Children's Hospital Target Of 3rd Bomb Threat Over Trans Care
As a result of a bomb threat connected to its gender-affirming care practice, Boston Children’s Hospital had to be evacuated for a third time this week.
Police investigated the threat and found no bomb devices, according to the Boston Herald.
“This morning, the hospital was again the target of a bomb threat,” a hospital statement released on Wednesday read.
“Boston Police investigated and have given the all-clear that there is no active threat to the hospital,” the statement continued.
“We will continue to work closely with law enforcement and hospital security teams, and we are grateful for their immediate response,” the medical center added. “We are committed to ensuring the hospital is a safe and secure place for all who work here and come here. We will provide additional information as we are able.”
The Herald reports that an unknown person sent an email riddled with spelling errors indicating the motivation for the disturbance on Wednesday morning.
The email, titled “Bombs in Boston Childrne’s hospital,” came from Ukrloh@proton.me, the paper reports.
In it, the sender complained of the hospital conducting “sex change operations,” referring to people involved as “sick disgusting degenerates.”
“You are some of the worst people, and you will all f***ing die,” the email stated, according to the paper. “We placed bombs in the Gender Multispecialty Service (GeMS) at the Boston childrne’s hosptial. We placed bombs in the houses of 3 of the doctors as well. F**k you.”
The facility became the target of right-wing extremists when Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok Twitter account and other far-right accounts posted false attacks on the institution online.
As LGBTQ+ communities became targets of right-wing radicals this summer, experts with whom The Advocate spoke warned that Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account engages in stochastic terrorism tactics.
There is a direct link between accounts like Raichik's Libs of TikTok and angry and potentially violent men showing up at drag queen story hours and Pride events, Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security under President Barrack Obama and expert in counter-terrorism, said in August.
Raichik tweets disinformation to her 1.4 million followers, whom she knows hold strong anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs. Joined by Tucker Carlson on Fox News, who amplifies Raichik’s messages regularly, a right-wing media ecosystem froths up conservative outrage and results in targeted harassment, threats, and acts of violence, according to experts and human rights groups.
The Gender Multispecialty Service at Boston Children’s Hospital is the first program in the country to treat transgender and gender-diverse adolescents.
This summer, right-wing provocateurs and influencers targeted hospitals, including Boston Children’s, whom they claimed were “mutilating” children by performing surgical interventions on them as part of their gender-affirming health care.
In Boston Children’s Hospital’s Gender Multispecialty Service, these surgeries are not performed on minors; anyone undergoing such surgery must be 18 or older. Yet far-right critics accuse the hospital of performing medical experiments on children.
In September, a Massachusetts woman was arrested and charged with a hoax bomb threat made in August against Boston Children’s Hospital. In October, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts announced that Catherine Leavy, 37, was indicted on one count of willfully making a false bomb threat.
