Mermaids vs LGB Alliance and Charity Commissioner - First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) Thread 3

[nauticant]

The Tribunal started on 9 September, witness testimony started on 12 September.

To obtain access to view the proceedings, send a request email to [email protected] about case CA/2021/0013 - Mermaids vs Charity Commissioner and LGB Alliance and ask for permission to join. You then have to provide certain information and agree to a judge's direction in order to be able to join.

There is also live tweeting from twitter.com/tribunaltweets.

Abbreviations:

J or judge: Presiding Judge, Judge Lynn Griffin
AJ or Judge: Assisted by Judge Joe Neville
MG: Mermaids counsel is Michael Gibbon KC
KM: LGB Alliance counsel is Karon Monaghan KC
AR: Karon is assisted by Akua Reindorf
IS: Charity Commission counsel is Iain Steele

(Also the witnesses, PR: Paul Roberts, JN: John Nicolson. BB: Belinda Bell, BJ: Beverley Jackson, KH: Kate Harris, and EG: Eileen Gallagher.)

Thread 1: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4629679-mermaids-versus-lgb-alliance-in-court-today
Thread 2: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4632780-mermaids-vs-lgb-alliance-and-charity-commissioner-first-tier-tribunal-general-regulatory-chameber-thread-2
Thread 3: ongoing

Witnesses for the applicant (Mermaids):

Paul Roberts - CEO of LGBT Consortium (12 September)
John Nicolson MP - Deputy Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global LGBT+ Rights (13 September)
Dr Belinda Bell - Chair of trustees of Mermaids (13 September)

Witnesses for the respondent (LGB Alliance):

Beverley Jackson - Co-founder and trustee of LGB Alliance (13-14 September)
Kate Harris - Co-founder and trustee of LGB Alliance (14-15 September)
Eileen Gallagher OBE - Chair of trustees of LGB Alliance (15 September)

Witness Statements:

Paul Roberts: lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Paul-Roberts-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
John Nicolson MP - lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/John-Nicolson-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
Dr Belinda Bell: lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Belinda-Bell-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
Beverley Jackson: lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bev-Jackson-Witness-Statement-Exhibits-1.pdf
Kate Harris: lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Kate-Harris-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
Eileen Gallagher (two statements): lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Eileen-Gallagher-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Eileen-Gallagher-Second-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf

Submissions:

lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Volume-4-Submissions-CA.2021.0013.pdf

(Header format follows the gold standard established by @ickky)

post updated by MNHQ at OP's request

The address is [email protected]. Note though that others in the thread read the email from the GRC as saying that anyone who was recorded as an observer for the hearing before will automatically get replacement access credentials.

Thanks. My email never came from the court though. It came from Kerry at LGB Alliance. Court will have my name on a list but possibly not my email address.

I've just received my replacement access credentials for next week.

10am start on Monday.

I just got it too, same pin but different link.

I received a begging email from Mermaids earlier this week.

Full of emotive language as ever. They sound increasingly desperate as their support and credibility ebbs away.

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

I do not believe they act in children's best interests. The sooner they are held to account the better.

They're running out of money. But no one is going to support them if they don't think they can be effective. Maybe people are waiting to see the outcome of the charity commission's investigation before committing.

Noting they tout this as an attack on the entire trans community, rather than a widescale questioning of some highly dubious practices by their individual organization.

The suggestion that their presence is necessary under the gambit of protecting vulnerable children is also very wide of the mark. It's children who should be protected from them. Not to mention their 'trustees'.

They're running out of money because the real world is counting up the safeguarding catastrophes, running out of fingers to count them on, and the reputation of this organisation is now not in the mud, it's down a bloody sink hole.

People will not support flagrant disregard for (and I'm putting it very politely) the safeguarding of children because an organisation whines that to expect the same standards of them as everyone else is transphobic.

Fuck off with that. If you are not up to the job you have no business getting involved with providing services to children.

And the average typical person in the street has heard 'trustee who celebrates and wishes to legalise paedophilia and talks about their own sexual attraction to children'

And trust me on this, their response has not been 'oh goody, how sex positive!'
Because no one with a grip on reality and appropriacy and boundaries would .

The National Lottery paused their funding earlier in the month. It probably translates to £50k+ every 6 months midway through a project so that is quite a wage bill to fund whilst deciding whether you need to make people redundant.

www.thirdsector.co.uk/lottery-fund-pauses-mermaids-payments-amid-charity-commission-compliance-case/governance/article/1801381#:~:text=Lottery%20fund%20pauses%20Mermaids%20payments%20amid%20Charity%20Commission%20compliance%20case,-07%20October%202022&text=The%20National%20Lottery%20Community%20Fund,regulator%20conducts%20a%20compliance%20case.

Yes I think they went on a recruitment drive after getting the national lottery award - wasn't it to fund local groups? So having recruited they now don't have the funding for the pay bill.
Haven't the BBC big charities like children in need also dropped their funding?
Plus they have this court case which will hopefully land them with a massive bill for costs.
So they will be feeling the pinch.

So weird that they didn't do any kind of risk-assessment around the different outcomes that might happen if they took LGB Alliance to court.

I think mermaids consider risk assessments to go as transphobic as safeguarding so avoided them

It's not weird at all that they didn't consider the consequences of taking LGB Alliance to court - what about the way they operate makes you think they are capable of rationally considering possible options and making sensible decisions accordingly? Did SG rationally consider taking her child to Thailand? Nope. And so it continues to today. Decisions are, and always have been, based totally on feelings.

Yep.

I had a look at the Gendered Intelligence safeguarding policy as they seem to be working with the same service user group in a similar way (although more tweens and teens rather than primary age although they do advertise a group for 8-11 year olds in London) and they say they have adopted a safeguarding framework from the National Youth Work Agency and their staff and volunteers are all externally trained in safeguarding.

genderedintelligence.co.uk/about-us/safeguarding.html

genderedintelligence.co.uk/static/pdfs/GI-Safeguarding-Child-Protection-Policy-Jan2022-v1.0.pdf?

www.nya.org.uk/skills/safeguarding-and-risk-management-hub/

I haven’t combed through it all because it doesn’t throw up any immediate red flags. Adults are named alongside with their job titles and the YWA has a hub service so presumably small charities and orgs who use their framework have that to tap into when concerns are identified and someone further up the chain needs notifying.

It seems to me that when Susie Green reinvented Mermaids in 2016 the remit shifted from supporting the parents of children who were being seen by GIDS to working directly with children, sometimes without their parents involvement.
This may have been more of a drift than an intentional focus switch, which would explain why they don’t seem to have anything even remotely like Gendered Intelligence’s policies and protocols.

Then they got that big cash injection from the National Lottery and the $350 thousand from H Bomber Guy’s Donkey Kong stream and quickly hired loads of new staff (mostly young people, hired based on identity rather than skills) and stacked all those young and inexperienced staff on top of what were already improper foundations for a charity that works directly with children, sometimes without parental knowledge (but possibly ok foundations for a peer-support-for-parents phoneline, which is what Mermaids were when Susie Green first contacted them).

Hmmm - Gendered Intelligence - who offer "mentoring" in being trans by trans adults for children in schools and suggest that schools can use the Pupil Premium, Disability Services Allowance or other Access funds to pay GI for this.

genderedintelligence.co.uk/professionals/mentoring.html#:~:text=Gendered%20Intelligence%20offers%20mentoring%20to,place%20in%20any%20educational%20setting.

I'm not sure how on earth schools spending targeted funding to pay Gendered Intelligence is ethical, part of a school's role or (given everything we know about social contagion & the emerging evidence of the harm done by social transitioning), safe in terms of safeguarding children?

indeed.

Especially as Karma is a bitch - and a Terf-y one at that.

Gosh, that’s fairly scandalous - how does spending pupil premium funds on GI improve the lives of children in poverty?

(deffo not endorsing GI btw, my post above was more to point out how woeful Mermaids have been, even in comparison to other questionable organisations. The bar for being better than mermaids is so low it’s on the floor and rolling downhill!)

Not meaning to criticise TheClogLady. Most of the trans activist groups have had to row back from their initial safeguarding breaching work with schools and children to a more informed approach. On one hand it's amazing that Mermaids haven't cottoned on to this. But as their core business is wanting to persuade children that their bodies & mental health problems can be improved with drugs and surgery along with fostering parental alienation and secretly posting binders to young girls, it's probably impossible to incorporate safeguarding principles in any form. Hence the mess they're in.

Just stocking up on all the support Tunnocks I'm going to need. See you at 10am, vipers!

I've had my access request rejected this morning - according to Judge's directions last month I should have requested access by 5pm on Friday?

I don't know how I would have known that (had access approved to last session before break, assumed same log-ins would work until mid-Saturday when I caught up with this thread.)

Ho-hum. Reading along it is, thanks in advance for the coverage by those more organised than me!

I shall be reading along, let's see what this week brings.

Hoping Tribunal Tweets will be covering this?

I'll be checking in for updates in between working. Thanks all!

I'll be reading along cause I'm in work and in Ireland. I know two UK colleagues are " working from home " today and tuning in.