I am so upset by the whole attitude of the NSPCC, as a women who was sexually abused for many years of my childhood, I feel utterly betrayed by them. I am disgusted that they can make money from adverts about, and the public's concern for, girls who are experiencing sexual abuse and then turn around and imply that there are no concerns when these very groomed and traumatised girls are forced to share spaces with males.
Girls who have been groomed and abused will often have very poor understanding of boundaries and how to assert them, and whilst they are desperately learning to develop and assert them they should not be expected to ignore or override them in order to be kind or inclusive to males (even those who identify as girls or women).
Equally, these vulnerable girls (who will often feel unable to speak up at all) should not have to suffer the really awful effects of their trauma responses, which will often occur when they feel especially vulnerable around males. Using a mixed toilet or changing room, or a single sex toilet next to a male who identifies as female, will often be very distressing.
A child with fragile boundaries or real fears about speaking up and asserting them will be particularly vulnerable to inappropriate sexual behaviour from her peers or other males. I know this because alongside the years of sexual abuse and rape from an adult male relative, I also was subject to inappropriate sexual behaviour from two male class mates, when I was about ten, on at least two or three occasions.
The NSPCC is letting vulnerable girls, and in fact all girls, down in the most horrific of ways. Their input into this has resulted in groups, such as Girlguiding and British Gymnastics, coming up with policies that also seriously ignore the wellbeing and safeguarding of girls and also remove a safe space for these girls, in which they might have started to recover or build resilience.
Amongst other things the stance that the NSPCC has taken in this will undoubtedly, in my mind, result in abused girls who will now find it far harder to recover and intergrate into society. I can not stress enough the importance of being able to rely on single sex spaces in allowing me to negiogate a path through life, especially in my teens and twenties.
The NSPCC is completely failing sexually abused girls and as I wrote at the beginning it has often been adverts that have been about abused girls that have brought in the money for them. And their directors' salaries are not small. I feel that women and girls like me have been used by them and then our needs ignored and abandoned. The NSPCC disgust me.
Also, I have watched despairingly in the last few hours as the NSPCC have thanked people on twitter for their messages in which they have called the women raising valid concerns: bigots and transphobes.
To the NSPCC, I do not care what I am called I will continue to do what I can to ensure that the safety, wellbeing, recovery and social integration of sexually abused girls is not impacted by policies or practices that do not consider their needs and rights. Balancing the rights of vulnerable children was always going to be extremely difficult, but the NSPCC should have properly acknowledged this and then helped other organisations to understand the different conflicting needs and their impact within a legal and safeguarding framework and subsequently come up with appropriate solutions. The NSPCC could have led the way with this and done what was expected of them but instead...