Ep 1109 | 'We Were Harming Children': Whistleblower Exposes the Nightmare Inside Gender Clinics | Guests: Jamie Reed & Vernadette Broyles

Summary

Podcast Summary: Episode 1109 | 'We Were Harming Children': Whistleblower Exposes the Nightmare Inside Gender Clinics

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Host/Author: Blaze Podcast Network
Release Date: December 4, 2024

---

Introduction

In Episode 1109 of Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey, hosted by Allie Beth Stuckey, the discussion delves into the controversial and troubling practices within transgender clinics, particularly those serving children. The episode features two pivotal guests: Jamie Reed, a whistleblower from the Washington University transgender center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, and Vernadette Broyles, the president and general counsel of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. Together, they shed light on the alarming trends and ethical breaches occurring in pediatric gender medicine.

---

Background of Guests

Jamie Reed introduces herself as a former employee of a pediatric transgender center where she worked for nearly five years. She now serves as the Executive Director of the Courage Coalition, advocating against child transitions and supporting the preservation of children's natural biological development.

Vernadette Broyles explains her role as the president and general counsel of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. Her organization comprises five attorneys across the country, focusing on cases where children have been socially transitioned without parental consent and defending parents whose children face threats from Child Protective Services due to their gender identities.

---

Experiences at Gender Clinics

Jamie Reed recounts her initial belief in the mission of the transgender center, describing it as a place aimed at helping children identify their "true, authentic selves." She details the rapid increase in the number of children seeking services—from four or five per month in 2018 to nearly sixty by 2023—and observes a significant demographic shift. Originally serving primarily young, feminine-presenting boys, the clinic began seeing a surge in teenage girls with severe mental health issues who were aggressively pursuing medical interventions like testosterone therapy and surgeries ([02:31]).

Jamie Reed: "I really believe that we were intervening early to help children identify their true, authentic selves and give them a pathway towards a healthy, authentic adulthood." [02:01]

---

The Shift in Clinic Practices

Reed describes the clinic's transformation, highlighting the lack of proper protocols and internal guidelines. She notes that by the time she left, the majority of clients were teenage girls who had already socially transitioned in multiple environments without prior mental health evaluations ([03:22]).

Jamie Reed: "The center had really been only open a year, but there were just elements to it that didn't make a ton of sense." [06:55]

---

Medical Practices and Questionable Protocols

Reed criticizes the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in minors, emphasizing the absence of standardized treatment protocols. She explains the concept of Tanner stages and how some endocrinologists were initiating puberty blockers prematurely or allowing indefinite blocking without progression to further treatments ([10:11]).

Jamie Reed: "Puberty, in my opinion, now is a 'human right.' Because the body requires these steps, and the brain requires the pruning and the slowness of how puberty engages." [10:11]

Reed also accuses the medical professionals at the clinic of manipulating parents by threatening that their children might commit suicide if not transitioned, undermining parental authority and decision-making ([13:28]).

Jamie Reed: "Why do we even send doctors to medical school then if they're willing to just hand that over and let children make these decisions?" [14:25]

---

Detransitioning and Adverse Outcomes

Reed shares harrowing accounts of adverse medical outcomes resulting from early medical interventions. She describes instances where testosterone therapy led to severe physical harm, such as a 17-year-old girl's genitalia deteriorating to the point of requiring emergency surgery ([21:57]).

Jamie Reed: "We had a patient who we had put on testosterone at a young age. She had an... one of her first sexual experiences and her vagina completely tore open and she ended up bleeding so profusely that we had to send her directly to the emergency room." [21:57]

Additionally, she recounts cases where minors sought to reverse their transitions shortly after undergoing surgeries, revealing the profound psychological and physical distress caused by these interventions ([23:24]).

---

Legal Implications and Advocacy

Vernadette Broyles outlines the legal battles her organization faces, including lawsuits against schools and clinics that facilitate unauthorized transitions. She recounts tragic cases, such as that of Ellie Perez, a 12-year-old who attempted suicide after being coerced into a double life of gender transition without parental knowledge ([52:36]).

Vernadette Broyles: "There are so many of these stories, and that's the kids. See." [52:36]

Broyles emphasizes the role of Child Protective Services in exacerbating these issues by alienating parents and coercing children into transitions, even leading to situations where children are left vulnerable to abuse and trafficking ([54:51]).

---

Personal Impact on Guests

Jamie Reed shares the profound personal toll of her whistleblowing. Initially fearful of ostracization from her community and professional networks, she was instead met with overwhelming support from unexpected allies across the political spectrum ([42:14]).

Jamie Reed: "In some ways, it's been one of the greatest blessings of my life." [42:14]

Reed also discusses the strain her activism has placed on her marriage. Her spouse, who had transitioned as an adult, was not initially supportive of transitioning children. The fallout from Reed's decision to speak out led to significant marital challenges, ultimately resulting in her spouse detransitioning ([44:35]).

Jamie Reed: "It really caused this real rift in our marriage because it really put in front of her pathway this reckoning point that she was not ready to do." [46:16]

---

Conclusion and Call to Action

Both Reed and Broyles underscore the urgent need to protect children's biological integrity and parental rights. They advocate for the closure of harmful clinics, the establishment of clear medical protocols, and the reinforcement of parental authority in decisions regarding a child's gender identity.

Reed passionately states:

Jamie Reed: "Children have the right to grow up with their fertility, their sexual function, and their endocrine systems intact, whole and functional. It is their basic human right." [56:12]

Broyles echoes the sentiment, urging parents to remain vigilant and assertive in safeguarding their children's well-being.

The episode concludes with a heartfelt acknowledgment of the guests' courage and a reaffirmation of the collective fight against practices that harm children under the guise of gender affirmation.

---

Key Takeaways

• Rapid Increase in Pediatric Transgender Services: A significant rise in the number of children seeking gender transition services, predominantly teenage girls with complex mental health issues.

• Lack of Protocols and Ethical Concerns: Clinics often operate without standardized guidelines, leading to premature and sometimes irreversible medical interventions.

• Adverse Medical and Psychological Outcomes: Reports of severe physical harm and deteriorating mental health among minors who undergo medical transitions.

• Legal and Parental Rights: Ongoing legal battles to protect parental authority and prevent unauthorized transitions, highlighting the misuse of Child Protective Services.

• Personal Sacrifices and Community Support: Individuals like Jamie Reed face personal and professional challenges but receive unexpected support from diverse communities in their fight against harmful practices.

---

Notable Quotes

• Jamie Reed: "Children have the right to grow up with their fertility, their sexual function, and their endocrine systems intact, whole and functional. It is their basic human right." [56:12]

• Jamie Reed: "Puberty, in my opinion, now is a 'human right.' Because the body requires these steps, and the brain requires the pruning and the slowness of how puberty engages." [10:11]

• Vernadette Broyles: "We have been perpetuating a human rights abuse against children in this country that is a nonpartisan issue." [57:09]

---

This episode serves as a crucial exposé on the ethical and medical challenges within pediatric gender clinics, advocating for the protection of children's biological integrity and the reinforcement of parental rights in healthcare decisions.

Transcript

[Ali Stuckey]

This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with.

[Bernadette Broils]

Code [e-mail] Jamie Reed is a whistleblower from the Washington University transgender center at St. Louis Children's Hospital. She is speaking out about the troubling things she saw there, why she went from transgender affirming to who she is today, an advocate against child transitions. We also have Vernadette Broils, who is the president and general counsel of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. They are sharing Jamie's story today as well as some other cases that Ver Nadette is working on. And wow, this is going to blow your mind. And you will be inspired by both of their courage. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com use code ALI at checkout. That's Good Ranchers.com code ALI Jamie Bernardet, thanks so much for joining Relatable first, Jamie, could you tell us who you are and what you do?

[Jamie Reed]

Yes, My name is Jamie Reed. I worked in a pediatric transgender center for close to five years. I am currently the Executive Director of the Courage Coalition. We are a group of primarily adult gays and lesbians who are trying to stop the current practices of pediatric gender medicine and support gays and lesbians, and especially those who are maybe gender non conforming, to grow up with their bodies whole and intact.

[Bernadette Broils]

And Bernadette, you're her attorney?

[Unknown]

I am, yes.

[Bernadette Broils]

Can you tell us a little bit about what kind of law you practice and why you're in this sure.

[Unknown]

I'm the president and general counsel of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. We are five attorneys in different parts of the country, and we bring cases on behalf of parents whose children have been socially transitioned behind the backs of the parents, sometimes even over their objections. And we are also now more and more defending parents whose children are being threatened by Child Protective Services.

[Bernadette Broils]

And, Jamie, let's go all the way back to how I initially heard about you and your story. Your report came out, what you saw at a gender clinic, what was happening with children. So just take us back there to the clinic, what you saw and why you do the work that you do now.

[Jamie Reed]

So I worked in this clinic across the period of time where this really started to explode in our culture and what years were. So I started in 2018 and I left 2023 ish. And what I saw was we were beginning with maybe four or five kids per month coming in. And when I left, we were seeing close to 60 new kids per month coming in. And the kids that were coming had radically changed. So initially this was primarily young boys who were very feminine present, whose parents were concerned. And it had radically shifted to teenage girls who were significantly mentally ill, who were all identifying as trans and wanting really rapid medical interventions. They wanted testosterone. They were talking about surgeries already. And they were 70 to 80% of the clients now were teenage girls.

[Bernadette Broils]

How old were they typically?

[Jamie Reed]

Oftentimes they would come to us after puberty. So the bulk of our patients were probably 14 to 16. But the clinic did still see kids all the way as young as three. So, I mean, this was a giant kind of pediatric practice. And when I started in this clinic, I was what we would refer to as a true believer. I really believe that we were intervening early to help children identify their true, authentic selves and give them a pathway towards, you know, a healthy, authentic adulthood.

[Bernadette Broils]

I was going to ask why you started working there in 2018. You just said that you were a true believer. But even so, there are a lot of people who believe that who don't feel called to get into the actual work of working at a clinic. So what led you there?

[Jamie Reed]

So my background is in working in social work roles, but I'm not a social worker, so I've been a caseworker. I currently also now have a Master's of Science in clinical research. So I've always worked peripherally kind of social service in medical settings. But I was working with young people who are HIV positive. I did that for a long time. And what I was seeing was that there was these. This kind of growing cohort of young people who were identifying as trans. And there was some overlap in my patient population, but in my personal life, I was married to someone who was trans who had medically transitioned, a woman who had transitioned to live as a male. And I also am a lesbian. And I grew up in my own childhood experiencing what some people refer to as gender distress. So I was gender non conforming. I was the tomboy. I really felt as that true believer that this was part of my community and these kids were kids that, you know, somehow reflected my experience.

[Bernadette Broils]

And so you kind of felt like this was not only just a job, but almost a calling that you're giving back to this vulnerable community.

[Jamie Reed]

Absolutely.

[Bernadette Broils]

And when you first got there, did it feel fulfilling, like it was what you signed up for?

[Jamie Reed]

When I first got there, I felt like it was very haphazard and chaotic. So initially I kind of thought, well, this is just that it's so new. The center had really been only open a year, but there were just elements to it that didn't make a ton of sense.

[Bernadette Broils]

And this was in Missouri, right?

[Jamie Reed]

This was in St. Louis, Missouri, yes. And, you know, one of the things I think we see across the nation is these centers really exploded and have just been popping up in red states and rural areas. Like just. There's just been an explosion. And so for our hospital to start the center in 2017, there were just crucial elements missing. There were no protocols written. There was no real internal guidelines or mechanisms. This was a center that was started in a really well known hospital, but was really flying by the seat of its pants and had a lot of structural issues.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah. And you said that when you first started, you were only there for five years, so not very long. And yet you were there to see the shift from what you said. Young boys, would you say teenage boys or younger than.

[Jamie Reed]

No, younger.

[Bernadette Broils]

Young boys who were kind of feminine to teen girls who really wanted testosterone and even double mastectomies and things like that. Going back to the beginning, I want to talk about the difference in parents of these kids too. So going back to the beginning, what were parents saying when they were bringing their young boys in?

[Jamie Reed]

Parents at the beginning were a lot more cautious. There was a lot more seeking guidance. Something in the general population shifted in that period too. These were children who primarily had not been socially transitioned by their parents at home, and they were slower and they were asked. It was more of an asking the medical establishment, should I socially transition my child? Do you believe that's the right thing to do. Please evaluate my child first. That was more of the parental kind of view. By the time I left, these kids were brought to us having been completely socially transitioned in multiple environments before they ever saw what would be called a gender specialist. These kids had been socially transitioned in school, in their families, in every kind of aspect of their lives. That had already occurred well before they ever saw, often saw any sort of mental health provider.

[Bernadette Broils]

You said that there was really a lack of protocol when you first started. But what were the typical recommendations for a young boy that was brought in whose parents thought, okay, maybe he's really a girl?

[Jamie Reed]

I think that the phrase watchful waiting was a little bit more still in existence at the time. A lot of this is also. There is a medical element to this. So the original protocol, as the Dutch in the Netherlands divides this, was that you would start a child on a pubertal blockade when they reached Tanner 2 of puberty.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah. And can you explain what that is?

[Jamie Reed]

Yeah. So they Tanner stage puberty into five stages. It's not necessarily directly correlational to just blood work. An endocrinologist is actually doing a physical exam of the body. So they're looking for early signs of puberty, breast budding, testicular growth. I mean, this is a body process that takes a long time. The pituitary gland, all of these glands in the brain, are basically talking to our secondary sex organs. And they're telling them, you know, turn on, turn off. There's pauses, there's stops. Puberty is a. Puberty, in my opinion, now is a human. Right. Because the body requires these steps, and the brain requires the pruning and the slowness of how puberty engages. But what we were looking for initially was, is the child in Tanner stage two of puberty? And if so, then the question is, are we going to initiate a puberty blockade to block them and then eventually give them cross sex hormones and puberty blockers?

[Bernadette Broils]

If it's in a young girl who is in Tanner stage two, which I think is like, when you start seeing the physical, outward signs of puberty, that you would think, like, right before a girl starts her period or something, even.

[Jamie Reed]

A little bit earlier than that. Oh, okay, so Tanner 2 is even earlier than earlier than that.

[Bernadette Broils]

So right before those things, that's when endocrinologists would say, okay, we got to block the testosterone in boys, we got to block the estrogen in girls. And how long would that process typically last?

[Jamie Reed]

The part of this medical establishment that really shows me that it is not a tried and True well tested paradigm is that there were even debates over that itself. There were some endocrinologists in gender clinics who would allow kids to be puberty blocked for a very long time. And then there were other endocrinologists that were saying, you know, that they would put in an age guideline. So I had an endocrinologist I work with that would say by a certain age you had to move on to sex hormones for the body's bone growth and bone development. But again, I've even seen cases now in clinical studies where there are young people who are asking endocrinologists to never be put on sex hormones and asked to remain in a pre pubertal status ongoing. And I've even seen ethical papers argue on the other side that this is their right and they should be able to do this. The damage to the body is just immense and, and the brain.

[Bernadette Broils]

I think a lot of people don't realize that puberty is necessary for intellectual maturation, your ability to be able to understand consequences. And there just seems to me, and we can get into this more later, but a nefarious motivation, like what kind of people would want to prolong basically eternal adolescence and young people and prevent them from being able to make wise choices and to keep their body in a state of like pre pubescent development. That's very disturbing to me.

[Jamie Reed]

It is. There's also this element where we've somehow put the children in charge, where we're basically saying to the kids, well, what, you know, it's all, what do you want? What do you see in the center? So much of the decision making process was the endocrinologists were not making the decisions. They were saying that it was the mental health providers. The mental health providers were not making the decisions. They would basically say, if the child says they're trans, then they're trans. And the parents were looking at both of these medical professionals saying, I'm relying on you. And then in the end, we're in a clinical space and the parents turn into their child and saying, well, if this is what you really want. And so we were in a position where we were basically giving the prescription pad over to children. And why do we even send doctors to medical school then if they're willing to just hand that over and let children make these decisions?

[Unknown]

Yeah, so that's such a dereliction of duty because we understand that children do not have the capacity to make these kinds of decisions. And in every other area of children's lives, legally, children are considered incapacitated. They're dependent upon their parents to be able to give consent to a whole variety of things or there are many things they can't even do at all. They can't contract on their own. And so the idea that we're placing these life changing decisions on the backs of children is to me such a violation of their basic human right to be able to rely upon the judgment and the maturity of their parents to be able to make wise decisions on their behalf.

[Jamie Reed]

Children don't want these decisions on their shoulders either, though they might, especially adolescents might say, well I, you know that they will vocalize things like, well, you, I could decide, I could figure this out. But I think part of why we see such high anxiety and depression levels in children right now is because we are putting on their shoulders some of these considerations that never should have been theirs to worry about. And I think kids actually do better in environments where we as the adults say, hey, we're the adults, we got this, you can be a kid, I'm the one making the decision. And my decision also goes, yeah, definitely.

[Bernadette Broils]

And that's true in all different realms. Kids want boundaries and they will push and push until you say, no, it stops here. And when we're talking about mutilating your body, it would seem like in that situation more than any other situation, there should be some adult that says no. Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day and that is Good Ranchers. Good Ranchers has an awesome deal going on right now. If you subscribe to any box, if they're 100American meat, you can get a free gift of salmon, bacon, ground beef or they're better than organic chicken in every box for the next year. That is an amazing value. Plus when you use my code ali, you get an extra $25 off. This would be an amazing gift for any meat lover in your life or someone who is maybe starting a healthy diet or carnivore, you can help them start off on the right foot by getting American meat from Good Ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com use code ALI for that. 25 off. Good ranchers.com code ALI this changed so quickly from parents who were hearing watch and wait. But I'm sure some who did go through with social transition and puberty blockers to par parents bringing their kids in fully affirming their newfound identity. So what changed with what the doctors recommended? Was it still telling these teen girls watch and wait or was it, yeah, let's sign you up for cross sex hormones?

[Jamie Reed]

The doctors absolutely were. Let's Sign you up. They really had the con. Like, their. The way that they worked was if the child says that they're trans, and if the child says that they want what these drugs give, then why would I stop them from doing this? Yeah, but the other thing that shifted in this period of time was there has been this huge cultural shift into this belief structure that trans is the new civil rights era, that it is gay 2.0, and that if the parents or the. If our culture didn't just immediately affirm this, that they were, you know, not being the good liberal citizen of our.

[Bernadette Broils]

Country and they're being bigots, they're the same thing as racists from years ago.

[Unknown]

They're unsafe if they don't affirm.

[Jamie Reed]

And that's where it really went awry.

[Bernadette Broils]

Did you see manipulation of parents? When I've talked to. I talked to a nurse that encountered a lot of this at a hospital down in Houston where doctors were actually illegal because it was. It's illegal in the state of Texas giving puberty blockers to these kids. And she saw a lot of the kind of emotional manipulation that we see from doctors who would say, you know what? If you don't let your child do this, she or he will commit suicide. Was that kind of thing going on at this clinic?

[Jamie Reed]

Yes, it. But it wasn't just the doctors. So there are aspects of what I did, too, that I still work through. So, yes, I absolutely saw clinicians say to parents in front of their children, if you don't agree to this, then your child is going to be at risk of committing suicide. I saw doctors say things like, would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son? But I was absolutely complicit in that for a number of years as well. I really believed that was the truth. And it took. You know, I wish. I wish I could say I just woke up one day and was like, duh, we can't sex change kids. It didn't work like that. It took me a long time to see the harms, see that the kids weren't getting better, see that the kids were actually falling apart after we put them on these treatments. See a couple years of these kids and see that they just were not doing well. It took me a long time to get to the position where I knew what I was doing was wrong.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah, talk about that shift. When you started to wake up. What were some of the things that caused your eyes to open?

[Jamie Reed]

In medicine, even in data, I look for patterns, consistencies. I'm looking for outcomes. And so I Had this really unique position in the center because I completed the intake for every single kid that came in. And I tracked every single kid as they went through. So I kind of had this bird's eye view. Whereas I think sometimes the doctors would see a kid in front of them and go, well, they're doing great. And then they wouldn't see on the back end that that kid disappeared three months later. And then I sometimes would see, they disappeared, they desisted, they detransitioned, or that their mental health was deteriorating. But really we were, we were harming these children. I mean, we started to see true medical harms. We had a patient who we had put on testosterone at a young age. She had an, you know, one of her first sexual experiences and her. Her vagina completely tore open and she ended up bleeding so profusely that we had to send her directly to the emergency room, where they sent her directly into emergency surgery.

[Bernadette Broils]

And that is because the testosterone had deteriorated her genitalia.

[Jamie Reed]

Correct. It had degraded the tissues so much.

[Bernadette Broils]

How old was she?

[Jamie Reed]

I believe she was still maybe 17 when that happened. But we would have put her on testosterone at 13 or 14.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow.

[Jamie Reed]

And when I said to the doctors, there's this phrase an adverse outcome, I said, this is an adverse outcome. And their response was, it's really not. We expected things like this to happen. Like, they knew these treatments were so harmful that they didn't even see it as outside of what the ex expectation was that that was not what I signed up for.

[Bernadette Broils]

So what would they have considered an adverse outcome if not a 17 year old's vagina completely deteriorating because of testosterone?

[Jamie Reed]

That's a really good question that I wish I could answer, but I actually attempted within the university to report that situation and as an adverse outcome, and I was told not to.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow. And so that is one instance at least, that shocked your conscience.

[Jamie Reed]

Yes. We had a. We also had a young woman who had a double mastectomy within three months. She was calling the surgeon's office saying first that her pronouns had shifted, that she was she again.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow.

[Jamie Reed]

But also she was begging to have her breasts put back on.

[Bernadette Broils]

Gosh, that just breaks my heart.

[Jamie Reed]

And this. The surgeon wouldn't take her phone call. The surgeon didn't have the. Couldn't even call her back and address what they had done to her. They punted it off to me and our nurse. You call her back, they were trying to say, you see if this is true. And then the other thing that was so gut wrenching is that they were willing to cut her breasts off quickly with a letter. They were not willing to even do a consultation about reconstruction until she had a full psych eval and waited an entire year. But tell me how that. Right.

[Bernadette Broils]

That is not what was required to get her breast cut off. What was required from what you saw to get a surgery like that?

[Jamie Reed]

So first of all, I do want to point out that the clinicians that I work with did lie to myself, state's legislature and say that we were not discussing surgeries with minors. We absolutely were. We were giving minors the numbers and names of surgeons who would do this as minors. I saw those clinicians say this bold faced lie to the Republican legislature. And I. If you have to lie about what you are doing, yep, you are not doing the right thing.

[Bernadette Broils]

Right.

[Jamie Reed]

But really all these kids would need was at least one legal guardian to consent and a letter from a therapist. And the problem was these therapists are all completely captured. And we also would only send you to a therapist who would write you a letter.

[Bernadette Broils]

Right.

[Jamie Reed]

I mean it's a self fulfilling loop and it's all, I mean, this is one of the most corrupt systems I've ever seen within medicine.

[Unknown]

And these letters were standard templates that actually. Didn't you help write some of them?

[Jamie Reed]

Yes, that I helped write that we would send them a fill in the blank. Here. Here's the fill in the blank template.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah. And they really had. These psychologists had no incentive to stop one of these young people. I mean, you're talking about kind of being scared of children. I've talked to detransitioners who when they did have a therapist that was bold enough to say something like one detransitioner I talked to, she said that her therapist, when she was trying to get a sign off for, you know, the hormones and the surgery and all that, she had a therapist had the audacity to say, you know, it sounds like you actually are mad at your mom and that's part of what's going on. And she was livid, you know, she, she expressed anger and the therapist said, okay, okay, signed off. And so I think that's what's happening in some cases. I think also that they're scared of the political pressure, which is 100% not an excuse at all. It's very cowardly. But that's a lot of sadly what's going on. It's really not about, from my perspective, benefiting these young people at all.

[Jamie Reed]

Not at all. And you know, the longer I was there, I think I had a three step Process step one was, I would never bring my children anywhere near this place. That does not feel good. When you work in a. In a medical center, you want, you know, as a parent. But it was never, I would never bring my kids here. Then there was this period when I thought to myself, there's no need to do this to girls. The girls, if they need to transition as adults, they can do so. They will pass as male. There's absolutely no reason why we're doing this to children. It was the boys that really. I took the longest to really understand how wrong this is. This whole concept really came out of this idea that, you know, trans adults who wanted to pass as women didn't pass and they did not, you know, as society. They didn't pass and they felt uncomfortable. And so, you know, we started doing this to kids and I kept holding onto this little piece of like, yeah, but these, you know, like, maybe the boys, maybe this is still right for the boys. And it was seeing the boys that we had actually puberty blocked and then put on cross sex hormones. I was there long enough to see what should have been the trajectory into.

[Bernadette Broils]

Them doing well, like from 10 to 15.

[Jamie Reed]

Right, right. And they just weren't. They might superficially look female. They would come in and in the grossest way, my endocrinologist would sometimes come out of the room and say things like, I made these beautiful breasts, like he was playing God. But when I was working with these young people from that social, psychological functioning part, they were not even getting a ged. They were not getting a driver's license. They were not this, like, functional human being that we want adolescents to become. And part of what I started to recognize was we had lied to them as children, and we were asking them to sit with this lie about who they were. And part of adolescence, part of the requirement of becoming an adult, is this real integration of who am I? That's what we ask people to do when they become an adult. Who are you? You're separate from your family, you're separate from your parents, you're this whole being, but you're an adult now. And when we set up these kids with a lie, they could not progress through that because they fundamentally were presenting to the world and they could not reconcile this lie internally. And so they were fundamentally unable to really take those steps into adulthood. And that was what I saw when I let everything else and I was just holding on to maybe this is right for these boys. It was that damage that I saw in these boys. Yeah, that they always would have to sit with this lie.

[Bernadette Broils]

Another pause to tell you about our next sponsor. There was this really sad Danish study that I saw the other day that shows that a year after aborting, women exhibit a 50% higher likelihood of first time psychiatric treatments and an 8587 higher likelihood of personality and behavioral disorders. The pro abortion side would like us to think that abortion is just like getting a tooth extracted. There's no emotional implications for it. But that's just, just not true. It's ending the life of a child that you created. It's not only bad and deadly for the child, it's also bad for women. Pre born is a large network of pro life clinics that is not only trying to save the lives of these little babies, but also they are serving the moms of these babies. They provide free ultrasounds, give them all kinds of free resources to make it as easy as possible to make the life affirming choice. If you want to partner with them and saving these lives and loving these moms. Go to preborn.com ali donate whatever you can. This is a tax deductible donation. It could be the difference between life and death. Go to preborn.com ali do you think that the effect of the puberty blockers on their brain and the kind of inhibition of maturation that happens through natural puberty, I mean you are talking about basically a failure to launch in some cases. They weren't independent, they weren't happy, they weren't getting their driver's license. Do you think that had to do with it?

[Jamie Reed]

Yes. And what's so interesting is that this field pretended like this has been around forever and we know all the science. It's only after I leave that I start to also see papers coming out where they did not do enough of the actual. They didn't do the follow up studies in the original protocol. And now what it looks like is we do see that IQ is affected. There's parts of the brain that pruning happens when you're in adolescence where you know, the superfluous neuropathways are pruned down. And then there's really, you know, strengthening of the neural pathways that we need. And it does seem like too those things have to kind of hit in a sequential order for the brain to reach that full development. And so we do have this whole cohort of children in this country and globally that we performed an unauthorized medical experiment on. And I don't even think we've begun to grapple with what are the long term effects of those experiments. And will these children and their families ever actually receive justice?

[Unknown]

And it's something important to mention because I've heard your story many times and I know it so well. Did these boys or did these kids actually improve in their mental health? Right. Because the whole justification for doing these radical alterations in their bodies is that while it's going to keep them from committing suicide, it's going to help their mental health. Now, in practice though, did you see that or not?

[Jamie Reed]

No. And so this is part of also where I'm kind of an outlier, but I'm really interested in data. I'm more of a data scientist. My master's in science is clinical. And so I just started looking at our data. These kids should have had better scores, better scores on anxiety, depression. Their suicidal ideation should be decreasing. And here's the thing. What the other side is going to say is that, oh, society just, they're still being, you know, society's still. Stigma, bullying, stigma, bullying. This is not the case. These were fully affirming environments. These are parents who fully embraced this. They were in school systems where they were kind of held up on a pedestal. Like this was, this is not a bullying. So, no. And these kids were not getting better.

[Bernadette Broils]

And we see that even in places like Sweden who have been affirming this thing for a long time. The study, the landmark study from a few years ago that showed that men who transition into women actually had no fewer thoughts of suicidal ideation and actually committed suicide at the same rate of those who identified as transgender before their transition. And so I don't even think that we have solid evidence that proves that this is improving outcomes. You talked about how the young girls who came in, they had lots of other mental health problems. Can you talk about that? What were typically the mental health problems that you saw?

[Jamie Reed]

Oh, there was the typical. And then what I think social media has caused typical was, you know, anxiety, depression, self harming behaviors, eating disorders. I mean, this is, in some ways this is kind of, you know, a new version of what we saw as anorexia. And, you know, like, there are swings and kind of mental health trends that go. I mean, I think trans is one of those. But the thing that was really hard to see was that these were the kids in the lockdowns. These were the kids who had all of the negative effects of what we did to them because of COVID I mean, we kept the bars open, but we closed the schools. I mean, but these kids were starting to develop things that were socially mediated contagions. So TikTok tics. Kids who believe that they have Tourette's syndrome, but it's the exact same Tourette's as you see in. You see in TikTok videos.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah.

[Jamie Reed]

On social media. Kids who believed that they had multiple personality disorders. Kids who. I mean, we had two patients who believed that their vision was affected, one who believed that they were actually blind, but they weren't. They were not. And we sent them to. To have all of the tests run to see what was the biological cause. There was none. I mean, this was a socially mediated belief that they were. That they believed that they were blind.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow.

[Jamie Reed]

And we also saw children who believed that they had these real serious. I mean, socially mediated contagion illnesses are some of the hardest to treat. You have to get first at the concept that they will even recognize that they might have something that's not biologically driven.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah, it's like Munchausen.

[Jamie Reed]

Yes, but internalized more. And then the issue that I was butting up against, also from like, a social science perspective, is the clinicians could see that these kids had all of these other socially mediated illnesses. And when I said trans is one of those, they were like, oh, but no, trans is the authentic true self. And I'm like, really? Because this child hits every single other marker, and their parent says that they had no gender distress in childhood. No gender distress even six months ago.

[Bernadette Broils]

But now they're trans, and the doctors didn't care. Was there any doctor that you talked to, any endocrinologist, any therapist that you discuss this with who was like, yeah, you might be right.

[Jamie Reed]

There was a nurse that I worked with that we were really close, and we shared a lot of the same concerns. Our child psychiatrist would sometimes share those same concerns. What I learned after I left the center was that there was an endocrinologist who had a position of authority within this division. And when they went to try to open the center, the center chronologist was saying, I don't think the science is here. I don't think we should do this. And that person was actually pushed out of their leadership position, and the center was opened against that person's real, true, better judgment and scientific evidence. Yes. I think that we have just been in a culture of so much fear that as soon as my story broke, there were so many doctors within even the system that I worked in. Emailing me saying, thank God you said this. Yeah, I've been thinking this. And what's difficult for me, though, is that I was not in the same position of authority that these Clinicians had and they couldn't take the step. I think that if there were more of them, if more people were brave enough to step up, it wouldn't fall on just a small number of our shoulders.

[Unknown]

But I think what we're talking about is ideological capture.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Of a portion of the. Of the medical community, which is a very dangerous place to be.

[Bernadette Broils]

Next sponsor is crowd health. I don't have to tell you all how complicated and tiresome health insurance can be. Sometimes, even if you have it, it feels like you don't because of how much you're paying. You might want to just opt out of the complicated health insurance scheme altogether and opt for crowd health. Crowd health is the health insurance alternative. For $175 for an individual or just $575 for a family of four or more, you get access to a community of people who are willing to help out in the event of a medical emergency. So you get access to things like telemedicine visits, discounted prescriptions. So much more without doctors networks getting in the way. And you join the crowd, a group of members just like you who want to help pay for each other's unexpected medical events. You can start at just $99 a month for your first three months. When you use my code ALI at checkout, that's JoinCrowdHealth.com code ALLIE. Crowd health is not insurance. Learn more at JoinCrowdHealth.com code ALI. Tell me about blowing the whistle. How did you decide to come out with your story?

[Jamie Reed]

I lost a lot. So I. I eventually was kind of pushed out where they were basically saying, you can't continue to raise ethical concerns. You need to get on board or get quiet, shut up, move on. I was in a very privileged job. My children would have had an amazing college tuition benefit. I had excellent insurance. I had a good salary. But I couldn't continue to work in that center. So I found a different position within the university. And I honestly tried for a minute to just let it go, just forget about it.

[Bernadette Broils]

Out of sight, out of mind.

[Jamie Reed]

Can I just let this go? And I just found any time that I was quiet, sitting with my own thoughts, it just nagged at me like I couldn't. I would picture these kids, I would picture the parents who just fought for their kids. And I was just like, I just cannot leave all of this behind. And it took a long time to figure out how to do this. But I eventually reached out to a medical advocacy group who then put me in touch with Bernadette and once I had counsel, I really had a team built around me to give me the legal advice, the counsel, but also just the support. Yeah, I think so much of this is we have to just, if you can have one person with you to walk with you, makes a difference.

[Bernadette Broils]

Courage is contagious.

[Jamie Reed]

It absolutely is.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah. We talk about sharing the arrows and that's when you see someone being unfairly maligned or bullied or reaping consequences for standing up for what is right or standing up for something that you believe in too, rather than us cowering in the corner and saying, wow, I'm glad that's not me. Now I'm not going to speak up because I don't want that to happen to me. We say no, whatever arrows you're throwing at them, you can throw at me too. And when we all do that, that makes a big difference. But it does take one. And you were the one in this scenario that said, you know what, I've got to speak up about it. So tell me what the reaction has been like.

[Jamie Reed]

It's. In some ways, it's been one of the greatest blessings of my life. I was so afraid the night before that story broke that I would end up on the other side of that, completely alone. And it's the exact opposite. And it's. I also felt like I was going up against what many people would say is my community. I mean, I, you know, the gay and lesbian community. I thought that I was just going to be a pariah and completely ostracized. And what immediately started happening was email after email after email of all of these people who had been fighting this fight for years already. I didn't even know so many of them existed. But I mean, I had one person reach out to me, send an email and she said, just so you know, you're my new best friend. And I've. And she shared with me her writing and her work. And this was a liberal, you know, lefty woman who she just was like, we're out here, we've been fighting this and we are ready to embrace you. And that's really all that's happened, is I've just been supported in so many ways from so many different angles though too. I can truly say now I have friends in every single partisan, I mean, from like weird libertarians and I don't entirely know what they're talking about all the time to, you know, some of these really high placed Republicans to normal Democrats to, you know, all across the board. But this issue is so damaging and it has caused so much harm, but it also has this ability to break apart some of these divisions in our country.

[Bernadette Broils]

I agree.

[Jamie Reed]

In such a powerful way.

[Unknown]

It has brought together. I mean, that's the blessing, Ali. It's that it has brought together people who would otherwise never be aligned with each other at all. Far left. Far right. Just laying aside all of that. And it's becoming a rallying cry. That and parental rights. But. And so. And. And they're rallying around. Around Jamie.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

You know, and that. And the courage that they're seeing.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yes. And, Jamie, tell me a little bit about your spouse, because you mentioned that she was transgender. Were you sharing with her at the time all of the stuff that you were concerned about, especially about the young women? And how did that go?

[Jamie Reed]

So I'll say this about my spouse. Roxy never was as on board with transitioning kids as I was. So there are definitely a lot of individuals who have medically transitioned as adults who absolutely were never in support of doing this to kids. She never believed that this was a good idea, in part because she had transitioned herself as an adult and just recognized how challenging it was and how many individual decisions had to be made. So initially was never on board with this for kids. But then when I blew the whistle, it really, I think, caused this real rift in our marriage because it really put in front of her pathway this reckoning point that she was not ready to do, and it took a very long time for her to get there. And so one of the things that has been challenging for that relationship was that in some ways, I really did have to step out alone to blow the whistle. She could not walk her at this.

[Bernadette Broils]

Point, did you kind of feel like not just children, but the entire concept of transitioning was harmful and maybe based on a lie?

[Jamie Reed]

So I absolutely recognized that. I felt my own spouse had transitioned as a response to trauma, and I absolutely felt that I could see, especially within the lesbian community, that so many gender nonconforming lesbian women were medically transitioning in response to trauma, in response to our society really just not accepting their gender nonconformity as masculine women. And so, to me, I think that kind of gets back to this concept of true trans. And no. So I recognized, you know, that true trans is really kind of a misnomer, because what it ignores is that there's so many pathways into this for people. Trauma, vulnerability, autism, gender nonconformity in childhood, just being a gay or lesbian adult. Like, there's so many pathways in that. I think it's a misnomer to talk or pretend like there's really this true, authentic self that is trans. I hold a position really now that's kind of challenging to nuance. But there are so many adults who've already done this that we still have to provide them compassion, love and care and acceptance. While we start to have the questions about what does the I'm all about evidence. What does the evidence show us? The evidence shows us this is not the right pathway for children, Period. End of story. We don't need any more studies. This is not the right thing to do for kids.

[Bernadette Broils]

And has your spouse detransitioned?

[Jamie Reed]

Yes. She has completely ceased testosterone and is starting to think about ways to kind of reintegrate. You know, that biological sex that was always there as an outward presentation.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow. I bet that's been quite the journey too.

[Jamie Reed]

She has been doing this with such grace and also the way that I would hope anybody who goes to do this does this, which is support mental health treatment, getting a therapist, going slow and just taking the time to try to reintegrate in a way that works. You don't have to know all of the, you don't have to have all the answers to say, this is my actual biological sex. And how is that going to look? You don't have to know that to just embrace this is my real biological sex.

[Bernadette Broils]

Last sponsor for the day is Jace Medical. It is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your family's medical needs. We've got flu season, all kinds of viruses floating around, and if for some reason you're not able to get to the pharmacy or get through to your doctor the way that you normally do, you want an emergency stash of medication online. The Jace case not only comes with five life saving antibiotics for bacterial infections, but also you can add on things like Tamiflu or ivermectin or an epipen and this really could be a lifesaver for you or someone in your family. The Jace daily case is also a year long supply of the prescriptions that you and your family rely on on a daily basis. Go to jace.com use code ALI a checkout for a discount on your order, go to jace.com code ali. Bernadette, you seen this from the legal side, you don't only know Jamie's story and everything that she encountered, but you know the stories of a lot of people who have been affected by this industry, by this process. Can you talk just a little bit about that? What are you seeing in your practice?

[Unknown]

Yeah, so I'm seeing Both the things that are happening, particularly in schools, that are, in a sense, feeding the monster. What Jamie described is what I call it is a monster, and it has many tentacles that are going into. Virtually every portion of our society is going into our government. We had a federal government that was pushing this, and that's when it exploded as a misdirection of their distortion of Title IX and media, just really every portion of our society. But the one that is most toxic towards children and most harmful has been the school and the academic. And so we talk about in our practice, we talk about the school to clinic pipeline that they've set up. So what we've seen, and we have many parents we work with and we have lawsuits over, are children that are secretly transitioned. So one of them, I'm thinking of the Perez family. So their little girl, she was 12. This is a Catholic Christian family, had never had any gender dysphoria and really didn't have any mental health problems to speak of. Just a normal kid. But she was bullied a bit at school, and she thought, you know, boys are stronger, so I just want to be a boy. That alone then catalyzed this process where privately the school counselor started to meet with her parents, had no idea to promote and endorse this idea that, well, maybe I should be a boy and maybe I am a boy.

[Bernadette Broils]

A public school, or did you say Catholic school?

[Unknown]

A public school. And Ellie, Beth, this is in Florida.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Well, Ron DeSantis was governor. Right, right. A few years ago, before they passed some of their laws. They passed this, helped pass some of these laws. But so she's meeting with this counselor privately, and it creates a double life. And the level life became so untenable for her, of course, unbearable, that she just decides it'd just be better if I end my life. And she attempted suicide at school. I mean, like, really, truly did. And so the parents, they're called. They have no idea. They're called to the principal's office to learn for the first time as their child is being taken to the hospital on the back of a police vehicle. What is going on? Well, they learn she'd been trans identifying and been meeting with the. They learn everything for the very first time.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow.

[Unknown]

Thankfully, she has desisted and now she frankly wants to be a warrior to, you know, to fight this.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow.

[Unknown]

We have a lawsuit for that. Our most tragic story. And there's. We could sit here for two hours, right? But unfortunately. Yeah, unfortunately. But our most tragic is Sage. Now, I'll say her name because there's now a law in her honor that they're trying to pass in Virginia. She had had trauma as a child, talking about the trauma pathway. And so when she hit puberty, see, there's just a lot of things that line up, begins to trans identify that causes her to become sexually harassed at school because they're telling her and she's tiny, she's five foot tall, to use the boys bathroom. None of this is told to the parents. So the so sage she runs away because she doesn't feel safe. And when she runs away, she runs into the arms of an adult pedophile who raped her and trafficked her to other men and took her across state lines. And when she's found in Maryland, the woke judge doesn't want to give her back the system there in Baltimore because they discovered that her parents might not be affirming of her male identity. This is a traumatized child. Her mom wasn't able to be there when they do a rape kit on her. And so they put her in a facility for troubled boys because she's identifying as a male. Allie, what do you think happens to her in this facility? Of course, what everyone knows, what all of your audience knows immediately. So she runs away because she's being sexually assaulted there again. And she's trafficked further. And they find her in Texas. And thankfully Texas has the common sense to return her to her parents. We have a lawsuit now in Virginia. It's pending before the fourth Circuit court of appeals. But there are so many of these stories, and that's the kids. See. So then what is it that's feeding the clinic that Jamie worked at? Well, are these school officials that are endorsing this lie to susceptible children who are in the process of development, who believe trusted adults. When the trusted adult says, maybe your problem is that you were born in the wrong body. And you know what? We don't have to tell your parents because you and I know better. And so by the time that the parents find out, there's so much. There's so much indoctrination and these kids are demanding to go to Jamie's former clinic. And the parents are then in an untenable situation and they feel and they're coerced many. So that's one side of the stories that are a part and you know, behind the scenes of this clinic, of clinics like this and all around the.

[Bernadette Broils]

Country, well, are we going to tear this down? Is it crumbling? What do you think?

[Jamie Reed]

So within my own state, story broke. And within a year, the center was completely closed.

[Bernadette Broils]

Wow. Praise God.

[Jamie Reed]

Which was. Was actually. It was my goal. It was what? The night before that story came out, I said, you know, that we just have to get. This place has to be shut down.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah.

[Jamie Reed]

But our country is really fractured.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah.

[Jamie Reed]

So we have 24, 25 states that are trying to protect kids, and we have 24, 25 states that are not. And so what my coalition is working to do every day is to try to make sure those other states start to protect these kids. And we also have to pull this out of this kind of, you know, cultural mess of a conversation that we've got going on and really bring this back to real simple basics. Children have the right to grow up with their fertility, their sexual function, and their endocrine systems intact, whole and functional. It is their basic human right. We have been perpetuating a human rights abuse against children in this country that is a nonpartisan issue. This is not a red or blue. It is purely a human rights issue that has to stop.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah. And parents have the right to know what is going on with their child laws, even in conservative states. And. Well, you would be able to tell me, but from my understanding, counselors really have to tell parents they are legally obligated to keep some of these conversations confidential between them and this child. And that needs to change. Parents need to have the rights to this kind of information about their kids, right?

[Unknown]

Well, it depends on the state. So in most states, actually, parents, they do have the right to know what's going on, even in counseling sessions, unless they have consented to not knowing. Okay. And it really is. It is different from state to state. So the first thing I tell to parents, and then there are some states like California and Oregon and Washington and really the deep blue states, in which, unfortunately now kids have the right as early as 12 or 13, to be able to consent to mental health treatment without their parents being involved at all. And. And these kids are in a world of hurt. These parents are in a world of hurt. But the. So we say to parents all the time, do not relinquish your parental rights at any stage. Demand them. Because the last story I'll share when we talk about how to tear this monster down, is child protective services being weaponized. Yeah, we're seeing this around the country. And we have right now a case in California. I had one already in Arizona, but a case in California where a family, an immigrant family, has lost custody of their child because she is gender dysphoric, she's gender confused. And these parents believe in Biological reality. And so we're fighting that right now. So the thing I want Jamie and I talked about, we're hoping that your audience realizes that, number one, don't expect, because you're maybe a conservative family or a Christian family, that your child is safe, is immune from this. Yeah, this is a. These are conservative parents. They're Christian parents. In fact, many of our clients are. And even if your child is not even in public school, Child Protective Services can go anywhere, right?

[Bernadette Broils]

Yep.

[Unknown]

And they can be called at any time. And we're seeing a huge up. Last week in three days, we had three families contact our office for help with Child Protective Services.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yes.

[Unknown]

So we have. So the most important thing is that by the time a family gets to me. Okay. To either Jamie, the former Jamie, or to me as a lawyer, they're in a world of hurt. They're in a nightmare. So we wanted to talk about. And we'll share a little bit about resources and recruiting the faith community, the church, to get to a place to, as you said, inoculate our children and our families before we get there.

[Bernadette Broils]

Yeah, well, we will absolutely share those resources. We'll make sure to link them in the description of this episode. My producer is telling me that we do have to wrap, although I could talk to you guys for hours. And I just want to say I'm so thankful for your courage. You didn't have to. You could have moved on, moved to a different job, make sure that your kids still get tuition help to a university. And you chose to sacrifice on behalf of people who may never thank you or know how you positively impacted their life. And, of course, you, too. I mean, just legally on the front lines. I mean, this fight just wouldn't exist without lawyers who are willing to take up this cause many times at personal cost. And so I just want to thank y'all so much. Courage begets courage. And you just never know who's going to watch her listen to this and take up the cause of courage because of what y'all are doing. So thank you. And I am praying and doing whatever small thing I can from this microphone to just link arms with you guys and to try to end this. And I think that we can. So thank you.

[Jamie Reed]

Thank you.