www.thetimes.co.uk/article/da0f8e48-a241-4baf-9224-a77b02c580b6?shareToken=41c4303889699d9af0b26aac8682b9e9
Puberty blocker clinic accepted £20k donation from ‘sugar daddy’
GenderGP, which privately prescribes hormone drugs to children, can skip the NHS ban on the drugs because it is private
Dr Helen Webberley said GenderGP would not be following NHS guidelines banning the prescription of puberty blockers
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE TIMES
Tom Ball
Sunday March 17 2024, 11.00pm, The Times
A private clinic that has vowed to defy an NHS directive banning the prescription of puberty blockers to children accepted a £20,000 donation from a “sugar daddy” who paid a male YouTuber thousands of pounds to behave like a submissive girl.
GenderGP, which is run by Dr Helen Webberley, a GP from south Wales, has provided children as young as nine with drugs that suppress puberty hormones following online consultations.
Webberley said that her company would not be following NHS guidelines issued last Tuesday banning the prescription of puberty blockers,,_ after medical leaders concluded that “there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness” of the drugs.
A loophole in the guideliness_ mean puberty blockers can still be issued by private providers. Campaigners have warned that children and parents could migrate from the NHS to online clinics running a “Wild West operation”.
As a private company, GenderGP is financed through fees paid by the families of children wishing to change their gender and does not receive charitable donations or public funding. However, the clinic does accept donations for a fund it set up to help those who are struggling to pay for their treatment.
Among those who have given money to the fund is an anonymous American donor who gave $25,000 (£20,000) as part of a joint donation with a British YouTuber whom he paid to be his online “sugar baby”, The Times can reveal.
The donor, who goes by the pseudonym Tenmuses, gave F1nn5ter, a YouTuber from Birmingham with over half a million subscribers, thousands of pounds to undergo laser hair removal, wear an outfit with the words “Daddy’s princess” written on it and sit in a child’s chair when he disobeyed his commands.
Tenmuses also offered him money to strip on camera and undergo breast implant surgery, both of which he declined.
F1nn5ter, whose real name is Jude Howarth, 23, initially grew an online following by making videos about computer games. He began wearing female clothing after telling his followers he would do so if he received $1,000 (£800) in donations from them
Having previously described himself as a cross-dressing man, he announced this month that he had started taking feminising hormone therapy and now uses both he and she pronouns.
According to Howarth, his anonymous benefactor is a wealthy American businessman in his forties who had previously worked as a doctor.
Neither the clinic nor Howarth responded to requests for comment.
The Singapore-based GenderGP was set up in 2015 by Webberley, 54 and her husband Michael, 57.
Mr Webberley was struck off in May 2022 after a tribunal ruled that he had been reckless in wrongly prescribing puberty blockers to a transgender nine-year-old child through Gender GP after a ten-minute consultation on Skype.
In the same year, Mrs Webberley was issued with a two-month suspension by the tribunal service for serious misconduct.
She was accused of failing to alert one of her teenage patients to the impact of puberty blockers on fertility. However a High Court judge later quashed the ruling, leaving her free to continue practising.
Puberty blockers suppress the release of sex hormones that cause physical changes such as breast development or the growth of facial hair. They have been prescribed to hundreds of under-16s on the NHS since 2011 at the gender identity clinic run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London.
A review of the Tavistock clinic in 2022 by Dr Hilary Cass warned that puberty blockers may “permanently disrupt” brain development and “lock in” children to an irreversible, life-altering path of cross-sex hormone treatment.
A private member’s bill has been put forward by Liz Truss,,_ the former prime minister, which would make it illegal for any healthcare provider — whether NHS or private, in any part of the UK — to prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children."