Tavistock scandal ‘on a par with East German doping of athletes’ - top of Times home page tonight

[Fenlandia]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e04f4958-aa26-11ed-8a03-b2faadede0c5?shareToken=81bddfc85342137edc81797069ccd8cb

rogdmum · Today 07:35

Here’s an example of just how badly concerned parents were treated by the Tavi:

^twitter.com/bayswatersg/status/1435203195270320130?s=61&t=FN1sS54YOXJb6PaYFzIZJQ^

Tragically, that's entirely typical behaviour for the ?TRA zealot team; intimidate, lie and slander people, because they have no actual argument and resort to lashing out and squealing.

It was a comment about the publishing industry in general. What on earth made you think it was about Mermaids?

Sorry, not Mermaids, Gids. Because this thread is about the articles in the Times and it was a book about Gids which wouldn’t get past the junior staff.

She had been covering the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London — the only one of its kind for children in England and Wales — since 2019 and decided to write a book about it. “I wanted to write a definitive record of what happened because there needs to be one,” she tells me. Not everyone agreed. “None of the big publishing houses would take it,” she says. “Interestingly, there were no negative responses to the proposal. They just said, ‘We couldn’t get it past our junior members of staff.’ ”

@SidewaysOtter @RedToothBrush I don't know a lot about anime but I remember reading some about 20 to 30 years ago aimed at teens and a recurrent storyline was boys and girls swapping bodies with each other or their own body swapping sex - for example on contact with water or if they got angry that kind of thing. It was all quite Freaky Friday in tone, lots of comedy and silliness, but it seemed to be a big theme. No idea of today's anime and if it is still a thing.

Anna Hutchinson’s comments are heartbreaking:

”That’s when I think I changed as a human being,” Hutchinson reflects. “I just think I became a bit more cynical.” She had gone from believing that positive change could be made, and that there was the goodwill to do that, “to believing this was a system that knew it was taking risks with children’s wellbeing but was not going to do anything about it.”

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/19ffce5e-a930-11ed-9813-2dc4880907f5?shareToken=503678bce372c5fd1e0b7268b74da4e9

I've checked back but cannot see a link on this thread to this article, also in today's Sunday Times:

Irish doctors concerned those transitioning as children could experience ‘significant levels of regret’.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7b164366-aa58-11ed-9813-2dc4880907f5?shareToken=623e182e9faecf97d87674f3763eb45aa_

"[Professor Donal] O’Shea added: “It is likely we will encounter significant levels of regret and other adverse outcomes in the Crumlin legacy group which will be difficult to defend.”"

Those poor children. They and their families have been completely failed.

Thanks ClaphamSouth. This on top of the Kerry CAMHS scandal shows yet again that people don't matter to the HSE whatever their age or sex.

'Newsnight researcher' compares interestingly with her description in the Times: 'investigations producer for Newsnight and a long-term analytical and documentary journalist'.

Everywhere you look in this scandal you will find Liberal Democrats.

Remember the Tortoise News podcast series on GIDS?

I was thinking of Tortoise when I read the article ShireWifeofNigelFarage. It occurred to me that Polly Curtis must be kicking herself today. She had all of the jigsaw pieces, showed them to the audience, and then, in a remarkable act of cowardice/self-delusion concluded in the final episode that the actual "real" story was:
- the suicides of young people while on the waiting list, and
- what happened at the Tavistock was as a result of political meddling, and that "it's a familiar story of NHS scarcity compounded by a culture war."

Yes

Once you realise the pro-blockers, sad-I-never-got-them person on most (all?) the episodes works at Tortoise you can imagine how that might’ve happened. They appear in the video I linked.

Re suicides, I will make a separate post.

Thanks for linking to the Tortoise discussion episode. I'd missed that.

Does anyone else feel a bit annoyed that this story doesn't seem to have got any traction anywhere else yet? I haven't seen anywhere else reporting it. This ought to be a massive story, like Thalidomide.

The following post is a heap of human misery - do not go link following unless you are in the right head space (or only look at one or two at a time).

These are some of the stories in the press that might be on the list of young lives lost that might be a contributor to the closing of GIDS.

Basically the time & narrative more or less fits, but I don’t know the exact time frame that the ‘15 deaths’ reported by Tortoise News counted within.

These are extremely tragic, extremely complex cases that would not have been fixed by a short wait for puberty blockers followed by cross sex hormones under 16.

Samaritans say that the number of suicides has not escalated dramatically in recent years but that the numbers look a bit off because inquests have been delayed due to covid. Suicides are collated by the year of inquest, not the year of death.
The covid delays mean the info I can currently find relates to 2020/2021 and most of the 2021/2022 cases are not yet in the public domain

There is one death on the list that is not a suicide, but it is a case of terrible failures within the paediatric mental health system. I’m not sure now if the Tortoise podcast said ‘suicides on the waiting list’ or ‘deaths on the waiting list’?
Obvs, we can’t know if deaths of teens, adolescents and young people with gender identity distress are suicides until the inquest is complete and at the time of the podcast, they couldn’t have known either.

Everyone of these young people was loved and is missed and I am so sorry that despite multiple contacts with mental health services, they did not get the support that they needed.
💐
(I have not typed out their names because our ongoing Mumsnet GIDS discussions might weird out bereaved friends and families if they accidentally stumble across us via a Google search)

This young person aged off GIDS list before being seen, so the NHS gender doctor called to give evidence is from the adult service at T&P.

Gender GP are also involved (and from the Argus article, it looks like things were ok until discharge from CAMHS and then the awful black hole transfer to adult MH services happened.

Full hearing in September.

www.theargus.co.uk/news/23281942.amp/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-64457165

This young person sadly died a few days after the Keira Bell ruling, when Susie Green was breaking Samaritans guidelines all over our TVs
The suicide ideation and self harm was, however, part of a long established pattern.

it’s a complicated case with multi agency involvement as the young person was a patient at an inpatient mental health facility (one that had two other patient deaths within a 9 month period):

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/i-thought-son-would-safe-19453939?

www.farleys.com/inquest-opens-into-death-of-trans-teen-at-prestwich-mental-health-hospital/

the inquest has just been adjourned for police investigation as medical records look iffy, possibly falsified:

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/police-reopen-investigation-boys-death-26106485.

One of the other teens who died at Prestwich identified as non binary

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/my-trans-child-went-hospital-25904150.amp

This teen was being held at Prestwich Hospital after being charged with the murder of his mother in Hampshire:

www.thesun.co.uk/news/20499774/son-strangled-mum-crime-mental-health/amp/

His death has been ruled as caused by neglect due to lack of treatment for low potassium (which can cause psychosis!) - I haven’t found any evidence either way re: GIDS involvement but dad accepted the NB identity, it was well established and there had been previous involvement with paediatric psychiatric services so it’s possible a referral existed (although obvs way too complex for GIDS to want to take on responsibility!)

www.inquest.org.uk/rowan-thompson-inquest-concludes

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/breaking-jury-rules-neglect-prestwich-25399556.

This young person died a couple of months before the Bell ruling - no mention of GIDS but mother is very affirmative of the 15 years olds transman identity:

www.inquest.org.uk/ellis-murphy-richards-close

This article is about a young person who died in the early period of the covid pandemic (pre Bell ruling), it mentions GIC waiting lists but the young person was under 18 so it was mostly likely the GIDS list:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-60498335.amp

This report says the 19 year old was ‘struggling with gender identity’ but no further info:

www.kentonline.co.uk/maidstone/news/amp/tragic-19-year-old-thought-shes-been-labelled-confused-tee-261797/

This young person had also been discussing gender identity with friends but the article doesn’t elaborate further:

www.sussexlive.co.uk/news/sussex-news/horsham-schoolgirl-who-took-life-6809830

One of her school friends had taken her own life in the same manner 6 weeks earlier - gender is not mentioned but I include the link to illustrate how complicated these cases are, and how social contagion is a real and devastating thing:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10957555/amp/NHS-Trust-failed-schoolgirl-Robyn-Skilton-dead-home-Horsham-West-Sussex.html

Adding Samaritans contact to this post for anyone reading who is affected by similar issues 💐

www.samaritans.org

"Mermaids declined to comment" - that's got to be a first.

Kemi Badenoch has commented, which is heartening:

twitter.com/KemiBadenoch/status/1624569672355188736

Good on her. And a reminder because this feels like it was years ago but wasn't:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0df1a300-1022-11ed-b7aa-67f5549661eb?shareToken=33db2d5a0141d9259d60c898f08ff223

"When I became equalities minister in early 2020, the NHS clinic for young people was presented to me by government officials as a positive medical provision to support children. I was assured that was there “nothing to see here”, if anything, the Tavistock was getting unfair press. This was despite whistleblowers like Dr David Bell already raising concerns about practices at the clinic.

...

I insisted on meeting campaigners on both sides of the debate: not just Stonewall but, to the horror of some officials, the LGB Alliance. I met clinicians and, most importantly, I asked to meet young people who had used the Tavistock’s services.

One such young person was Keira Bell. To my surprise, I was advised strongly and repeatedly by civil servants in the department that it would be “inappropriate” to speak to her. I overruled the advice. Along with other advisers across government I met Keira and listened to what she had to say. Her testimony was harrowing and brought many on the Zoom call to tears. Keira described how, after being put on puberty blockers at the age of 16, she was given testosterone shots at 17, before her breasts were cut off at 20. Worse was the casual indifference she described from the GIDS service to her continued post-surgery wellbeing.

There are two types of ministers — those who assume that officials know best and follow their advice unquestioningly, becoming spokespeople rather than decision-makers — and those who don’t.

The government machine wants to be comfortable and consensual and campaigners and activists know how to take advantage of this. A minister asking tricky questions can be stopped in their tracks by accusations of stoking “culture wars”. Minutes of private meetings with whistleblowers and concerned citizens can be selectively leaked or become the subject of numerous innocent-looking freedom of information requests, designed to identify targets for harassment on social media, as I discovered in one unfortunate case..."

Mail online:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11741849/amp/More-1-000-children-given-puberty-blockers-controversial-Tavistock-gender-clinic.html

Almost 300 comments in two hours

Possibly because most people everywhere are straight, so the majority of the transitioners began as heterosexual and stayed that way, but now with a new gender identity which in their ideology makes them gay or Lesbian or queer. Transbians etc began as heterosexual boys or men, who stayed heterosexual in old money.

Gays and Lesbian teens are over-represented among transitioners, but heterosexual teens are quite likely still the majority, just because there are so many more heterosexual people overall (based on the England-Wales census, well over 90%).

it’s all so horrific and desperately sad and some people still dig in. Perfectly willing to sacrifice innocent children for their great cause.

I would love to read a research paper on the impact of anime and related genres in all this. I understand that there is a specific sub-genre or something linked to anime where gay men fall in love with each other, have romantic sex etc.

This, I have been told, is mainly read by young teen girls, and several detransitioners have stated that it affected their desire to transition, because the relationships described were egalitarian and not exploitative and dehumanising. They felt the stories spoke about people like them and so that contributed to their identifying as gay boys or men.

There are also the Twitter profile pictures with anime faces, little girls with giant shining eyes. Very cute, and I am told, severely sexualised in some anime-type porn. These profile pictures are attached to accounts by teens, but often they are attached to accounts by middle-aged trans women. It might not be far-fetched that the cartoon faces are seen as the ideal towards which they are transitioning?

Proper research on all this would be great, because the correlation between anime consumption and transitioning clearly exists.

I wonder if the Guardian or Independent will mention it tomorrow. Not holding my breath….

The Mail have picked it up - just as in the Times the commentators are appalled

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11741849/More-1-000-children-given-puberty-blockers-controversial-Tavistock-gender-clinic.html

The anime look - very thin, childlike, huge eyes, yet somehow very sexualised - was big in the pro-anorexia world of the 90s. It is a very appealing look if you're approaching puberty with the inevitable grown of curves and wobbly bits, and finding it terrifying. I'm not surprised that a desire for that look is transferring over to ROGD teenage girls, too.

Truly horrendous. The NHS did this it to children

thanks to all our posters on here who have contributed to this thread. And before.

That is so true