Cross-dresser on trial for hospital incident

When Cincinnati University Hospital nurses walked into the patient’s intensive care room Feb. 17, they saw the wounded man was visibly shaken – and wearing lip gloss. He became even more shaken when he learned the female phlebotomist who had just kissed and groped his exposed penis was really a man.

That phlebotomist, Chad Thrasher, also known as Chadea Thrasher, is on trial, charged with sexually touching the patient. Thrasher, 24, lives as a female and appeared in court wearing women’s clothes, jewellery and hairstyle.

But it was Thrasher’s alleged conduct in the alleged victim’s hospital room – as he was recovering from the four surgeries he needed after being shot during a crime – that could send Thrasher to prison for up to 18 months.



Thrasher had drawn the man’s blood before but this incident was different. The man wasn’t scheduled to have his blood drawn. Thrasher had developed an attraction to the man and began talking to and acting toward the patient in an inappropriate way, Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor David Hickenlooper told jurors Thursday.

Thrasher started talking about to the man about body parts, about exotic dancing in clubs and that Thrasher had a stalker, Hickenlooper said. Then, Thrasher said the man’s lips looked chapped, so, Hickenlooper said, Thrasher forcibly put lip gloss on the weak patient before forcibly kissing him, grabbed the man’s penis and asked how long it had been since he “had been with a woman.”

“This is not the usual interaction between a health care provider and a patient,” Hickenlooper said. Thrasher initially denied the incident but later told police any physical interaction with the man was consensual.