Trustee of Mermaids quits after speech to paedophile aid group Times article

And 'stories' are probably all they are. Not actual evidence.

Or they’ve realised that they haven’t been suitably checked.

Interesting that, so far, Benjamin Cohen is quiet on the shutting down of the support line

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Every time I think my contempt for Mermaids has peaked it does something to surprise me 🙄

Pointing out a paedo apologistic is a trustee of a children's charity when there are already safeguarding concerns and said charity freely admit they didn't do a full background check and relied on another organisation to do it to an appropriate level is a 'coordinated attack'.

Right o.

I am sure they would record all their phone calls. I would guess if someone got hold of them there is little to no threats.

Do the charities commission look at things like this? Not threats received, but what their safeguarding (for the phone lines) was and what action they took?

Owen Jones devastated:

twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1578028166148689922?cxt=HHwWhMDUjbSQpOYrAAAA

'This is absolutely devastating.

Mermaids represent a crucial lifeline for young trans people and their families. I know so many stories about how they've transformed lives.

That their helpline has been shut down underlines that LGBTQ+ charities are under coordinated attack'

It’s so obvious they have pulled the help line because they know their safeguarding is non existent. Surely no one believes the reason they are giving?

This is from Disclosure Scotland:

www.mygov.scot/transgender-disclosure-application

'You do not have to:

answer 'yes' to the part of the form about previous names, unless you had other names that do not relate to your transgender status

disclose previous names that relate to your transgender status on the application

give your Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) to your employer

Notify Disclosure Scotland of your previous names

Even though you do not need to disclose the previous names on the application, you'll need to provide these to Disclosure Scotland separately.

...

What your disclosure certificate will show

Your disclosure certificate will show your current name. It will not include any previous names.'

Oh whoops. None of our volunteers have have safeguarding training and vetting. We've taken them on good faith cos they worked for the right people?

There is. You are allowed to hide your ‘deadname’. And your biological sex. Not dangerous at all. Wonder who signed off on that clause?

Mermaids has been flirting with practical applications of queer theory since at least 2018.

Their Big Lottery 2018 Reaching Communities grant included the aim of developing "stronger relationships with universities and academia"

Their appointment of Chair Belinda Bell in 2019 provided links to Cambridge University via the CU Judge business school, plus the heavily interlinked and incredibly incestuous east of England third sector. (See also recent trustee appointment Matthew Maddocks.)

Their appointment of a pedophile apologist was undoubtedly a mistake, but their appointment of an academic at the very fringes of queer theory and childhood studies was the natural conclusion of a planned and considered organisational shift.

Or to put it another way Mermaids had full access to Jacob Breslow's recent and easily found works. They found nothing to trouble them in his accounts of the "hypersexualised provocative" 12 year old boy he put on stage at an event he organised, or in his casual references to children and intergenerational relationships.

In Mermaid's own words "we became aware of his participation in a 2011 conference that would have disqualified him from becoming a trustee. Once notified, we immediately launched an investigation and Dr Breslow tendered his notice that same day"

Breslow's departure is not because the views in his published works did not align with Mermaids' views, it is because he'd been stupid enough to openly associate with an organisation that supports pedophiles.

Re the DBS checks, I'm sure pp have mentioned it, but isn't there a loophole re holding a GRC and full checks being carried out?

I’d say a mix of all of the above. The trustees are bricking themselves now they’ve realised they’re on the hook for this shitshow.

Facebook post about the helpline:

'We do not make this decision lightly, but our duty of care towards staff and volunteers necessitates a harm reduction approach to protect our dedicated staff and volunteer team.'

Again, placing the wellbeing of staff and volunteers first. What about the children and YP you're supposed to be there for, Mermaids? No mention of them at all in that statement.

DBS is the most basic of all checks, though. It just shows if you've had criminal convictions.

For someone operating a charity ostensibly supporting children in distress you'd surely expect far more indepth checks and training?

To plan to re-open a helpline (but not with the volunteers back on the rota and primarily during office hours) would tend to suggest that there was something urgently needing to be fixed about the volunteers being on the rota.

I am a trustee of a charity (entirely different field) with a helpline. Their problem might be:

• poor recruitment/training records
• poor reference/DBS checking
• poor supervision
• poor record keeping/casenotes if there is any form of casework

What a mess

Do you think all their volunteers have been checked via dbs and done safeguarding training?

I wonder how many people who work for mermaids have decided to quit. And of course this is being cited as the result of bullying rather than transparency. Again.

This has just cropped up on my Twitter feed from Mermaids:
"Due to intolerable abuse, we have made the decision to close the helpline and webchat services for the rest of today and tomorrow. Next week, to enable us to take all volunteers off the rota, we will reduce hours to 9am to 6pm only."

Oh right so it's LSE's fault

Why the fuck they haven’t just said

‘We are grateful that this has been brought to our attention and will be conducting an internal inquiry with immediate affect, as well as fully complying with any and all relevant external bodies’ is beyond me.

The charity itself might just survive if Susie Green personally took the brunt of everything and resigned and then all the charitable aims and services were rebuilt from the ground up with proper oversight.

Not that I want Mermaids to survive, I’m just pointing out how other, less batshit charities might approach weathering a similar storm and that Mermaids inability to do this shows how fucking bonkers this whole shit show is.

If Green isn’t willing to fall on her sword in an attempt to save the charity itself then it really will expose where her priorities lie and if she truly believes in Mermaids professed cause of helping gender distressed kids and their families or if it’s just a vehicle for her own, what, vanity? God complex? Assuaging her subconscious motherly guilt?

The headlines should read 'charity accused of poor safeguarding standards admit poor safeguarding but say it wasn't their responsibility and trusted someone else to do it for them'.

Well the problem is the checks weren't done. So liability exists even if they don't admit the checks weren't done.

The alternative narrative is they did checks and STILL appointed him.

I still think this is an attempt at abdication of responsibility rather than taking it. That says we don't think the liability is ours.

Cos really Mermaids have no where to go and hide on this one.

Appointment of trustees goes right to the top and is one of the most basic fundamentals of running the charity. If you don't even have proper protocols for vetting them and are passing it off as someone else's responsibility, you aren't upholding your responsibility as trustees either though.

All three scenarios put the trustees in situation which isn't good enough to meet their charitable status responsibilities.

Its hard to see how the position of any trustee appointed prior to Breslow is tenable tbh!

I think we should also remember that concerns were raised back in 2018 when the Lottery funding was announced - the report below relates to these concerns:

Review into the award of a Reaching Communities Grant to Mermaids

www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/media/documents/Mermaids-UK-Review-Report_February-2019.pdf?mtime=20190219142027

I think quite a few of those complaints could also be revisited in the light of the Cass Review.