When Gays Against Groomers Missouri chapter leader Chris Barrett reviewed Sen. Josh Hawley’s letter to Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, he was happy to learn of an investigation but felt the Missouri senator didn’t go far enough.
“This is a great move,” Barrett said in an interview. “They absolutely need to be investigated but they also need to do the same thing with Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City as well. They have a Gender Pathways Services clinic where it’s the same thing.”
Hawley sent his March 7 letter to Washington University Chancellor Dr. Andrew D. Martin and St. Louis Children’s Hospital President Trish M. Lollo in St. Louis alleging that its staff subverted parents’ wishes regarding their child’s gender-affirming care treatment.
Hawley
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“My office is launching an investigation into the Center’s treatment practices in order to present American taxpayers and parents with all the facts relevant to policymaking and medical treatment decisions,” Hawley stated. “Starting immediately, your institutions must take steps to preserve all records, written and electronic, regarding gender-related treatments performed on minors since the opening of the Center. Additional oversight inquiries and outreach will follow.”
The accusations were based on a whistleblower report published in The Free Press,
“That report presented substantial evidence that, like so many other pediatric gender clinics across the United States, this Missouri-based clinic appears to have been operating without transparency, oversight, and accountability—and causing devastating harm to children in the process,” Hawley wrote.
The controversy started after Jamie Reed, who worked at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital as a case manager between 2018 and 2022, alleged that instead of receiving mental health treatment, children were receiving puberty blockers even in cases where the drugs were questioned by family members, according to media reports.
On Feb. 17, Washington University Transgender Center announced in a letter that it would not issue a moratorium on hormone therapy and puberty blockers, which Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey had requested.
“We need to be looking at this all over the state, not just what's happening in St. Louis,” Barrett told the St. Louis Record. “The Washington University University clinic needs to be shut down. Children's Mercy’s Gender Pathways clinic needs to be shut down. This is just not something that should be provided to kids, period.”
The whistleblower reported that the Center’s “working assumption” was to pursue aggressive and early intervention despite research indicating that the vast majority of children with cross-gender identification desist by puberty.
"If you just leave kids alone, it resolves on their own," Barrett added. "It does not make sense to start them on puberty blockers and hormones and possibly doing surgeries if anywhere from 64% to 92% will desist from their gender dysphoria. It just doesn't make sense to do anything to them."