Woman gets probation for calling in hoax bomb threat at Boston Children’s Hospital

A Massachusetts woman has been sentenced to three years of probation for calling in a fake bomb threat at Boston Children’s Hospital as it faced a barrage of harassment over its surgical program for transgender youths.

Catherine Leavy pleaded guilty last year in federal court to charges including making a false bomb threat. Authorities say the threat was made in August 2022 as the hospital was facing an onslaught of threats and harassment. The hospital launched the country’s first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program.

The U.S. attorney’s office announced Monday that she had been sentenced on Thursday. Her attorney, Forest O’Neill-Greenberg, didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

The hospital became the focus of far-right social media accounts, news outlets and bloggers last year after they found informational YouTube videos published by the hospital about surgical offerings for transgender patients.

The caller said: “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital, you better evacuate everybody you sickos,” according to court documents. The threat resulted in a lockdown of the hospital. No explosives were found.

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Leavy initially denied making the threat during an interview with FBI agents, according to court documents. After agents told her that phone records indicated the threat came from her number, she admitted doing so, but said she had no intention of actually bombing the hospital, prosecutors say. She “expressed disapproval” of the hospital “on multiple occasions” during the interview, according to court papers.

Boston Children’s Hospital is among several institutions that provide medical care for transgender kds that have become the target of threats. Medical associations said last year that children’s hospitals nationwide had substantially increased security and had to work with law enforcement, and that some providers required constant security.