Gloria Rhodes is a nurse at the Operation Remedy OB/GYN clinic for underprivileged women, responsible for illegally implanting patients with IUDs to sterilize them when they abused their children.
History[]
Rhodes annually volunteered internationally to provide treatment for impoverished people, experiencing how many families have children who suffer and how many mothers die from childbirth. She’d travel while working for the Center for Population and Hygiene, a controversial and white supremacist medical services and studies group investing in eugenics advancement. The group sponsored Operation Remedy because of Rhodes’ crimes, where she’d take opportunities of routine visits or make up reasons for patients to arrive, when she saw they were brutalizing and torturing their children while still getting pregnant. Rhodes would illegally insert IUDs into the women that would release the hormone benecrene, which the FDA outlawed because of its health risks, including cancer. The women would effectively be sterilized by the aggressive drug, and once the procedure was finished or if there were side effects, she’d schedule a follow-up to remove the implants. Rhodes never kept records of appointments to avoid a paper trail that would incriminate her, forging signatures on other forms to disguise the sterilizations and other treatments.
One patient, Traci Sands, maimed her daughter Keesha, who had to be removed by Child Services, Traci also taking the welfare checks to buy drugs. Her grandmother Lillie regretted not protecting Traci from Lillie’s own violent daughter Althea and wanted to stop the abuse passing onto another child in her family, so she came to the clinic as a visitor and personally requested Rhodes use an IUD. Rhodes lied to hide that Traci’s sickle syndrome would risk complications, and after Traci was arrested for murder, she died in lockup from the benecrene resulting in a toxic reaction. Rhodes’ history and records were tracked, and she was arrested pending charges considering the evidence of her egregious crimes against her.
Paul Robinette defended Rhodes, and in spite of him and Rhodes trying to argue the drugs were safe, Rhodes was justified, and Traci begged for the IUD, the team gets from one of the employees, Savannah Watson, under blackmail of revoking her probation for drug convictions that Rhodes sterilized more women and girls, which escalated the charges to murder. Isabella Perez was confirmed to have been a victim, but although her testimony was honest, she was slut-shamed on the stand, and she furiously called out Rhodes before bursting into tears. When Lillie was revealed to have known the employees by name and her name showed up on the visitor's log, she was granted full immunity from conspiracy charges in exchange for her testifying on the stand Rhodes lied that the treatment was safe.
When the jury was allowed to decide on both murder and manslaughter as options for a conviction, Rhodes was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter. She planned to appeal, insisting she protected children by punishing the women she targeted, but the prosecution simply said she was worse with the carnage she left behind. (L&O: “Birthright”)
Known Victims[]
- At least twenty unnamed women and girls (assaulted; all sterilized with benecrene IUDs)
- Isabella Perez (sterilized with a benecrene IUD)
- Traci Sands (sterilized with a benecrene IUD; died from complications with sickle syndrome)