Parents hit back at Missouri trans clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed

Missouri families are pushing back against a whistleblower’s allegations of “morally and medically appalling” care at a St. Louis clinic that treats transgender youth.

Jamie Reed, 42, wrote a first-person essay in The Free Press about working at the The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, accusing the center and its practitioners of ignoring children’s mental health issues and only focusing on treating gender dysphoria.

In the piece, titled “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle,” Reed claims that transgender children were hurried into medical treatment without understanding side effects or long-term outcomes. 

But patients at the clinic and their parents say the allegations by Reed, who was a case manager at the clinic and does not have a medical degree, don’t align with their experiences, according to two reports published Wednesday.

“The idea that nobody got information, that everybody was pushed toward treatment, is just not true. It’s devastating,” Kim Hutton, whose son was a patient at the center, told the St. Louis Dispatch. “I’m baffled by it.”

Almost two dozen parents of children who went to the clinic spoke to the Dispatch and challenged Reed’s assertions. 

The parents said despite working at the center, Reed had no medical or managerial role and wasn’t in appointments where doctors saw patients.

They said Reed’s role was restricted to making appointments, doing patient intake and informing families about additional resources.

Transgender youth and parents similarly disputed the claims made by Reed in a report in the Missouri Independent.

Alison Maclean said the clinic told her 12-year-old son he was too young for hormones and didn’t pressure him into taking puberty blockers.

“I think the clinic attempts to gauge where you’re at, kind of in your, in your journey with your child,” Maclean told the Independent.

She also said the clinic has provided her with a plethora of information should her son decide to medically transition — something Reed claimed rarely happened.

“I think these little bits have been cherry picked from people who maybe didn’t pay attention,” Maclean said.

Christine Hyman told the Dispatch that her son wanted top surgery and testosterone during his first appointment at the clinic at age 12 — both of which were denied.

“Put it out of your mind. We don’t do that here,” a nurse told her son, Hyman said.

By the time he did start testosterone, her son — now 17 —  had already seen a therapist 89 times over the course of more than a year.

Reed said in her essay that when she questioned consensus at the clinic, she was given a low performance review. She also submitted a sworn affidavit to the Missouri Attorney General, asking them to investigate the center. 

The AG’s office announced last month that it was investigating “disturbing allegations” at the clinic.

Jess Jones, a former colleague of Reed’s, told the Independent: “I feel like I could go line by line to her affidavit and debunk it all.”

“There were parents of trans kids who also raised some red flags around Jamie. So I really wish the center had listened to trans people,” Jones said. “We said: ‘This is a person who isn’t safe for us.’”

Jones also spoke to the Dispatch, telling the paper that they complained about Reed along with other colleagues to human resources.

“How passionately [Reed] worked as a case manager felt at odds with how she talked about transgender people,” Jones said. “Jamie was the primary reason I left.”

Ernie Trakas, one of Reed’s lawyers with advocacy group the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, said in a statement to the Dispatch that “it is not surprising to me that the negatively affected families have not yet come forward.

“Parents have a strong instinct to protect their children’s privacy …” Trakas continued. “Conflating short-term patient satisfaction, which some patients refer to as the period of ‘hormone high,’ with good medical outcomes is the kind of misguided thinking that contributed to the opioid epidemic.”

Washington University said in a statement it was alarmed by Reed’s accusations and would investigate them. 

“We are committed to providing compassionate, family-centered care to all of our patients and we hold our medical practitioners to the highest professional and ethical standards,” it said.