August 13, 2022

ENGLAND: In Move Against 'Trans' Ideology, Britain To Pass Sweeping New School Policies Against 'Preferred Pronouns'. Over 1,000 Families Suing NHS Clinic For Children Sex Change As Young As 3.

Daily Mail, UK
written by Greg Heffer
Wednesday August 10, 2022

Schools should not be teaching eight-year-old's 'key words' such as transgender, pansexual, intersex, gender fluid or gender dysphoria, the Government's top legal adviser has said.

Attorney General Suella Braverman today warned 'well-intentioned but misinformed' teachers they could be 'indoctrinating children into a one-sided and controversial view of gender' in classrooms.

The Cabinet minister, who recently ran for the Tory leadership before being knocked out the contest to replace Boris Johnson, also insisted it was not 'age-appropriate' to teach four-year-olds that people can change sex or gender.

In a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank, the Cabinet minister attempted to offer 'legal clarity to schools and parents' on transgender issues.

Officials at the Department for Education are set to issue new guidance for schools, teachers and parents, with Mrs Braverman saying she was 'setting out the legal breadth' for the approach to what pupils are taught.

The Attorney General said a 'lack of clarity and confusion' had left some teachers 'petrified of doing the wrong thing' and feeling 'cornered into accepting the dogma they are provided, accepting the materials they are presented with'.

'They feel they have no option but to teach something they fundamentally disagree with, they think is harmful and they know to be wrong,' she added.

'We can't be living in a climate like that, we can't be living in a country where teachers, and parents and young people feel gagged.'

The Attorney General warned that 'Ofsted must step in' if Government guidance was not being applied or followed by schools.

Mrs Braverman's views on transgender issues in classrooms, and the legal arguments around them, came as she spoke more widely about equality and human rights law.

She urged Conservatives to reject a 'quasi-religious narrative' from 'the Left' that rights are 'an inevitable march of progress towards ultimate liberation'.

'All rights, however noble, impose limits and obligations on other people, some with tricky trade-offs,' Mrs Braverman said.

Offering her stance on trans issues in schools, the Attorney General - who is now backing Liz Truss for the Tory leadership - said:
  • it is lawful for a single-sex school to refuse to admit a child of the opposite biological sex who identifies as transgender;
  • it is lawful for a mixed school to refuse to allow a biologically and legally male child, who identifies as a trans-girl, from using the girls’ toilets;
  • it is lawful for a mixed school to refuse a biologically and legally male child who identifies as a trans girl from using a single sex girls’ dormitory;
  • it can be lawful for schools to refuse to use the preferred opposite-sex pronouns of a child;
  • it can be lawful for a school to refuse to allow a biologically male child, who identifies as a trans girl, to wear a girls’ uniform;
  • it is lawful for a school to refuse a biologically and legally male child who identifies as a trans-girl from participating in girls’ single sex sporting activities;
  • no child should be made to fear punishment or disadvantage for questioning what they are being taught, or refusing to adopt a preferred pronoun for a gender questioning child.
Mrs Braverman said it was 'wrong' for schools to suggest they have 'legal obligations' to address pupils by their preferred pronouns, names, or admit them to opposite sex toilets, sports teams or dormitories.

The Attorney General hit out at ideas on transgender issues that are 'pervading the public sector and are being taught in some schools without any democratic scrutiny or consideration of the consequences'.

She said that exisiting Government guidance 'makes clear that where partisan political views are covered, schools ensure that these are presented with the appropriate context, which supports a balanced presentation of opposing views'.

'In my view, a primary school where they are teaching Year 4 pupils, aged eight and nine, "key words" such as transgender, pansexual, asexual, gender expression, intersex, gender fluid, gender dysphoria, questioning or queer, would be falling foul of government guidance,' Mrs Braverman said.

'Nor is it not age-appropriate to teach four-year-olds that people can change sex or gender.'

She added that Government guidance meant that primary schools 'do not need to set exercises relating to childrens’ "self-identified gender"'.

'In these instances, schools – who may be well-intentioned but misinformed - are breaching their duty of impartiality and indoctrinating children into a one-sided and controversial view of gender,' the Attorney General continued.

'Age appropriateness is the critical factor, the younger the child and the more simplified the explanation, the greater the risk that schools won’t achieve the right balance.'

Mrs Braverman argued that child should not be cowed when questioning 'what they are being taught, or refusing to adopt a preferred pronoun for a gender questioning child, or complaining about a gender questioning child using their toilets or changing rooms, or refusing to take part in activities promoted by Stonewall or other such organisations'.

'The right to freedom of belief, thought, conscience and speech must prevail,' she said.

Elsewhere in her speech, Mrs Braverman said there was now a 'rights culture' in Britain 'in a way that did not exist' prior to New Labour's Human Rights Act in 1998.

'Aspects of this are causing confusion and distress,' she said.

'In my view, many of the difficult cases we have seen, have been symptomatic of this long tail of Blairism.'

Mrs Braverman hailed the Government's proposed 'Bill of Rights' - which she said should be made law 'as soon as possible' - as 'a further step towards taking back control’ and a means of 'injecting a healthy dose of common sense into the system'.

Responding to the Attorney General's speech, a spokesperson for Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, said: 'Trans children and young people deserve to feel safe and welcome while they are learning, yet our research shows that half of them (51 per cent) experience bullying at school just for being trans.

'Supporting school leaders and classroom teachers to provide a learning environment where trans children and young people's wellbeing and dignity is taken seriously should be a priority we can all agree on.'
Sky News Australia published August 11, 2022: NHS 'facing a wave of lawsuits' over Tavistock clinic. Broadcaster Esther Krakue says she predicted the NHS “would be facing a wave of lawsuits” due to gender clinics like the soon to be closed Tavistock.

Breitbart.com
written by Kurt Zindulka
Friday August 12, 2022

Over 1,000 families are expected to bring legal action against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which operated the only gender clinic for children in England before being ordered to shut down over safety concerns.

The Tavistock Centre and its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), which has been accused of offering puberty blocking drugs to children after as little as just one consultation, is now facing legal action from families over allegedly misdiagnosing their children.

Since opening in 1989, the Tavistock Centre “treated” some 19,000 children for alleged gender dysphoria, a condition in which an individual feels a disconnect between their biological sex and their gender identity.

Speaking to The Times, Tom Goodhead of the Pogust Goodhead law firm said that he is expecting “at least 1,000” families to join in the legal action against the NHS trust.

“Children and young adolescents were rushed into treatment without the appropriate therapy and involvement of the right clinicians, meaning that they were misdiagnosed and started on a treatment pathway that was not right for them,” he said.

“These children have suffered life-changing and, in some cases, irreversible effects of the treatment they received.”

In 2021, Keira Bell sued the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, alleging that the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) had pressured her into medically transitioning her gender at the age of 16, something which she later grew to regret as an adult.

While the High Court had initially ruled in her favour, finding that it was wrong for the clinic to prescribe puberty blockers without the authorisation of a court, the decision was later overturned by the Court of Appeal.

In May, the Supreme Court ruled that she will not be able to challenge the decision, clearing the way for more children to be prescribed with life-altering drugs.

Bell says that as a result of her “treatment” she was left with “no breasts, a deep voice, body hair, a beard, affected sexual function and who knows what else.”

Whistleblowers from the trust had also claimed that the Tavistock Centre had used dubious pretexts to put children on gender-swapping drugs, including if girls did not display a fondness for “pink ribbons and dollies“.

Another whistleblower, nurse Susan Evans, claimed that there were political motivations behind the prevalence of the use of puberty blocking drugs, saying last year: “The treatment pathway of children with gender dysphoria [was] becoming ever more politicised, and moving away from high standards of clinical mental healthcare with good assessment and psychotherapeutic treatment.”

Indeed, it has been estimated that over the past decade, the number of girls being diagnosed with gender dysphoria at the clinic had increased by 5,000 per cent.

In June, NHS England ordered that the Tavistock Centre close after an independent review from Dr Hillary Cass found that the treatments offered were “not a safe or viable long-term option” for children.

Nevertheless, the centre will remain open until next Spring, and it is set to be replaced by smaller local alternatives, meaning that the practice may still continue.

Responding to the potential lawsuit, a spokesman for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust told Sky News that the Gender Identity Development Service “is committed to patient safety.”

“It works with every young person on a case-by-case basis, with no expectation of what might be the right pathway for them, and only the minority of young people who are seen in our service access any physical treatments while with us… it would be inappropriate to comment on any current or potential legal proceeding.”
Sky News published December 11, 2019: Special Report: NHS 'over-diagnosing' transgender children. Sky News speaks to teenagers who have both undergone gender reassignment surgery and those who have decided to de-transition.
BBC News published October 1, 2020: NHS child gender clinic: Staff concerns date back more than a decade. Newsnight has obtained a copy of a review into the NHS’s only child gender clinic from 2005, led by the then medical director Dr David Taylor. The review reveals safeguarding concerns had been raised by some staff back then, fifteen years ago.

Breitbart.com
written by Virginia Hale
February 27, 2019

A governor of the NHS trust in charge of England’s flagship child sex change clinic has resigned in protest amidst allegations it was “fast-tracking” young people into gender reassignment as a result of pressure from “highly politicised” LGBT campaigners.

Breaking off a 35-year-long association with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, Marcus Evans quit after it dismissed an internal report branding its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) “not fit for purpose”.

“Adolescence and childhood is a time when people are developing socially and biologically — a time when young people are identifying with different groups, and with male and female aspects of themselves,” Mr Evans told the BBC’s Today programme Monday.

“There is pressure from the child who is in a distressed state, there is pressure from the family and the peer group and from the pro-trans lobbies — and all of this puts pressure on the clinician who may want to help the individual to resolve their distressed state by going along with a quick solution.

“There is a lot at stake here as these decisions have far reaching consequences,” the consultant psychotherapist warned, speaking after he told the Sunday Times that GIDS was trying to “dismiss or undermine” concerns raised by its own medical staff in a leaked review compiled late last year.

Dr David Bell, who drew up the report, warned children were at risk of “long-term damage” as a result of the NHS clinic’s “inability to stand up to pressure” from transgender activist groups such as Mermaids UK, which has been criticised for false claims that delaying gender-bending medical treatments which have irreversible effects on young patients’ fertility causes gender-confused youths to commit suicide.

Staff governor at the time of compiling the report, Dr Bell said clinicians felt children were being put onto life-changing drugs without sufficient assessment of the role played by their personal histories and by wider psychosocial issues in patients’ gender dysphoria.

Noting that some youths view gender reassignment as a “solution” to “multiple problems such as historic child abuse in the family, bereavement… homophobia and a very significant incidence of autism spectrum disorder”, and the observation that children seemed to have been “coached” online and by activist groups, the report’s warnings also echoed worried voiced by other professionals who work with young people.

After a review into the respected consultant psychiatrist’s findings by Tavistock and Portman’s medical director, Dinesh Sinha, said the clinic was “safe and operating in line with the best care in this field internationally” the NHS trust issued a statement attacking claims in the leaked report as “unsubstantiated” and alleging Dr Bell had “no expertise in this field”.

This was despite Dr Sinha backing some of the concerns raised, with his review highlighting staff being forced to work in “an atmosphere of significant persecution” created by pro-trans campaign groups, and admitting clinicians’ fears that children had insufficient understanding of the effects of treatment on their fertility when placed on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

In a letter to the Sunday Times noting “the extraordinary increase” in the number of child sex change referrals in Britain — a figure which has risen 2,500 percent in less than 10 years — a group of academics specialising in the field of gender slammed the trust’s attempt to “discredit” Dr Bell, asserting that “the health of thousands of children is at stake”.

With ministers expressing concern over reasons behind the huge rise in children presenting to the NHS with gender dysphoria, critics have questioned why public money continues to be awarded to controversial activist groups such as Mermaids. The group has been accused of using intimidation and blackmail to promote fertility-compromising “treatments” for underage children — and was even ordered not to contact a family after a judge ruled a woman, who was being advised by the group, had been abusing her seven-year-old son by forcing him to live as a girl.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 5:08 PM

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