there were social rules, and I broke every one of them.
I have never told anyone about this, Scottie, you are the first to get most of the story almost complete. There is yet another side to this story to tell, one I have no time to tell right now. But if you ask for it I will flush it out for you later.
All I will say is society hates outliers, anyone who is different in any way. While genders are not invisible, and gender roles can change and be accepted by at least some friends with similar crosses to bear, I had no one, not that I ever met in my youth. Everyone hoped I would fail and fall, but I never did. Instead I dropped out of school, left home, and became a flower child/hippie. No one knew my past, and no one cared about intellect. Peace love and protesting the old values were the only requirements to join. And I was there. This was my home, the streets, and the people were my people. I was at peace with them and they with me. I loved them all.
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Hi Rawgod. What you say so well rings so true to me. Thank you so much for trusting me and this site with such personal truth. What you went through just being you is what in some respects what the LGBTQ+ kids go through. I did not have your intelligence and I couldn’t understand others very well maybe I was on the spectrum or maybe it was my childhood sexual abuse that made me misread so many clues my fellow classmates put out daily that confused me.
I feel so sorry for what you went through. I know you told me before not to morn your past as you survived it, but it does pain me that you went through it as it would pain me any child facing what you did. So many couldn’t have done as well as you which is a testement to your internal fortitude. Frankly, in the time you grew up and what you were facing as I have watched the documentary the Canadian government put out about the horrific abuses of anti-native Christian schools and the horrible abuses done to the kids I am shocked you are as well grounded as you are.
That hate and misunderstanding toward the native people is again something I don’t understand. Most people in the US don’t understand our US constitution and the declaration of independence was heavily influenced by the native people in the soon to be US who described their way of governing to the founding fathers.
You may always share what you wish to here; it is as safe a place as I can make it. But if you wish privacy you may email me at Scottiestoybox@gmail.com. However from what I have read in your own posts and what you have shared with me you do not shy away from much of anything.
That said, it has been a long time since I have been to your blog. You were facing lots of health issues for both you and for your compainion. Plus you had many cats. Any updates on your life you wish to share I would love to know.
But you ask how to be true to yourself if only a few know. When I went into the army after being in the navy, I could have a car which most of my fellow classmates did not. I was in constant demand for cute young horny “straight”males to go on passes with them. Yes it always came down to us having sex and straight or not they received as they gave. When I was in Stugart working for the command of European theater my boyfriend at the time got into trouble due to illegal drugs. I went to the commanding admiral and he was totally cool with us being gay kids in love. He had us transferred to Berlin. When we got there on a Sunday we were met by our new first sargent who sat behind his desk and calmly asked… so I understand you two are a couple. My boyfriend was terrifed to answer but I spoke up and said yes we are first sargent. He smiled and said yes the admiral made that clear. OK it will take me a day or so to move people around but we will get you a room together in a few days. That was the last time I ever denied being gay.
I lost jobs, lost promotions, was assaulted on the job site, and was discriminated against because of it but since then to today I am proud to be a gay man. As I think you are of your heritage. Hugs
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