St. Louis Gender Clinic Told Teachers to Encourage Whole 5th Grade Group to be ‘Transgender’

A gender clinic in St. Louis, Missouri, encouraged local fifth grade school teachers to “affirm” the “transgender” identity of an entire group of children.

The Washington University Transgender Center at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital, which made headlines last week after a former employee and whistleblower Jamie Reed excoriated the “morally and medically appalling” practices of the clinic, reportedly instructed the teachers to encourage “transgenderism” on children.

Reed’s account encouraged Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) to investigate.

Emails received by the Daily Mail show a Parkway C-2 School District teacher corresponding with the clinic, concerned about elementary school girls — aged around 10-11 — who claimed to be “transgender” after one of their classmates had done so previously.

Despite speaking about the “social contagion” theory —  that once one child begins to identity as “transgender,” others will follow for social reasons — the clinic doctor dismissed the idea, saying, “This language isn’t affirming and the few studies on phenomenon are, in my personal and professional opinion, invalid.”

The clinic doctor went on to claim that all of the students must really be “transgender,” and Dr. Sarah Garwood who works at the clinic was quoted as saying, “The best we can do is affirm, validate and allow for exploration.”

“If in a few weeks or months, a student wants to go by their legal name and pronouns that match their sex assigned at birth, no harm was really done in affirming them before,” the quote of Garwood continued.

“I will try to find some resources for you, after filtering through resources that may invalidate transgender folks,” the teacher was told. “In general, I’d recommend as much support and discussion as possible around their gender exploration.”

These emails were revealed after a Freedom of Information Act request from Parents Defending Education (PDE).

“The utter lack of curiosity about the underlying causes of such a trend among ten-year-old children by medical professionals is immoral at best and an abdication of professional responsibility at worst,” PDE president Nicole Neily told the Daily Mail. “These children and their families have been let down, both by the school and the hospital – so it’s little wonder that trust in these institutions have declined precipitously over the past few years.”

Bailey’s office is investigating the gender clinic upon receipt of a whistleblower affidavit, and earlier this month said, “We take this evidence seriously and are thoroughly investigating to make sure children are not harmed by individuals who may be more concerned with a radical social agenda than the health of children.”

Reed, the whistleblower, said she was “struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment,” and detailed how only very little evidence is required to start children down the irreversible path of “gender transition.”

A child only needs to have seen a therapist “once or twice for the green light” to start the process and in order to hit the proper marks and “make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition.”

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.