Parents have warned that they are being reported to the authorities for challenging their child’s mistaken belief they have been born in the wrong body.
Members of the Bayswater Support Group told the Mail on Sunday how schools and medical staff had alerted the authorities over them not ‘socially transitioning’ their children or affirming their child’s ‘gender identity’.
The parents’ support group identified at least 17 cases where social services have investigated parents following complaints against them for actions such as refusing to buy their child puberty-blocking drugs or breast binders. It estimated that schools made up a third of the social services or police referrals made against its members.
Intimidation
One mother described how a social worker came to her home after she opposed the idea of a double mastectomy being appropriate treatment for her daughter. She said: “My raising reasonable concerns as a parent was framed as ‘aggressive’.”
After explaining her reasoning to the social worker, the case was closed, but the mother recalled how “deeply upsetting” the encounter was: “I felt as though I had been accused of putting my daughter at risk when I believed I was trying to protect her.
“The whole accusation was false, disingenuous and felt designed to intimidate me into compliance.”
Parental concern
Another mother recounted how the police came to her home and arrested her husband following an argument with their daughter for refusing to give her puberty blockers.
She explained how the school refused to stop calling her daughter by a male name at their request, and how a GP appointment for her child was arranged by the school without her knowledge.
She said: “It felt as though every institution was against us. After I complained to the school, we were referred to social services. I was told the concern was emotional abuse. I feared she might be taken into care, but eventually social services closed the case.”
Criminalising parents
MPs and Peers have been warned that Government plans to ban so-called conversion therapy risk criminalising parents.
A Westminster committee is currently hearing evidence on the controversial Bill which would criminalise “emotional pressure” on a person that causes them to believe they have or do not have a particular “sexual orientation” or “transgender identity”. Any person found guilty of an offence faces a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.
Criticising the proposals in the press, Baroness Cash said: “This is the long arm of the law reaching into family life, into private conversations between parents and children”.
Sex Matters, a women’s rights group, called the draft legislation “an attack on ethical, loving parenting”.
Social scientist Matilda Gosling warned: “This Bill would criminalise ordinary and therapeutic conversations in the name of preventing conversion”.
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