Society must confront the ill-treatment of gender-confused children at the Tavistock Centre, a senior BBC journalist has said.
Newsnight producer Hannah Barnes’ soon-to-be-published book on England’s flagship transgender clinic for children reveals how vulnerable youngsters were routinely set on a ‘sex swap’ medical pathway.
Last year, NHS England announced that the Tavistock’s controversial Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) would close, after an independent report by Dr Hilary Cass found it was not a “safe or viable long-term option”.
Ask no questions
Ahead of the publication of ‘Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children’, Barnes told The Sunday Times: “It’s really striking how few people were willing to question GIDS.
“As one clinician said to me, because it was dealing with gender, there was this ‘cloak of mystery’ around it. There was a sense of ‘Oh, it’s about gender, so we can’t ask the same questions that we would of any other part of the NHS.
“Such as: is it safe? Where’s the evidence? Where’s the data? And are we listening to people raising concerns?’ These are basic questions that are vital to providing the best care.”
She also said: “There needs to be debate about this, and it needs to come out of the clinic and into society, because this isn’t just about trans people — it’s bigger than that. It’s about children.”
First-hand accounts
Excerpts from the book, printed in The Sunday Times Magazine and The Times newspaper, share the alarming experiences of former staff, governors, children and parents at GIDS.
Whistleblower Dr Anna Hutchinson, a clinical psychologist who left GIDS, told Barnes that the Centre’s treatment of children was “scandalous in its negligence and scale”.
scandalous in its negligence and scale
Detransitioner ‘Harriet’ was prescribed testosterone and went on to have a double mastectomy, but now believes her desire to be a boy was “a coping strategy” and says she is no longer battling against her “own biology”.
The book, which is published next week, claims that more than 1,000 children were referred for puberty blockers. It notes that 97.5 per cent of children seeking sex changes had autism, depression or other problems – evidence the clinic ignored.
Inconvenient truth
Welcoming the exposé, Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch tweeted: “Let the tragic Tavistock scandal remind us to always stand up for the truth as we see it…no matter how inconvenient or impolite some may find the truth to be.”
Former Health Secretary Sajid Javid described the book’s contents as a “damning report that shows why the decision to close Tavistock was right”.
And Times columnist Hadley Freeman, who conducted the interview with Barnes, said the story was “a jaw-dropping insight into failure: failure of leadership, of child safeguarding and of the NHS”.
In response, a spokesperson for GIDS said: “Concerns relating to young people’s wellbeing are taken seriously and investigated.”
‘Infinite’ genders
On Monday, The Daily Telegraph revealed that posters promoting the idea that there are an “infinite” number of ‘gender identities’ were on display at the clinic in London.
Leaflets alongside the posters, provided by the controversial trans-activist organisation Gendered Intelligence, suggest that all people are on a sliding scale between “man-ness” and “woman-ness”.
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