Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH), the site of a whistleblower scandal involving illegal gender surgeries on minors, must form the nation’s first-ever detransition clinic by October as part of a newly finalized legal settlement with the state of Texas. TCH must also provide such care for free for the first five years.
The historic settlement was first announced in May, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Aug. 5 that the agreement had been completed. TCH agreed to the settlement’s conditions, including paying about $10 million to resolve state and federal Medicaid fraud claims and admitting to providing transgender procedures. TCH, the largest children’s hospital in the U.S., must permanently revoke multiple physicians’ medical staff privileges and amend its bylaws so that any medical staff who performs gender transition procedures would lose medical staff privileges.
In 2023, Paxton launched an investigation into the hospital over reports of Medicaid billing violations. The claims came from a resident surgeon, Dr. Eithan Haim, who reported to an investigative journalist that the hospital was continuing to provide gender transition treatments, despite a 2022 agreement to halt such practices.
Haim also reported that they were committing Medicaid fraud by illegally billing Medicaid for pediatric transgender procedures. Federal agents later informed Haim that the Biden administration’s Justice Department was investigating him for violating patient privacy laws.
TCH nurse Vanessa Sivadge, who at the time did not know Haim, corroborated some of Haim’s accusations to the same reporter after seeing the allegations in a news story. Sivadge said that after she anonymously exposed TCH’s continued gender procedures on minors after the hospital publicly claimed it had stopped such treatments, she was threatened by FBI agents at her home.
Sivadge told Decision in a 2024 interview that the agents told her that if she was protecting the leaker, they would “make life difficult” for her. Weeks after the FBI visit, TCH fired Sivadge, in August 2024.
In January 2025 at the beginning of the second Trump administration, the government dropped its charges against Haim.
In a statement responding to the finalized settlement, Sivadge quoted Psalm 37:5-6, which states, “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” (NLT).
“As a result of my disclosures,” she said, “five physicians that participated in sex-rejecting procedures have been held accountable: three current physicians will have their clinical privileges and staff appointments permanently and irrevocably terminated, and two former physicians are permanently barred from ever again holding privileges or credentials at any facility owned by, controlled by, or affiliated with Texas Children’s Hospital. This is what justice demanded.”
After her termination, Sivadge founded Protecting Texas Children as an organization that centers on affirming and celebrating “the good and beautiful design of God as seen in His creation of male and female.”
Attorney General Paxton called the historic settlement “a resounding defeat for the radical gender ideology that has preyed on Texas children under the guise of ‘care.”
“This settlement sends an unmistakable message: if you put radical ideology over children’s health, my office will go after you,” he said.
TCH is required to pay legal fees to Sivadge, who will also receive nearly $2 million from the settlement.
“This is a story of redemption. Of true justice,” Sivadge said. “The hospital who once sanctioned the harming of children is now setting the standard for their help and healing, at zero cost. It’s a story that only God could write, and I am so humbled and honored to have played a very small role in what will become a center for hope for countless detransitioners who have nowhere to turn to for their ongoing care. This victory is as much theirs as it is mine.”
Relevant Scripture: Luke 8:17, Isaiah 1:17, Ephesians 5:11-13, Romans 8:28
