During the Missouri attorney general’s investigation of a state youth transgender clinic, some horrific details have come to light. Perhaps most notable are the revelations from the sworn affidavit of Jamie Reed, a case manager at the clinic from 2018 to 2022. She is married to a transgender man and describes herself as “politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.” But despite joining the transgender clinic because she believed in its stated mission, Reed was horrified by what she encountered in practice.
“During my time at the Center, I personally witnessed Center healthcare providers lie to the public and to parents of patients about the treatment, or lack of treatment, and the effects of treatment provided to children at the Center,” Reed writes in her affidavit. She witnessed staff “provide puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children without complete informed parental consent and without an appropriate or accurate assessment of the needs of the child,” and saw “children experience shocking injuries from the medication the Center prescribed.” Throughout it all, she says, the center made “no attempt or effort to track adverse outcomes of patients after they left the Center.”
I’m including a lengthy passage from the affidavit, which is worth reading in full:
Nearly all children who came to the Center here presented with very serious mental health problems. Despite claiming to be a place where children could receive multidisciplinary care, the Center would not treat these mental health issues. Instead, children were automatically given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones even though the Dutch study excluded persons experiencing mental health issues.
One patient came to the Center identifying as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non binary.” The child was in very poor mental health and early on reported that they had no idea their gender identity. Rather than treat the child for their serious mental health problems, the Center put the child on cross-sex hormones and ignored the child’s obvious mental health problems. The child subsequently reported that their mental health actually was worsening once they started the cross-sex hormones.
Most children who come into the Center were assigned female at birth. Nearly all of them have serious comorbidities including, autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma histories, OCD, and serious eating disorders. Rather than treat these conditions, the doctors prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. Some examples include:
- Patient was in a residential sex offender treatment facility in state custody. Patient had previously sexually abused animals and had stated when they were released that they would do so again. There were questions about consistency of gender history. The Center did not treat this underlying condition, but instead started the patient on hormones.
- Patient who has severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and had threatened to self-harm their genitals. The Patient did not have a trans or other incongruent gender identity. The patient was placed on hormones not even to treat any gender dysphoria but to chemically reduce libido and sexual arousal.
- Patient had history of sexual abuse and notified the psychologist of this. It was even documented in the letter of support that the patient had concerns about the changes that testosterone would cause to their genitals. Instead of treating the underlying trauma the patient was started on testosterone.
- Patient had serious mental health concerns and was prescribed mental health medications directly before being prescribed hormones, yet didn’t take the mental health medications. Nevertheless, the patient was placed on hormones.
- Patient had significant autism with unrealistic expectations, struggled to answer questions, and wanted questions to be provided ahead of time. Yet the patient was started on feminizing hormones.
What Reed is describing is child abuse, plain and simple. It’s the abuse of some of the most vulnerable members of our society in service of ideological goals. And revelations from similar clinics throughout the United States in recent years demonstrate that this is not a one-off incident. It’s systemic.
Missouri is doing the right thing in confronting these alleged abuses in their state. Other political leaders must do the same elsewhere.