Mermaids - new statement

[MsMcWoodle]

I can't find a thread that mentions this. Sorry if this has been covered but didn't want it to get lost:
Times Lucy has tried to question Mermaids again - but as usual, they won't be questioned and just put out a statement:
www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/tavistock-complaints-process.html

There have been 2 of these Mermaids statements recently. Each time I was expecting a story in the Sunday times/ other but it hasn't happened.

The other recent statement titled, "Can the discussion about trans children please now become less toxic and abusive?" was discussed here:
www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/mermaids-statement-about-good-morning-britain-and-caroline-farrow.html

In December Mermaids published a statement on FB answers to Janice Turner's article which exposed the content of their training for teachers.

22/12/18 Times "Trans ideologists are spreading cod science
Those who defend controversial charity’s right to a £500,000 lottery grant should really listen to what it is preaching"

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-ideologists-are-spreading-cod-science-m8n0pdbq3?

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3457686-Janice-Turner-article-in-the-Times-about-Mermaids

Mermaids response here: www.facebook.com/MermaidsGender/posts/1952394018190698
thread discussing it:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3458163-Mermaids-Response-to-the-Times-Article

its worth bearing in mind the intended audiences for the Mermaids' statements. Amongst TRAs, there is a fuelled belief that The Times especially has an 'anti-trans agenda'. Also some journalists & commentators do only cursory research

Multi level marketing

Skinnycoffee, jamboree nails, younique etc etc.

THeres definitly similarities with how they all ‘recruit’

The MLM issue is highly relevant to how vulnerable people get involved with TRAs and SRA/DID conspiracy theories

The problem is with youtube / facebook influencers and social entrepreneurs

So many teens and young adults, many of them very vulnerable, are making money via youtube and facebook by making videos about chest binding / hormones / DID switching etc.

Other kids see it, get excited, want to get involved due to the potential to make money and also for narcissistic gratification and so subscribe to the original influencer and then start making their own videos.

Thus the movement spreads via social contagion but also via a MLM model

Do you mind sharing a bit more about what signs you saw before. What concerned you and do you think the problems should have been clear to the authorities before the end?

Some articles from the inimitable Lisa Muggeridge on Kids Company:

idgeofreason.wordpress.com/2015/07/03/why-kids-company-is-a-problem/

(General stuff about red flags and obvious issues.)

idgeofreason.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/mumsnet-kids-company-and-online-politics/

(How the women of Mumsnet were on it long before anyone would listen and how women's voices are routinely ignored.)

idgeofreason.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/why-patrick-butler-didnt-see-a-problem-with-kids-company-and-why-it-matters/

(How the bourgeois left and its media routinely let down women and children.)

I think.The link with Kids Do us also the racial aspect Batmanghelidjh believes the children she helped suffered because they were black (in the main) and were victims purely because of racism therefore she was a crusader uninterested in underlying issues In the same way SG believes the children Mermaids 'help' are victims of transphobia rather than just gender curious children and hence she too is a crusader. Both women have invested so much in their simplistic, flawed beliefs that they are/were in seige mentality where nothing is too extreme. In SG case she can be get now be wrong and the more poor children she recruits the stronger she feels her case.

*Kids Co is

No lessons learned from Kids Company

A journalist and erstwhile supporter of Kids' Company spent some considerable time at the charity, to see the "good work" at first hand. She found that staff were lovely, but not working at full capacity.

One of the striking things she noticed was the behaviour of the Founder, Camila Batmanghelidjh, at public events. She would leave after saying that she had just taken a phonecall and been asked to return to base because a suicidal child needed her help.

It happened too often to be true, but the effect on the audience was dramatic.

There was a mismatch between the Founders words of saving lives and preventing suicides, and the actual numbers of children that were on the books. The work happening 'on the ground' was nothing like the work that the Founder claimed to be doing.

Thanks all, this is really interesting.

Sorry - MLM is multilevel marketing.

From first Lisa Muggeridge article linked above, this is a key principle:

"When you work with anyone vulnerable (I mean there is a power imbalance between them and you which you could abuse just by not reflecting on the impact of what you do), you start with the principle of ‘do no harm’. The assumption your intervention is harmful in of itself, unless the benefit it could have, outweighs that harm significantly"

Best practice for any organisation or individual working with people who are vulnerable requires reflective practice & should be actively open to constructive challenge.

Defensive practice by comparison risks the breaching of Safeguarding frameworks.

A journalist and erstwhile supporter of Kids' Company spent some considerable time at the charity, to see the "good work" at first hand. She found that staff were lovely, but not working at full capacity.

A great deal of harm can be caused by people who are or perceived to be 'lovely'
People need to look closely at what is actually being said or done by those who seek support/sympathy/admiration

additional quote from 2015 article by Lisa Muggeridge,"Why Kids Company IS a problem" :

"The charismatic leader of Kids Company is right, the services we have to protect children are at the moment are broken. The consequences are complex, and awful. Child protection is being used wholly inappropriately and a lack of insight into reality within Westminster is creating serious crisis which will become politically impossible at some point. But they were steadily broken over a long time while charities like Kids Company were the main beneficiaries. They are being broken by austerity and we should have a system where the children who caught up in this mess are worth more than being a badge to deflect criticism of whatever you like.

The problem with the charity model, which we learned before World War 2 changed things, is that charity is inevitably about the dooer, and issues like the potential to cause harm get lost in the need for a media profile and future revenue."

See current thread about NSPCC & very important powerful post by chickenonamug
concludes:
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..."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3551084-The-NSPCC-arent-right-about-this-are-they?pg=8

See allso thread with collation of some of the Safeguarding & Child Protection framework failings/failures:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3301266-Safeguarding-girls-and-protecting-women-post-Jimmy-Saville-metoo

Charities are the ideal vehicle for hiding in plain site.
Self aggrandisement and attention seeking behaviour can be engaged in freely if it is called fund raising/ publicity.
Funds can be appropriated easily under the guise of providing services. I have seen it happen.
Unfortunately the people who see it are often shouted down, eased out, scapegoated. If they are smart they often leave before this happens and another fresh faced, naive recruit is brought in to do the donkey work.

A previous poster mentioned that Mermaids goes after Posie and Caroline. Both mothers to young children who have criticised Susie Green's decision. Posie's remarks were on social media where few people would have seen them, but for Green's repeated reports to the police.

Rod Liddle says the same thing in The Times (and even goes further and states that Susie Green should be jailed). And not a whisper from Mermaids about it, far less police action.

Andrew Gilligan of The Times has also written repeatedly of concerns around both Mermaids and Susie Green but the police were not called then either.

Say what you see.

And their latest excuse of we can't control what users on Mermaids do sits strangely alongside their call for Mumsnet to be shut down. Because Memaids doesn't like what Mumsnet users say.

God I hate waffle. Is this woman a politician? She can certainly waffle like the best of them in an attempt to obfuscate the answer to a question. Could have just said:

1. Has Mermaids ever assisted families in writing complaints to GIDS?

A: Yes

2. Has Mermaids ever advised young people and their families on what to say, in order to accelerate treatment?

A: Yes

3. Are individual GIDS staff members rated and discussed on online forums?

A: Yes

4. The clinicians claims that the factors outlined above combine to create an "unethical and toxic" clinical environment... How does Mermaids respond?

A: Don't care.

NotBadConsidering
They know men will do whatever they can to infiltrate safe spaces, they’ve experienced it and they’ve stated as such on their own fucking website, but they will sneer and condemn anyone who raises concerns about men infiltrating safe spaces for their own gains

OK for ppl like me who are a bit slow on the uptake this is where the penny really drops.

I can't wade through it all again, would someone who's picked up the detail mind just clarifying?

They have a closed forum for children? Which has no outside supervision or transparency. And lots of those children are underage, in fact most of them?

Is that right?

NotBadConsidering
They know men will do whatever they can to infiltrate safe spaces, they’ve experienced it and they’ve stated as such on their own fucking website, but they will sneer and condemn anyone who raises concerns about men infiltrating safe spaces for their own gains

"OK for ppl like me who are a bit slow on the uptake this is where the penny really drops."

God yes! It's not being slow. It's not saying what you see (as a pp said).

They have a closed forum for children? Which has no outside supervision or transparency. And lots of those children are underage, in fact most of them?

Im sure that Mermaids charity will have a policy whereby the forum is supervised by a 'trained' adult volunteer.

Mermaids telephone supportline (for both children & parents/carers) is staffed by 'trained' volunteers.

There's information previously available that Susie Green (CEO) wrote / created the training for volunteers.

Datun

Here you go [from the Mermaids' statement]:

"Our parents and teens online forums are peer groups, where literally hundreds of messages are exchanged every day. A wide variety of topics are covered, between parents and young people, and without censure unless our rules of conduct and respect towards one another are broken, or a safeguarding concern is noted. This is not Mermaids, but open discourse between peers.

"The aims of bringing families and young people together are to reduce isolation and loneliness and create a sense of community for people who are dealing with very difficult circumstances. Mermaids does not tell people what to say or do, we provide information and resources only."

Dear god. It should absolutely have transparency. And they can say you have to register to speak, if they don't want dodgy people.

And the moderators, volunteers are being trained by someone who is an IT consultant?

Are there other forums like this? Is it usual to have closed, secret forums for children?

Mermaids does not tell people what to say or do, we provide information and resources only."

Slippery disingenuity.

How is this allowed without oversight???

Charities are the ideal vehicle for hiding in plain site.
Self aggrandisement and attention seeking behaviour can be engaged in freely if it is called fund raising/ publicity.
Funds can be appropriated easily under the guise of providing services. I have seen it happen.
Unfortunately the people who see it are often shouted down, eased out, scapegoated. If they are smart they often leave before this happens and another fresh faced, naive recruit is brought in to do the donkey work.

Yes, yes yes. And when you go to the trustees, or the Charities Commission with pages and pages of evidence, you get old X [head of charity] says there is no problem or your evidence doesn't prove anything. When X is the person that is the problem.

This needs to go onto the main boards. It affects all parents.

Mermaids does not tell people what to say or do, we provide information and resources only."

It is extremely unusual for any charity/organisation providing support (including those whose charitable aims are to provide information/resources) including peer to peer forums for vulnerable children or adults not to have a trustee/member of staff/key advisor who has professional expertise such as health, education, psychology etc. This is basic duty of care, Safeguarding & good practice.