Telegraph article on the Kiera Bell decision

Excellent interview with Susan Evans by Jo Bartosch - so good to see the Telegraph treating this issue with the seriousness it deserves.

Someone posted it on FB:

Thirteen years ago, Susan Evans – then a clinical nurse with the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London – walked out.
She had first raised concerns about the clinic’s “precipitous referral” of children on to the medical path to change gender several years earlier, in 2004. But it was only last week that the whistleblower felt a sense of vindication.
On Wednesday, the High Court ruled in favour of Keira Bell, a 23-year-old former GIDS patient and “detransitioner” who had started taking puberty blockers when she was 16, prior to undergoing reassignment surgery, which she later regretted; and “Mrs A”, the mother of a trans-identifying 15-year-old girl currently on the waiting list for treatment.
Evans had long supported their application for a judicial review into whether NHS guidelines on administering hormone-blocking drugs, followed by the Tavistock, Britain’s only NHS gender clinic for children, are unlawful.
Three High Court judges ruled that under-16s are highly unlikely to be able to give informed consent to take puberty-blocking medication. In practice, this puts an immediate end to the use of drugs that delay the development of sex organs by blocking the hormones testosterone and oestrogen, but which can have serious side effects and unknown longer-term consequences.
NHS England has now ordered a full clinical review of each GIDS patient offered puberty blockers under the age of 16. “I was told privately by some the case was hopeless, that the bar had been captured by transgender activists, that institutions had been captured by ideologically driven charities,” says Evans. “Certain trans groups have really cultivated an atmosphere of fear among children and their families. But I’m just very relieved and obviously pleased with the ruling.”
Evans has worked for the NHS her entire life, and met her husband, Marcus, who was also in the field of psychoanalytic practice, when training in Springfield Hospital in Tooting Bec, south-west London. “What drew me to therapeutic practice was trying to understand the internal emotional worlds of other people,” she says, “because with understanding comes an improved experience of life. I had an instinct that drugs and physical treatments were never going to provide an answer for people in emotional distress.”
When Evans started at the Tavistock in 2003, she was “proud to be working in a tiny team at a pioneering organisation”. But on hearing a colleague describe how, after only a few assessments, they had referred a distressed 16-year-old boy who thought of himself as female for hormone treatment, her “jaw dropped”. She recalls feeling “something was very, very wrong with the GIDS approach”.
In her early years as a psychiatric nurse, she had witnessed treatments, such as electroconvulsive therapy, that are now widely condemned: “I know enough of the history of psychiatry to always be cautious about intervention.”
Evans had assumed she would be able to use her psychotherapeutic skills to support the scores of children referred each year. When she raised the possibility of alternatives to medication, Evans was advised the service would not have any patients without the offer of puberty blockers. Last year, GIDS had 2,590 children referred for them, compared with 77 patients a decade ago.
Evans began to become concerned by the influence of transgender organisations on clinical practice at the Tavistock. “It was becoming increasingly difficult to discuss the needs of the patients who displayed clinical curiosity. The beginnings of the more ‘affirmative model’ of care [whereby the cross-sex identity of a child with gender dysphoria is affirmed by referring to the child as if it were the opposite sex] were taking root”.
To this day, Evans believes this practice “has not been proven to alleviate mental distress”, and that its use within the GIDS is “based on political pressures and fears of litigation, rather than what would be clinically, professionally appropriate”.
Back in January, Evans launched a crowdfunding campaign with Mrs A to cover legal costs for the judicial review. Immediately, she received letters from “distressed parents who had been told that they were at fault when their children had harmed themselves”.
Due to personal circumstance, Evans withdrew, passing on her role as claimant to Keira Bell, who was prescribed puberty blockers by GIDS when she was 16. She had a double mastectomy aged 20, and now regrets transitioning, which has left her with “no breasts, a deep voice, body hair, a beard, affected sexual function and who knows what else that has not been discovered”. She may well be infertile as a side effect of the drugs.
More than a decade after she had walked out of the Tavistock, Evans’s husband convinced her to push for a judicial review about some of the practices both had witnessed there.
In September 2018, Marcus Evans, a recently retired clinician at the Tavistock, was appointed as a governor at the trust. Susan warned him that “his time as a governor might not be easy” – and, by January 2019, he had resigned. He cited two “really serious” complaints, “which completely tied with everything Sue been talking about 14 years earlier – only this time around it was 10 times worse, because of the exponential rise in patients”.
Between 2016 and 2019, a total of 35 clinicians left the Tavistock, many reporting concerns. One psychologist, who wished to remain anonymous, feared that “young people are being over-diagnosed and then over-medicalised”. Others felt the influence of lobby groups on clinical practice.
Clinicians reported being alarmed that underlying issues, such as homophobic bullying, sexual abuse or other traumas, were systematically overlooked. New light was shed on their concerns in June, when transcripts of staff interviews from an internal review of GIDS were leaked to BBC Newsnight.
The transcripts included staff fears that some patients had been placed on to “a gender-transitioning pathway” too quickly. It also highlighted claims of homophobic attitudes among the parents of children attending the clinic, with some allegedly appearing to prefer their children to be transgender and straight, rather than gay. Staff also reported feeling discouraged from referring to social services children they believed may have been sexually abused.
“The real scandal is that the treatment pathway of children with gender dysphoria became ever more politicised, and moved away from high standards of clinical mental healthcare with good assessment and psychotherapeutic treatment.”
For Evans, the ruling was not just a vindication of her clinical concerns, it was judgment on all of those who allowed professional standards to be overlooked to suit a political ideology.
“I am relieved by the ruling, but there will be a lot of kids and their families who will be thinking, what happens now? There is a myth that the suicide rate in this group is high, particularly if children are denied medical treatment. GIDS say that the actual rate of self-harm is no higher than other comparable groups.”
The judgment will change how children with gender dysphoria are treated – but Evans believes more understanding within local children’s services is needed.
“As soon as clinicians hear the words ‘gender dysphoria’, they refer children to GIDS, as if this is something separate from all the other issues in the child’s life. I think that what these kids need is support while they grow into adulthood. They need help before they make any permanent decisions they may live to regret."

[quote StandUpStraight]Jo Bartosch has two articles in the Telegraph today - one an interview with Susan Evans, and another with a woman whose daughter was fast-tracked to GIDS and whose school did not tell her parents that they had begun to treat her as a boy.

www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/right-blow-whistle-tavistock-clinic-puberty-blockers/

www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/websites-tell-gender-dysphoric-daughter-get-testosterone-grooming/[/quote]
Anyone have the text or a summary for these, as subscribing to the Telegraph is beyond what I can stomach politically?

They also have a column by that creepy AGP in their magazine too.

This week is another gem - busy working on perfecting the womanly art of being a woman - apparently it means being a surrendered wife or something.

"But – gentlemen take note – the more that my oestrogen levels rise, the more I find that pretty much everything is personal."

"Then Wiffid said, ‘Leave it to me. I think we should have your cabinet. I will get the others to accept it.’
‘That’s so kind, thank you,’ I said, hugely relieved at being able to avoid the sort of conflict that I find so stressful these days. But I couldn’t help thinking, ‘David would never have done that. He’d have picked the fight.’"

"Throughout the meeting the men talked among themselves and made decisions, which included the approval of my cabinet and paintings. We women watched, and listened, but barring a few rather tentative interventions, did not contribute to the debate. We did, however, chat to one another, in discreetly lowered voices, about how impractical and emotionally dim some of the men’s ideas were.
It struck me very powerfully that the men – straight or gay – had absolutely no idea how sexist their behaviour was, and would have been surprised and put out if this was pointed out to them. I know this because I’ve been in their position for most of my life and behaved exactly the same. I claim no moral superiority whatever.
But equally, three intelligent, competent, independent women allowed the men to get away with it. Again, I was guilty as charged. After all, I let a man speak for me, rather than standing up for myself."

"Yet I deferred to male assertiveness, and so did the women beside me. The other two, of course, could wait until they were alone with their husbands, and then let them know who was boss. And in any case, it’s not like they chose to be female.
I, however, have done just that. I’ve made a conscious decision, whose consequences I’m only now beginning to understand. But, call me crazy, I don’t regret it. Not for a second."

Now I know how sexist I used to be http://digitaleditions.telegraph.co.uk/data/437/reader/reader.html?social#!preferred/0/package/437/pub/437/page/238/article/109077

Yes, it's a good read

Daily Mail article by Sarah Vine. Again, common sense.

How often do those two go together?

Yet that article is utter common sense which anyone aught to agree with. A case like Keira's should not be controversial for any reasonable person- I don't see how TRAs can read about it and not agree it shouldn't happen again.

The Times is also excellent on gender issues - they have the brilliant Janice Turner - and they are much more balanced on Boris/Brexit etc. Readers looking for a suitable paper should give it a try!

If only they'd stop with the Boris fanclubbing...

In my youth I would read the Telegraph if I couldn't get hold of the Guardian because they both reported the actual news in a factual way (I'm that old) and separated out the comment (it was when the Times was shit).

I was most disappointed to pick the telegraph up a few years ago and realise it is just the Mail without the celebs in bikinis.

The Mail does good investigative work, the Tele can be good for depth of coverage and the Times is more balanced now. If I could find that in one newspaper I'd buy newspapers again.

It's lost all sense of perspective on Brexit and it can't report properly on Boris for all the fawning. My husband was starting to think about taking out a subscription to it, but the sycophantic coverage of Boris put him off.

I don't mind a right-of-centre newspaper (or, in times past a left-of-centre) but it can't be in the PM's pocket.

I agree it is good on the coverage of gender issues.

Cheering news on a dull and dismal Sunday.

Ahhh I do love a bit of sunlight on a Sunday morning

Sorry if this has been already posted.

Daily Mail article by Sarah Vine.

Again, common sense. www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9022297/SARAH-VINE-scandal-no-one-tried-stop-Keira-Bell-losing-womanhood.html

Jo Bartosch has two articles in the Telegraph today - one an interview with Susan Evans, and another with a woman whose daughter was fast-tracked to GIDS and whose school did not tell her parents that they had begun to treat her as a boy.

www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/right-blow-whistle-tavistock-clinic-puberty-blockers/

www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/websites-tell-gender-dysphoric-daughter-get-testosterone-grooming/

I've been living with my parents out in the country most of this year after their health broke down. DF has the Telegraph delivered. It's too right wing for me but I have been pleasantly surprised by their coverage of gender issues and sometimes they're quite good on women's rights too. If only they'd stop with the Boris fanclubbing...

a trial offer popped up for one month free, then 3 months at £1 each before going to full price. So on the strength of these two articles, I think that justifies the trial period for me (and then will see after that).

For those in the NHS the telegraph had a generous offer.
Not sure if it is still accessible. You need to use your @nhs email address to access it.

telegraph.co.uk/customer/subscribe/nhs/?country=GB

Widely-used guidelines from Stonewall and the PSHE Association (an organisation for teachers of personal, social, health and economic education) similarly discuss the use of puberty blockers. Trans charities Gires and Mermaids have provided training to teachers that talks about puberty blockers, with one Mermaids trainer describing them as “completely reversible” and providing “immense relief from the dysphoria”.

And yet we were constantly shouted at and told that Mermaids and Stonewall had no real involvement in schools

Well we can see why there are so many children now apparently so ''afraid'' of puberty. I mean, it was blindingly obvious why it was happening, we just weren't allowed to say it, but here it is in black and white.

The championing of their use on CBBC was abhorrent too, was there ever any acknowledgment from them that that was wrong, or was it quietly brushed under the carpet?

Breaching safeguarding

We have sai£ this all along here

Cheers Lang

This judgement is going to reverberate very loudly for a very long time, everywhere.

Still stunned by it.

The threat of Ofsted is such a useful tool for helping to prevent kids getting caught up in this trend.

Not yet, I think. It's not something Ofsted would criticise. The key is getting Ofsted to see this as a priority.

The threat of Ofsted is such a useful tool for helping to prevent kids getting caught up in this trend. I'm going to share this article with my friends who are teachers.

Ofsted will be alert to schools that breach good safeguarding practice, and may give schools an Inadequate rating if their approach to gender identity is considered inappropriate.

I suspect that this may be the single most effective way of removing the institutional capture.

If we could get Ofsted to look for whether schools are going beyond the NHS advice then schools will very quickly twig what is going on.

The vast bulk of schools overreact to every Ofsted initiative (from fear) and it I think it would quickly reduce the pushing of the affirmation approach to only a small number of hold outs where someone senior is a full on TRA.

Letters to the SS for Education, I think. The problem is that he's a chimp. On the positive side he likes headlines and this is an easy way to get them.

I just came to see if anyone had posted about this yet. This is a stonking article and should be VERY good ammunition for anyone planning to raise these issues or discuss RSE plans with their school. It sets out very clearly the potential consequences for schools if they rush into affirmation or use dodgy RSE resources, and it specifically mentions some of the most dubious, and very widely used materials. I'm hoping to use it with our school, which uses materials based on one of those mentioned.

I also saw on Twitter that Jo Bartosch has something coming out in the Telegraph at the weekend (Sunday I think it said?); and when I went to read this article a trial offer popped up for one month free, then 3 months at £1 each before going to full price. So on the strength of these two articles, I think that justifies the trial period for me (and then will see after that).

Very good news.

Its almost like some people were just waiting for the first green light to allow them to change direction.