Nurse Blows Whistle on Hospital Performing "Gender Affirming Care" on Children (with Vanessa Sivadge)

MUSIC Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters.

Romans 1218 tells us that, quote, if it's possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone, end quote. But there are times, as we all know, where keeping the peace might mean keeping a lie. Well, that was the experience for Vanessa Sivich, who worked as a registered nurse at Texas Children's Hospital. She chose to corroborate a whistleblower's testimony exposing the hospital's transgender medicine program. She was placed on leave and then subsequently fired by the hospital in August. She's here to tell us her story. Vanessa Sivich, welcome to Family Policy Matters. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Well, first of all, thank you for having the courage to stand up to what was then, I guess, an illegal practice that you are witnessing. Isn't that correct? Yeah. You know, I'm from Houston, Texas, born and raised, and Houston has the largest medical center in the world. And specifically, Texas Children's Hospital is the largest pediatric hospital in the United States. It is the jewel of the Texas Medical Center.

It's very prestigious and very just award-winning in every sense of that word. And when I accepted a position at the hospital in 2018, I truly believed that I was going to be there for the rest of my life. This was a dream come true for me. I graduated from nursing school in 2015. And three years later, I thought that I had peaked in my career, you know, and God has truly has a sense of humor because three years later, I transferred to a different role. And I started seeing children confused about their sex in my clinic. And this was a multi-specialty clinic in which children with various diseases and issues were coming to be seen.

And one of those clinics was the transgender clinic. And I use the word transgender very cautiously because I don't believe, as a Christian and as a follower of Jesus, that there is such a thing as a transgender child. I believe that there are children who are very confused about their sexual identity, and that there is male and female, as we know from Genesis 1.

And so that's how I prefer to, you know, I refer to these children as confused. And so I started seeing a number of things that were very concerning very quickly. Starting in 2021, I saw how confused children walked in to see the doctor and walked out with a cross-sex hormone prescription. I saw how parents were manipulated into believing that, quote, gender affirming care is life-saving and would save the life of their child. I saw girls who had histories of abuse and suicide attempts and autism and mental health issues come to believe that a hormone would solve all of those problems, those deep issues within their soul, within their heart.

And ultimately, as believers in Christ, you know, we believe that Jesus is the one who's the ultimate source of healing, and he brings that healing to that void that we all feel. But I knew I had to do something about it, and that day came specifically for me when I was asked to do something. By the doctor, the transgender doctor, I was asked to teach a boy, a teenage boy, how to administer an injection to himself. And what I didn't realize at the time was that this boy was going to utilize what I had taught him to administer estrogen to himself via injection on a weekly basis to affirm the false identity that he had adopted for himself. And after that happened, I realized that what I was witnessing and what I was asked to do was directly contradictory to my values, to my beliefs as a Christian. And so what happened next was I was at work and I read an article from an anonymous whistleblower, as you mentioned, who had come forward very courageously and very bravely to expose that Texas Children's Hospital was providing gender affirming care to children under the age of 18 in secret. And they did this because they knew that our Attorney General, Ken Paxton, due to his previously stated opinion that he would investigate hospitals for child abuse if they provided cross-sex hormones to children, they had scrubbed their transgender medicine program from their website.

There was zero evidence that anything of this nature was happening to the outside world. And I knew that that was a lie because I was a nurse working in this clinic where this was taking place. And so, you know, there's a saying that courage begets courage, that courage is contagious. And this anonymous whistleblower, who I had no idea who this person was at the time, had found the courage to come forward and reveal this shocking truth that children were being treated for gender dysphoria inside the hospital. And so I decided to come forward as well. I came forward anonymously. I spoke with this reporter and I provided my testimony as a nurse working in this clinic. At the time that you decided to come forward, did you realize how important that was and the trouble that you could get yourself into?

You know, that's a wonderful question when I've thought of quite frequently. No, I didn't. I had no idea what the outcome or the consequences of that decision would be. I thought that everything would proceed as it had been. What I didn't mention previously was very soon after the anonymous whistleblower testimony came forward in May of 2023, the Texas legislature here voted to outlaw and to criminalize gender affirming care, providing transgender medicine to minors under the age of 18. So all the surgeries and all of that, by the grace of God, is now illegal in the state of Texas. And that happened very soon after I came forward in May of 2023. And so I went back to work thinking, well, you know, this is now illegal. This is a step in the right direction.

This is wonderful news for the protection of children in the state. And little did I know what would happen two months later. I was anonymous.

No one knew my identity. But two months later on a Monday evening in July of 2023, I was having dinner here at home with my husband and some friends. And there was a knock at our front door. And my husband and I go to open the door and discover that there are two federal agents who asked to speak with me about issues at my work.

And they flashed their badges. They said they're from the FBI. And they informed me that I am a person of interest in an investigation targeting a whistleblower. And in their words, this anonymous whistleblower had violated PIPA, patient confidentiality, by releasing confidential patient information to the public. And they wanted to recruit my help to expose this whistleblower's identity to the world.

And, you know, it was a terrifying moment for my husband and I. Never did I think in my life that the federal government would weaponize a Department of Justice to come after a nurse whose only crime was to speak the truth about what I had seen. And instead of going after the hospital who had concealed their crimes against children, they were coming after the person who had exposed the crime in the first place. And so they issued a series of threats. They said that I wasn't safe at my work. They said that they could make life very difficult for me if I didn't cooperate with them. And their goal was to coerce and intimidate me into aiding their investigation of this other anonymous person, whom at the time I had no idea who this person was. Now, of course, we know that this is Dr. Eitan Heim, who was the first whistleblower who had come forward before me.

But at the time, I had no idea who he was. And so we had a decision to make, my husband and I. Our faith is what sustained us in those weeks ahead when we just didn't know what to do or what the consequences would be or what the risks would be. But, you know, we read a passage in Ephesians that says, take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness, but expose them, for everything exposed by the light becomes visible. And in Psalm 37, another passage that has been very meaningful and personally in my life, it says, commit everything you do to the Lord, trust Him, and He will help you.

He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun. And we knew that we couldn't stay silent. And so, you know, in the months to come, we decided to speak out about what had happened and what we had seen and how we had been targeted. You're listening to Family Policy Matters, a weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. This is just one of the many ways NC Family works to educate and inform citizens about issues that impact faith and family here in North Carolina.

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That's at NC Family Policy. Okay, so what happened next? You know, I knew that I needed to speak out about what had happened, about how I had been targeted by the FBI unjustly, but I didn't know what that would look like.

And so in the months that followed, I started seeing some red flags at my work, things that made me very suspicious. And this was after the law had been passed and signed into law by our governor. This was no longer happening. Children were no longer being given cross-sex hormones in the state of Texas. And that's obviously a very good thing, but in the paperwork and in the billing specifically, I started noticing some discrepancies. And what I discovered is that Texas Children's Hospital had been utilizing Texas Medicaid illegally and fraudulently to fund cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for children.

And that is a statute that is a law that has been in place since 2015. Texas Medicaid policy explicitly prohibits the coverage of gender-affirming care treatments, surgeries, or procedures for kids. And yet, as I was going about my work, I'm seeing patients who have Medicaid or CHIP or STAR, federally-funded or state-funded insurance programs on file, who are receiving cross-sex hormones and treatments. And I realized my astonishment that the hospital is not even trying to cover up or to hide the illegal actions that they are engaged in, that they are utilizing American taxpayer dollars to pay for these treatments that will irreversibly harm children. And when I realized that that was happening, I realized I couldn't stay silent about that.

I knew that the taxpayers in our state and ultimately in our country deserve to know what is going on. You end up getting fired from that job. Talk to us about what that means to you now. I mean, I know your next steps are you're suing, and I think for good cause.

When you look back, do you feel like you did the right thing? I was fired in August of 2024, just a few months ago. And I believe that that was retaliation against my coming forward as a whistleblower.

And it was illegal for the hospital to do that for a number of reasons. And so, for that, I have set up a Give Send Go. And I am fundraising for my legal defense because this will be a lengthy battle. And so, I'm so grateful for the public support.

I would encourage anyone to check out my story on my Give Send Go. But to answer your question, our attorney general has, thankfully, has opened an investigation into the hospital's misconduct of funds. But as it relates to other medical professionals, you know, for the most part, I've been very blessed and have received many messages of support from all over the world. But it can be a very scary thing for a medical professional to come forward, you know, to expose any kind of misconduct or to blow the whistle on anything illegal happening.

So, I have a lot of compassion for those people who are currently in that position, like I was. But I would say for the believer in Jesus who is operating in the medical field, I always encourage people that their fear of God has to be greater than their fear of man, of what man can do to them. And ultimately, you have to realize that this is your acting in obedience to the heavenly mandate that we have in Ephesians to take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness. That is the heavenly mandate that's the standard. That's the calling that we've been given.

And so, people have to kind of reckon with that and have to come to a place where they have to decide if they're going to be obedient to what God has called them to do. Wow. Thank you very much. Thank you for that.

So, we're just about out of time. Vanessa Sivage, tell our listeners again where they can follow your case and perhaps donate to help with your legal defense. Well, you can follow me on X. I'm very active on there. But I've also, like I've said, I've set up a Give Send Go page, which is a public crowdfunded platform.

And I have my personal email listed on there. And I always love hearing from people. So please reach out. And if you feel led to donate, I would so appreciate that. But I also very much appreciate the prayers.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Vanessa Sivage. Thanks for being with us today on Family Policy Matters. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks, and may God bless you and your family.