The FBI has arrested a New England woman for allegedly phoning in a bomb threat to Boston Children’s Hospital amid an unrelenting campaign of violent threats from the far-right over debunked claims about services the medical center provides to transgender youth.
Catherine Leavy of Westfield, Massachusetts is charged with one count of making a telephonic bomb threat, U.S. Attorney Rachael S. Rollins announced at a press conference Thursday, adding that additional charges for the 37-year-old may be forthcoming.
“While I cannot comment further on the alleged motive of this case, I want to say generally, that healthcare providers who support and offer care to gender-diverse and transgender individuals and their families deserve to do so without fear,” she said.
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Rollins said that in the Aug. 30 call, Leavy allegedly told the switchboard operator, “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital. You better evacuate everybody. You sickos.”
Investigators were able to trace the call back to Leavy’s T-Mobile account, Rollins said. Leavy was taken into custody at her home on Thursday without incident, and the phone allegedly used to make the call was recovered.
Leavy, who does not yet have a lawyer listed in court records, remains detained awaiting a court hearing on Friday. A message left at her home by The Daily Beast seeking comment was not immediately returned.
In a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday afternoon, FBI Special Agent Brian Gutierrez describes the “sustained harassment campaign” Boston Children’s has endured “based on the dissemination of information online regarding the services offered by GeMS.”
“Specifically, BCH and GeMS were accused of engaging in child abuse involving pedophilia, grooming, and mutilation of children,” the complaint states. “This conduct has included harassing phone calls and emails, individual violent and death threats, and threats of mass casualty attacks at BCH.”
The complaint says Leavy called in the Aug. 30 threat to Boston Children’s from her own phone, which led investigators to her front door. On Thursday, FBI agents showed up at Leavy’s home, it continues. At first, Leavy denied she had anything to do with any bomb threats but “expressed disapproval of BCH on multiple occasions.” After the agents played her an audio recording of the call, and told Leavy they had phone records showing the call was made from her phone, she confessed, according to the complaint.
“Leavy stated that she had no plan or intention to actually bomb BCH,” it concludes.
A Facebook account linked to a Catherine Leavy in Westfield, Massachusetts describes her as “chill down to earth but a little ball of energy live music flower gardens crafts chillen[.]” Federal campaign data shows numerous donations made by a Catherine Leavy of Westfield to, variously, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, and the Republican National Committee.
Boston Children’s has so far received “well over a dozen distinct threats,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph Bonovolonta told reporters, adding that the matter is being treated “as a top priority.”
“This alleged conduct is disturbing, to say the least,” Rollins said. “Bomb hoaxes cause, fear, panic, and a diversion of resources that have a real impact on our communities. The people that work at Children’s Hospital and the parents that bring their loved ones to Children’s Hospital are under enough stress.”
The latest bomb threat came shortly after 11 a.m. on Sept. 9, phoned in by an anonymous caller. Police did not find any explosives at the site. It followed a similar anonymous call on Aug. 30, allegedly made by Leavy.
Boston Children’s, which in 2007 established the first major pediatric and adolescent transgender healthcare program in the United States, has been under near-constant attack by right-wingers in recent weeks. Death threats targeting specific doctors at Boston Children’s have reportedly begun to appear on far-right message boards, and Fox News firebrand Tucker Carlson took the opportunity to tell his 3 million nightly viewers that the sort of care Boston Children’s provides is tantamount to the “sexual mutilation of children.”
“We believe in a gender-affirmative model of care, which supports transgender and gender diverse youth in the gender in which they identify,” the hospital’s Gender Multispecialty Service (GeMS) program webpage states. “This is a standard of care grounded in scientific evidence, demonstrating its benefits to the health and well-being of transgender and gender diverse youth… We are here to affirm, uplift, and advocate for transgender and gender diverse youth, and we remain committed to doing all we can to support their care and well-being.”
The program has treated some 1,000 patients in the last 25 years and began with a focus on gender-diverse adolescents. Today, it takes patients from ages 3 to 25.
But when the right-wing Twitter account LibsofTikTok took aim at Boston Children’s in early August, claiming—falsely—that the hospital was “now offering ‘gender-affirming hysterectomies’ for young girls,” the attacks began.
“This is monstrous,” former Trump official Stephen Miller tweeted in response. “How does anyone involved in this still have a medical license?”
Doctors working in the program were subjected to vicious abuse on social media, where people railed against the “mutilation” and “child abuse” supposedly taking place. The hospital said it experienced a sharp increase in harassing phone calls and emails, with some threatening violence.
In response, LibsofTikTok founder, Brooklyn real estate broker Chaya Raichik, claimed she was being smeared by left-wing agitators trying to get her suspended from Twitter.
Boston Children’s tried to fight disinformation with facts.
“The... online attention that followed was based on the incorrect statement that Boston Children’s performs hysterectomies on minors in connection with transgender care,” the hospital said in a statement. “For a hysterectomy performed as part of gender-affirming care, Boston Children’s requires a patient to be capable of consenting for themselves. Age 18 is used to reflect the standard age of majority for medical decision-making. Boston Children’s does not—and will not—perform a hysterectomy as part of gender-affirming care on a patient under the age of 18.”
On Thursday, Rollins noted that Massachusetts “isn’t the only place where this has happened,” pointing to “several other sister communities, whether it’s D.C., New York, California, where we’ve seen things like this, and we’re hoping to get some input from the Department of Justice about what our next steps might be.”
If convicted, Leavy faces up to 10 years in prison.
