Last February, Jamie Reed went public in a sworn affidavit and in The Free Press with allegations that the Washington University Transgender Center (WUTC), where she was a case worker for over four years, was rushing minors into harmful medicalization. Since then, media outlets, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Missouri Independent, New York, and NBC have published articles that attempt to push back against Reed’s claims.

The common theme of these articles is that some parents dispute Reed’s account and are satisfied with the care their children received at the clinic. The unstated premise is that if Reed’s allegations were true, we’d expect to see many families coming forward to corroborate her reports of medical harm and few to dispute them. Since the journalists find more families in support of the clinic than against it, the reasoning goes, Reed’s allegations should be viewed with suspicion, if not dismissed.