HOUSTON, Texas — A nurse at the nation’s largest children’s hospital said doctors pressured parents to have their children undergo hormone therapy and other gender-change medical interventions, warning them that putting off treatment could put their children at risk of suicide.
Vanessa Sivaj has been working since 2021 at a clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital that provides gender-affirming care to children. She says doctors there are more concerned with “ideology” than what’s best for young people, many of whom have additional underlying issues.
“Parents were manipulated by doctors with ideological agendas to put their children on the path to medical transition,” Sivaggi told The Washington Post in an exclusive interview.
“And I think doctors will use clever language to suggest that if they don’t do this, the child will kill themselves or they will harm themselves.”
Sivaj, 31, also argued that doctors misclassify treatments to justify gender-affirming procedures, a strategy she believes they use to get around a Texas Medicaid ban on covering hormone treatments for transgender care.
However, Sivaj said he had no direct knowledge of whether the treatment was being billed to the public health insurance system.
A Houston health care worker said she was being hounded by the FBI for speaking out, and agents visited her home after she spoke out. Conservative journalist Chris Rufoand suggested she was involved in an investigation into violations of the HIPAA patient privacy law.
Sivaggi, who still works at Texas Children’s Hospital, said he has observed doctors getting parents of young patients to agree to treatment without explaining the long-term side effects, including infertility.
“Doctors are treating patients based on what they think they want, not what’s medically best for them,” she said.
“There was no discussion of what the risks were or what the long-term effects were.”
Dr. Sivaj also found that many of her patients had underlying issues — past suicide attempts, autism diagnoses, depression and anxiety — that she felt were being ignored in the name of prescribing hormones and other transgender care.
“Many of them have been to the emergency room with suicide attempts, many are autistic, many are suffering from depression and anxiety and there’s clearly something else going on in addition to confusion about sexual identity, which is really devastating,” she said.
“It was a total shock.”
She said she witnessed doctors at the clinic misdiagnosing patients with hormone deficiencies in order to get Medicaid coverage.
“Healthcare professionals were deliberately misdiagnosing patients to justify puberty-suppressing drugs and hormones,” she said.
Among their strategies, she argued, was making the “absurd” claim that healthy girls are testosterone deficient, or healthy boys are estrogen deficient.
She explained that children who were identified as needing gender reassignment care would typically be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, but doctors were instead giving them a different diagnosis.
She argued that she saw this as part of an effort to ensure treatment was available through the taxpayer-funded health insurance system.
Texas Children’s Hospital announced in March 2022 that it would stop providing gender-affirming hormone treatments to children following a decision by Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Declared such treatment “child abuse” Based on state law.
In June 2023, the state legislature passed a law banning transgender treatment for children and barring taxpayer funds from being used for gender-affirming treatment. The law is currently the subject of litigation in the Texas Supreme Court.
Shivaji said the clinic would also record parents who expressed reluctance to provide gender reassignment care for their children.
“Some parents were very affirmative of their child’s new sexual identity, others were a bit more cautious, mindful and quizzical. It was always noted in the chart which parents were cautious and did not fully affirm and which parents were affirmative,” she claimed.
Sivaj first spoke out against pediatric transgender medical care in 2022, when he wrote an op-ed for a conservative newspaper. Family Research Council She believes the treatment will cause long-term harm to young patients.
But she came forward in May 2023 after another whistleblower, Dr. Eisan Haim, a surgeon who completed his training at the hospital, made specific allegations against Texas Children’s Hospital. Leaked Documents An indictment filed against Rufo University in 2023 showed the institution was secretly and illegally performing gender reassignment surgery on children.
Haim was subsequently indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas on four counts of violating the HIPAA Privacy Act.
“Dr. Heim broke no laws and looks forward to his day in court,” said Heim’s attorney, Ryan Patrick. Dallas Morning News.
After that interview, the FBI showed up at Sivaggi’s door on July 24, 2023. She said the visit was intended to intimidate her into silence.
That evening, Shivaji and her husband had invited friends over for dinner, but when the two men at the door identified themselves, Shivaji realized exactly why they were there.
The agents remained at Sivaj’s home for 15 minutes, threatening him in the hopes that he would help them track down Haim, Sivaj said.
“They said, ‘We’re here because we know your views on transgender health care,'” Sivaggi said of his interactions with the FBI.
“They continued talking and said, ‘You are a suspect in an investigation into someone who violated HIPAA and leaked confidential patient information.'”
Investigators said Shivaji told them he would not be safe at work if he did not cooperate.
“They need your help in finding him and they want you to help them expose him and if you don’t they’re going to make your life very difficult.”
When Sivaj called Haim a whistleblower, FBI agents corrected him, saying he was a leaker, not a whistleblower.
“They used very vague language, almost like threats, implying that if I didn’t help them, they wouldn’t be able to protect me.”
“We just listened. And then they left. From that moment on, we knew our lives would never be the same again and we couldn’t stay silent.”
The FBI said it does not comment on private communications.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into the whistleblower’s allegations, and Texas Rep. Brian Harrison has called on the state Legislature to hold hearings to investigate the matter and the Biden administration’s “unconstitutional tyranny.”
“The Biden administration’s goal is to suppress dissent. They want to silence dissent,” Harrison recently told The Washington Post.
A spokesman for Texas Children’s Hospital did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
Sivaj said her goal in speaking out is to advocate for children who are receiving life-altering treatment from health care providers who prioritize political correctness over medical care.
“These doctors are driven by a political agenda, an ideological agenda,” she said, “and I truly believe they think they’re doing the right thing.”
