(NewsNation) — A former case worker at a transgender clinic in St. Louis has gone into deeper detail about procedures she said caused her to complain to the state’s attorney general’s office.
“Young people who had top surgery called three months later and said they want their breasts put back on,” Jamie Reed told NewsNation in an interview Thursday evening on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.“
“Those are not the kinds of care outcomes that I think anyone wants for their children,” Reed said.
Reed spent almost four years at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. In February, she submitted a sworn affidavit to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey because of the treatment of children and their parents.
In her interview, Reed said the center distributed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones with limited individualized oversight. Oftentimes, the treatments were approved after just two visits and given to children who had other underlying issues, Reed claims.
“A lot of the patients had started coming to us with really serious comorbidities, with really serious mental health problems at baseline,” Reed said.
Reed estimates the center began medical transitions for more than 600 children from 2020 to 2022 and thinks it should be completely shut down if it doesn’t change course.
Children’s hospitals across the country follow standards of care from WPATH — the World Professional Association for Transgender Health — but Reed said those guidelines were often ignored.
“Even by WPATH standards, they were not meeting criteria to move forward with medical transition, yet we were moving them forward,” said Reed.
In some cases, Reed claims children were given drugs despite parents’ objections.
“On several occasions, the doctors have continued prescribing medical transition even
when a parent stated that they were revoking consent,” Reed wrote in the affidavit.
Pushback since going public
Some local parents have pushed back against Reed’s characterization of the clinic.
“It doesn’t align with the experiences of so many other parents and children we know that have gone through the same program,” Nick Zingarelli, father of a transgender daughter, told NewsNation affiliate KTVI. “It was a very long process from the time that we first sought care to the time that there was any actual medical intervention.”
Susan Halla is the board president of TransParent, a nonprofit advocacy group for parents with transgender children.
“We know the whistleblower, we believe what she’s saying is right-wing rhetoric,” Halla told KTVI. “It’s very apparent that her coming out, came out at the timing of these bills.”
Reed rejects that claim and said she decided to go public after being told by the center last August to “fully get on board or get out.” In November, she left the center and moved to a different job at Washington University.
Reed describes herself as queer, is married to a transgender man and identifies as politically left of Bernie Sanders.
“I would almost want to ask those parents, is it OK that we hurt 12 other kids that aren’t your kid because your one kid did OK?” said Reed.
U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine — a transgender woman — has said the nation’s gender clinics are proceeding carefully and that no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who shouldn’t.
Reed vehemently disagrees and said that assertion encouraged her to come forward.
She thinks multiple ongoing investigations will show that proper standards of care were not being followed.
Politicized rhetoric
Reed said she received significant backlash after going public with her concerns, but also private words of support from doctors thanking her for her courage.
Washington University issued a statement after Reed came forward, saying it’s “committed to providing compassionate, family-centered care” to all patients and holds its medical practitioners “to the highest professional and ethical standards.”
Bailey and Sen. Josh Hawley, both Republicans, have announced separate investigations into the clinic.
The university said it is taking the allegations “very seriously” and has already started “looking into the situation to ascertain facts.”
Washington University declined NewsNation’s request for an interview and pointed to its previous statements.
Reed’s affidavit comes as GOP lawmakers in Missouri continue to work on legislation that could ban hormone treatment and puberty blockers for minors. Last month, Bailey announced an emergency rule that places additional restrictions on gender treatments for children in the state.
The order prohibits health care providers from providing gender care to patients who have not received a full psychological assessment. That evaluation must consist of at least 15 hourly sessions over the course of 18 months or longer, the rule states. Patients must also be screened for autism.
When asked whether she felt used by Republican politicians, Reed said the bigger problem is on her side of the aisle.
“I am really upset that the Democratic Party is not even willing to have a dialogue about the science and the data right now,” she said. “The only people who are willing to even listen and have a conversation are not in the same political party that I’m in.”