‘Sickening’ Account of Mutilations, Sterilizations Prompts Sen. Josh Hawley to Investigate Transgender Clinic

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) speaks during a Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight on Capitol Hill in Washington on Aug. 3, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

After reading a whistleblower’s “sickening” revelations about a pediatric gender clinic, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said his office was launching an immediate investigation of its practices.

“This is a sickening account of forced sterilization and child abuse,” Hawley said in a tweet on Feb. 9, attaching the lengthy whistleblower account of a former employee of The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital,

In an article posted by The Free Press, ex-case manager Jamie Reed calls for a nationwide halt to the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for transgender-identifying minors—practices that American lawmakers have attempted to ban in a number of states.

The Epoch Times attempted to reach a spokesperson at the St. Louis hospital, but a receptionist said that the media line was “busy”; the call then disconnected.

The hospital calls itself “the guardians of childhood.”

But Reed’s article, entitled “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle,” asserts that children are being harmed at the gender clinic.

Reed’s article includes screenshots of emails in which she repeatedly expressed concerns over parents and children lacking full awareness of the possible consequences of these medical interventions. Reed was scorned for raising alarms.

‘Stop Questioning’

She describes doctors telling her and a colleague that they had to “stop questioning the ’medicine and the science' as well as their authority.”

Reed said she left her job at the clinic in late 2022 because she couldn’t stomach the “morally and medically appalling” effects on children.

During Reed’s four-year stint at the clinic, about 1,000 distressed youths came there seeking help; most of them were prescribed hormones “that can have life-altering consequences–including sterility,” Reed wrote.

She thinks a nationwide halt to transgender procedures for minors is necessary “given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country.”

Reed said she wanted to go on with her life after she changed jobs. But she but felt compelled to disclose the truth about her experiences after reading an October 2022 article from Reuters News Service.

Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender person who ranks highly at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “said that clinics are proceeding carefully and that no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who shouldn’t,” according to Reuters.

Reed’s response to the article: “I felt stunned and sickened. It wasn’t true. And I know that from deep first-hand experience.”

She said she began documenting everything she could about her experience at the Transgender Center. Then, a couple of weeks ago, she shared her account with Missouri’s attorney general. “He is a Republican. I am a progressive. But the safety of children should not be a matter for our culture wars,” she wrote.

The Epoch Times is seeking comment from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. The Free Press article included a link to a letter that Reed wrote to Bailey.

In the letter, Reed states that she witnessed treatments continuing on children despite adverse effects.

Reed concluded her Free Press article by stating that some people refer to transgender procedures being done on minors as “experimental.” She said that’s a misnomer because experiments should be ethical and well-thought-out—unlike these treatments for children.