‘I’m back on food stamps’: Nurse who exposed ‘uterus collector’ still faces consequences

Dawn Wooten, left, who worked as a nurse at Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, spoke at a news conference in September 2020 protesting conditions at the immigration jail. Photograph: Jeff Amy/AP

When American nurse Dawn Wooten started asking questions about the alarming number of unwanted hysterectomies and gynaecological procedures being performed on detained immigrants at her workplace in Georgia, she was unfamiliar with the term whistleblower.

Now, more than two years on, she has no regrets about having raised the alarm with her report on Irwin county detention center that shook the US and Congress with allegations against a gynaecologist so notorious he was known as the “uterus collector”.