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Transphobe from western Massachusetts admits she called in bomb threat that shut Children's Hospital last year
By adamg on Fri, 09/29/2023 - 9:12am
Catherine Leavy of Westfield yesterday pleaded guilty to two federal counts for calling in a bomb threat to Children's Hospital on Aug. 30, 2022 as part of a wave of threatened violence against the hospital and its doctors spurred by online transphobes making fake claims that the hospital was mutilating children.
Leavy formally pleaded guilty to one count of making a false bomb threat and one count of intentionally conveying false or misleading information that a bomb was on the way. According to the docket for her case in US District Court in Boston:
The court finds the defendant fully competent and capable of entering an informed plea, finds the plea knowing and voluntary, and accepts the plea, the defendant is now adjudged as Guilty. The defendant has been accepted into a Restorative Justice program and asks for the sentencing hearing to be scheduled in March to allow her to complete the program. Sentencing set for 3/19/2024 02:00 PM in Courtroom 13.
Restorative justice is a concept under which Leavy and her victim, in this case, the hospital, start a process in which Leavy will admit guilt for her actions and then work toward ways she can make amends for them.
According to an affidavit by an FBI agent on the case, on Aug. 30, Leavy called the hospital switchboard - a couple weeks after doctors began receiving death threats:
[Operator]: Boston Children's hospital, this is [name], how may I help you?
[Subject]: There is a bomb on the way to the hospital, you better evacuate everybody you sickos.
The hospital was put into lockdown and police shut a couple of blocks around it as bomb-squad officers searched for an explosive device that did not actually exist.
Investigators pretty quickly zeroed in on Leavy through the use of phone records:
On September 15, 2022, FBI agents interviewed LEAVY at her residence. The interview was recorded. LEAVY initially denied knowing the location of her cellular telephone and denied making the threat to BCH on August 30, 2022. Agents continued to interview LEAVY and played an audio-recording of the August 30, 2022, phone call to BCH. Agents also told LEAVY that phone records reflected that her phone was used to make the threat. During the interview, LEAVY expressed disapproval of BCH on multiple occasions. When agents further questioned her based on those beliefs, LEAVY admitted that she called BCH on August 30, 2022, and made the threat. LEAVY stated that she had no plan or intention to actually bomb BCH.
While at LEAVY's residence, FBI agents recovered the Target Telephone from LEAVY's bedroom pursuant to a federal search warrant.
On Sept. 9, somebody else called in a bomb threat to the hospital.
On Sept. 18, a small group of transphobes picketed the hospital across the street, but were outnumbered by police and reporters.
Things quieted down until Nov. 16, when somebody e-mailed a threat that bombs had been placed at the hospital and at the homes of three doctors.
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Comments
Mixed good
I'm a big fan of restorative justice, and I hope it plays a useful role here. This woman needs deprogramming, and hopefully her restorative justice program will have that effect.
I'm less a fan of the fact that others who have threatened the hospital are still running around free. May they get caught and rot in prison.
Maybe she should help catch them
Put her on the receiving end of a call the next time a bomb threat comes in. Make her sit in the hospital waiting for that call. Make her be the one to have to announce the lockdown and go through the procedures with the staff as they try to protect a bunch of kids with cancer who are afraid they might die to a psycho with a bomb who might "have no intention of actually bombing the hospital".
Then make her sit and read hand-written letters from all the teens who have had to experience growing up as the wrong gender and their fears and hopes about the surgeries and how the fact that people are calling in bomb threats, risking everyone else's lives at the hospital, makes them feel for needing the surgeries there regardless.
Just a clarification
The transphobes like to mention surgical procedures as their main talking point, but virtually no minors undergo gender-affirming surgery. My program (not GEMS, but a lot of our kids are seen there as well) serves thousands of trans/nonbinary/gender-expansive kids per year. We have had literally one minor ever who received top surgery at the age of 16, after he had lived as a boy since preschool. A small number of our kids receive puberty blockers, and an even smaller number receive cross-sex hormones at the age of 14+ after having lived as their expressed gender for a number of years. No one is doing genital surgeries on trans minors.
Considerably more minors receive cosmetic breast augmentations and cosmetic rhinoplasties each year. They can typically consent to these at 13 or 14.
A huge number of intersex infants receive unnecessary genital surgeries without full informed consent, as their parents are told their genitalia needs "fixing" rather than having a correct explanation that a normal variation is present and that leaving it alone until they're older is the healthiest option.
Most trans+ kids are not receiving any medical management. If they are seen by a medical or clinical program at all, it is to speak with them about gender, help them clarify things, inform them as to available options, and educate their family members. Most of our work with trans kids is around things like name changes and finding affirming providers and social activities. We connect some of them with GEMS and other programs, but the vast majority aren't interested.
This generation of kids are refreshingly confident and many don't feel the need to change anything about themselves, but just want to be respected for who they are. We are seeing more and more kids who don't even want to change their names, stating things like "well, my name is Elizabeth and I know I'm a boy, so boys can be named Elizabeth, and I don't owe anyone any further explanation." Pray tell, transphobes, how an awesome spirit like that is evidence that going to trans-affirming programming is "making the kids trans" and "convincing them they're someone they're not."
Restorative Justice
Perhaps someone here can enlighten me. Does the restorative justice plea mean that she will not serve any jail time? If so I have a very big problem with that. Jeopardizing children in the hospital through relocation and/or through the stress of the lockdown, delaying patients treatments and appointments, interrupting trauma care and terrorizing staff requires significant jail time. This was an act of terror plain and simple and should be treated as such.
I also can't imagine what type of restorative justice could possibly be acceptable. I do believe restorative justice is useful but seems utterly meaningless in this case. Restorative justice may just add to the stress of the employees. Bomb threats should not be subject to restorative justice , except perhaps in very specific instances where a single person is targeted, certainly not for an entire Level 1 pediatric trauma center.
No, this doesn't necessarily mean no prison time
Her guilty plea was not part of a plea deal, so the government could still call for prison time, and, in fact, her guilty plea is not based on entering a restorative-justice program - it came up in the context of her asking for a bit more time to complete the program before she is sentenced (unlike in state court, there's often a lag of a few months between a plea or guilty finding and sentencing in federal court anyway). Ultimately, it will be up to the judge to decide what sentence she gets.
The docket entry I quoted above continues:
Probation records (which means the federal probation department looked at her past records, if any) are not typically entered into the docket, and were not in this case, so we don't know what that said.
Before her sentencing, both prosecutors and her attorney will submit sentencing memoranda recommending a particular punishment (again, the judge has the final say).
bomb threats are wrong, but a small correction . . .
they were mutilating children. If you define elective radical mastectomies and chest reconstruction on healthy females as mutilation.
By their own 2022 article in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, the Gender Clinic at BCH noted that they did 65 mastectomies on minors as young as 15 between 2017 and 2020
Here's the article, look at it yourself. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9000168/pdf/jcm-11-01943.pdf
I don't want to get into the minutiae again, but I'll note that since we last had this discussion, the tide has turned regarding so-called "gender-affirming care" (sex change procedures) for minors.
There have been several medical malpractice lawsuits filed by detransitioning women who are suing for what they say was a fast railroading into puberty blockers and surgery when they were adolescents.
https://www.dhillonlaw.com/lawsuits/chloe-cole-v-kaiser-permanente/
Tort law and some judgments of tens or hundreds of millions may take these procedures out of the realm of a Children's Hospital
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/03/07/legal-action-may-chan...
The American Academy of Pediatrics is doing an evidence review https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/04/health/aap-transgender-youth-review/i...
Finland, Sweden and the UK have stopped sex change procedures for minors
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4070174-why-europe-and-america-ar...
Several states have banned sex change medications and surgery for minors.
The tide has turned because most people see these procedures on children as activist-driven insanity, and a denial of nature in favor of the most extreme kinds of pharmaceutical and technological interventions. If adults want to do that, fine. Putting minor adolescents into that system is wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/05/05/trans-poll-gop-polit...
I've documented this comment well, now let the insults and ranting begin.
I wouldn't be motivated to comment on this without the inaccuracy and the loaded terms ("transphobes.") Nobody's afraid, few are haters. Most people just don't think surgery and hormones to change secondary sex characteristics of children is a good idea.
But..
“Bomb threats are wrong, but…”
You are a detestable piece of human shit.
Elective mutilation
what a concept.
not a new concept at all
There are people who seek to, and have had, healthy limbs amputated. Legs, arms cut off
It's called Bodily Integrity Identity Disorder
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/07/health/body-integrity-dysphoria-welln...
Most jurisdictions prohibit it either through law or medical licensing regulation.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235713341_Regulating_bodily_int...
Caca
You claim to not want to go into the minutiae yet you do. First strike against your credibility on this question.
The lawsuits mentioned are too smart by half. Why would any medical institution go so far with gender transition if there was not a deep level of agreement? No. The law suit claims, "evidence of malice, oppression and fraud." Seriously, a major medical group willingly engages in "evidence of malice, oppression and fraud."
Add that the law firm representing the so-called victim is in cohoots with an ideological organization that is opposed to "a coordinated assault on our civil liberties from corporations, politicians, socialist revolutionaries, and inept or biased government officials." Notable is that this organization was started the namesake of the law firm.
In other words this is an ideological based law suit, which for all we know may have recruited, coerced or the current culture warrior term du jure, groomed the plaintiff. This is not about a genuine concern for the plaintiff. But a culture warrior who sees an opportunity to use law as a cudgel against the work of helping people feel comfortable in their bodies.
Second strike against credibility of this argument that tells people who are transgender to just shut up and disappear.
You just couldn't help yourself
Just had to get in a "bomb threats are bad BUT..."
Nah, this is pretty gross transphobia.
These are medical procedures being done by trained medical professionals after consultation with parents and the patients themselves, and in incredibly small numbers.
The end goal of these suits, as the groups behind them are happy to tell you once you get past their fake "won't someone think of the children" veneer, is to eventually ban all these surgeries for everyone as part of a process of trying to remove transgendered people from the world altogether.
"The tide has turned" because people realized they couldn't get the same political leverage complaining just about gay people anymore, so they turned their attention to trans folks in an attempt to use the same exact culture war tactics.
Let's face it: trans people have existed forever, which means trans kids have existed forever. Banning treatment for trans kids isn't going to get rid of them - it's just making life worse for these trans kids (which is the point, if people would be honest about it).
And it should go without saying, but none of this excuses bomb threats to children's hospitals and it's pretty telling that you're still trying to use this as a defense.
Restorative Justice for a terrorist
If she was Muslim this would not be the result.
Is intersex Satan's work?
I have a cousin who believes that claims of intersex is Satan's work. You're a boy or girl and that's that.
As a cousin I knew that fellow's mom. A mom who was the child of violence and horror that most people can not personally fathom. Not the Holocaust, but a childhood of great violence. A childhood that set her to be a vessel of Christian hate.
It impossible to understand what motivated Leavy without getting to know her. Perhaps however, spending time with victims in the context of Reparative Justice, will help her move from whatever motivated her to committing domestic terrorism.
I am reminded of images such as Pandora's Box and the genie in the bottle. Both about what is kept in boxes and bottles until something releases them. In this woman's case it might have been Trump, Alex Jones or religious leaders whose fortunes are based on the fears and anxieties of others. These parasites grasp how to squeeze millions from people who are primed to be fearful and ridden with anxiety.