@CharlieParley
Thank you for your kind welcome to the forum. You raise so many excellent points that it is hard to know where to start in my response.
Unfortunately the GRA and Equality Act have made not the slightest difference to my life. The authorities and TRAs continue to attempt to bully, silence and ignore me.
But, as you point out, this is the way that women and girls are treated and I am working very hard to change that regardless of the personal cost.
So although it is obviously realistic to accept that our experiences are very different, it does not mean that we do not have experiences and interests in common. As you put it: “Live and let live. Together – peacefully, happily, productively”. That is why I am here.
I am certainly not here to stop you talking about female biology as the basis of women's oppression.
I wonder if you have read "The Wise Wound: Eve's Curse and Everywoman" (1978) by Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle?
If not, I highly recommend it and have a habit of handing out copies to people.
In the autumn of 1988, I told Peter my story in his book- lined study in Falmouth and he gazed into the intersection between the ceiling and wall and said mysteriously, "I think you will go through hell and then you will be a wise woman and you will be able to do the same work I do; on the principle of the wounded healing the wounded".
I well remember leaving his cottage by the docks and looking out over the harbour thinking about what he had said. I couldn't imagine how anything could be worse than my previous experiences but it was a huge inspiration to think that I could one day be helpful to other people.
In 2003, after going through hell, I came across "The Wise Wound" in Oxfam during my lunch hour. At the time I was actually working as a temporary University learning support assistant, which was not something that I would have necessarily have chosen but was a most interesting experience and a story in itself.
I thought that, as I had met Peter, I ought to read "The Wise Wound". It was an absolute revelation. I had always felt that the "psychiatrists" with whom I had had the misfortune to come into contact had not the slightest insight into my personality or motivations and every single one of them has harmed me in one way or the other.
It was amazing to realise that this was (and I would argue) still is, generally true of women's encounters with "psychiatrists" and there is a particularly relevant chapter on "witchcraft" in which Redgrove and Shuttle argue, with Thomas Szasz, that the language and diagnostic approach used by male psychoanalysts in modern mental hospitals follows the same pattern as used on women in medieval witch hunts.
I have personal experience of being persecuted and abused by these people since 1982 when I went to the school doctor, Dr RT Thorne, at Radley College and explained to him that I had known that I was a girl rather than a boy from the age of seven.
Everything that I am going to write now can be substantiated from documents and medical records that I have published on my “Private Investigations” website after a battle for justice which has now continued for over thirty-five years: www.kate-middleton-private-investigations.uk/
In 2013, Earl Howe stated in the House of Lords that any abuse of a patient is unacceptable and the Government expect all cases of abuse to be fully investigated by the providing authorities; my case is one of those the GMC were supposedly investigating and is one of the thirty-nine cases mentioned in paragraph 176 of Maria Miller’s “Transgender Equality” report and is almost certainly the one mentioned in paragraph 179 as the “allegations related to incidents occurring too long ago”.
My case is particularly significant as Dr Deenesh Khoosal is now media spokesman for the Royal College of Psychiatrists on patients whom he describes, in professional presentations, as “she –men” and “gender benders” and there is a raft of contemporary complaints about him being a “nasty”, “cruel”, “old fashioned patriarchal binary sociopath” with “no place in a twentieth-century gender identity clinic” on Reddit.
I was his first patient/victim just after my seventeenth birthday in 1982 when I was an A Level student at Radley College, the boarding school outside Oxford.
Some of the boys in G Social (house) had been very understanding when I confided in them and asked how they could help. I said that I needed information and people told me about April Ashley and Jan Morris.
John Scriven produced a magazine article about Caroline “Tula” Cossey, the Bond girl, and everyone was very impressed. I well remember someone saying, “This makes sense! Maybe you could be a Bond girl?”
We agreed that if I was going to be a Bond girl, I should start with highlights and John and I dyed my hair in his study with a kit from Boots. It went horribly wrong and I ended up walking across campus in my black and white Mary Quant legwarmers with people shouting things like: “oy! F…king hell. It’s Cindy!” This was still better than being called gay which I hated because it was inaccurate.
I went to the school doctor, Dr Richard Thorne, and explained my situation at the suggestion of Revd Coulton, the Radley chaplain.
I well remember thinking that Thorne might arrange for me to talk to a nice woman about my feelings and future plans, as I had nobody to talk to in that all male institution; I hated being in an all male school, a fact repeatedly recorded in writing at the time and well as the fact that I had been bullied.
But I had stayed on because I wanted to get my A levels and either do something to do with boats or do English at uni and then “do something intellectual”. This is what I wanted to talk to someone about; it was obvious to me at that age that this was about getting a life and not just an operation.
Unfortunately, Dr Thorne referred me to Dr Kenyon in the Warneford hospital (formerly known as the Oxford Lunatic Asylum) for counselling on 15/11/82 explaining more than once in his referral that I was "rather upset and vulnerable" and completely unable to confide in my parents.
On 17/11/82, I came face to face with Dr Deenesh Khoosal, a junior registrar, who (in his own words) had "no personal experience". By his own estimation, there was no sign of anxiety, depression or suicidality when he got his hands on me.
The agreement with the school was that I would be provided with "expert counselling over sexuality" and I told Khoosal that I was "frightened over what to do" and wanted to be referred to a specialist and further information about my medical situation.
I told him about Jan Morris and April Ashley and he recorded their names in his notes. I told him that it would be "irresponsible" to have an immediate operation and he recorded that I would "want" to live as a woman for a year first.
And I told him about the problem with my parents who never listened to me. This put me in a totally vulnerable position as I was legally a child and had no control whatsoever over what was happening to me.
Khoosal then proceeded to take advantage of the situation for reasons that only he can fully explain.
Apart from the Gestapo style sexual interrogations, on the 25th November, he frogmarched me to an isolated ward on the second floor of the hospital and forced me to take off my clothes and lie on a bed so he could manipulate my genitals and give me orders on single-hand sexual activities; he recorded in writing that he had done this.
Alex Renton has recently written an excellent book entitled "Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class" and his chapter on Maurice the pedophile is the first time that I have read about other children having a similar experience of seeming to float up to the ceiling whilst being subjected to unconsented touching by an adult in a position of trust.
In law, any unconsented touching is an assault and it is recognised in law that it can lead to personal injury through psychological/psychiatric damage. As I was a child, he needed permission from the school in loco parentis or my parents before touching my genitals. Alternatively, if I were considered competent to consent then I had made my expectations entirely clear; further information and a specialist referral.
Twenty five years later, I explained to DS Viv Wilson of Hampshire Police, who took my witness statement, that I found Ralf Feines's portrayal of Amon Goth, the Auschwitz Camp commandant, in the film Schlinder's list, particularly distressing as it reminded me of Khoosal's behaviour towards me in the Warneford.
At the time that I made my statement, I had forgotten writing a suicide diary in instalments in my study at Radley starting on 29th November. It came to light in the internal hospital records in 2008 after my CID witness statement went to Thames Valley. That diary is written evidence of the injuries he inflicted on me and I identified his sexual interrogations, in writing, as "mental torture"; this is legally accurate.
On 30th November, I went to the dentist in Summertown, Oxford and bought the new Dire Straits album "Love over Gold" in a record shop in Little Clarendon Street and wrote my diary while listening to Mark lecturing his female protagonists in Love over Gold and the dark masterpiece “It Never Rains” as well as “Private Investigations”: “confidential information/ it’s in a diary/ this is my investigation/not a public inquiry”. …”
(Dire Straits played “Love over Gold” on Top of the Pops on 26th November; I wonder if Jimmy Saville presented it?)
My time at Radley ended on the evening of 6th December 1982 with a suicide attempt by overdose in my study as a direct effect of this violent man's behaviour towards me. Khoosal recorded this as a “major explosion” in his notes.
He then made a raft of specious allegations about how I was obviously "very disturbed" and needing "psychiatric therapy" as well as engaging in manipulative behaviour designed to get expelled from school. The allegations were recorded in letters written by Dr Anthony Storr on 7/12/82 and my housemaster, John Doulton on 8/12/82.
I told my father that I disputed the contents of these letters but he didn't give me the chance to explain what had actually happened. He sent these letters based on completely false information from an unqualified, ignorant, violent and thoroughly dishonest man to Dr Rowntree, senior medical advisor to the Foreign Office, with a letter saying that I had "claimed" that I was "victimised".
On 19th January 1983, Khoosal met my parents as well as subjecting me to further sexual interrogations. I told him that my father had "sudden tempers as part of his condition" [narcissism] and that I found my parents "boring" and that they couldn't understand my desire to be "trendy".
After meeting my father, Khoosal wrote another arrogant letter to Dr Thorne claiming that the "prognosis" was "pretty pessimistic" in view of my father's "spare the rod, spoil the child" attitude, his unwillingness to change his approach and his lack of insight; hypocrisy in the extreme in view of his own behaviour towards me.
So by the time I was seventeen, Khoosal had not only inflicted injuries from which I will never recover and have never had any constructive assistance from the medical profession but also destroyed my reputation and employment prospects with entirely false allegations of psychiatric problems.
I went on trying to report what he had done to me for decades but it was not until 2004 that I was able to finally get access to my GP records and my mother handed over a large file of documents and correspondence which I didn't know existed.
In 2005, I googled his name and discovered that Khoosal had taken up this area of medicine after committing his offences against me as a child and had a reputation for being "fearsome", "extremely arrogant", "deceptively chatty" and "extremely uncaring". I burst into tears and was described as "inconsolable" over the next three days as I thought of all the others he must have abused.
Then I rang the GMC and reported him but nothing was done.
I reported him to the police on March 26th 2007 during Dr Russell Reid's GMC hearings. Russell saved my life on 14th January 1988 with a prescription for oestrogen and a note saying I was under his care. He saved it for the second time in January 1991 with a free appointment and referral to the magician Fay Presto. I have a picture of the three of us at a Brotherhood of Magicians annual dinner dance that year on my website.
In 2007, Reid's patients set up a blog, which has 470 testimonies on it with many people saying that he saved their lives.
I went to see him at the GMC in 2007 because one of the patients used against him was Paula Rowe aka "patient b" who I knew fairly well in Falmouth from January 1987 onwards. She is mentioned in Reid’s letter to my GP of 14/1/1988 though not by name.
Rowe features in such stories as "Trapped in Gender Limbo" by David Batty which remains on The Guardian website in spite of being proven to be untrue at the GMC in 2007; Rowe has not detransitioned but is legally female. Rowe also features in “Mistaken Identity” (2004) and other articles by David Batty in 2006/2007 as “patient B” and can be seen from David Batty’s reports the GMC concluded that Reid did not harm her.
(Continued in part 2)