Seen as hostile
A whistleblower who claims she was “vilified” by an NHS gender identity clinic after raising concerns about the safety of children undergoing treatment has been awarded £20,000 in damages.
Sonia Appleby, 62, a social worker and psychotherapist, was “seen as hostile” and subjected to “quasi-disciplinary” proceedings after raising issues with managers at the Tavistock and Portman Trust, a tribunal ruled.
Appleby, who started working at the trust in 2004 and is the safeguarding lead for children, was awarded damages for “significant” injury to her feelings in a judgment handed down by a central London employment tribunal on Friday.
A few more cracks in the edifice.
Appleby had raised concerns about what the Gender Identity Development Service was doing to children.
Run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, the service — the only one of its kind in England — has been at the centre of controversy over its treatment of young people, including the provision of drugs known as puberty blockers to children as young as 10.
In December, the High Court ruled that children under 16 considering gender reassignment were unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to use of the drugs, and said court authorisation should be sought for the treatment.
The ruling is being challenged by the Tavistock, and at an appeal hearing in July, the trust said the drugs gave children distressed by their birth sex time to consider “options”.
Yes but the “time to consider” comes at a high price. It’s now more widely understood that it’s not a simple pause: the drugs cause irreversible effects…or more bluntly, damage. Maybe for some people it’s worth it, but it’s not something to do lightly.
Referrals to GIDS have risen sharply in recent years, from 1,408 in 2016-17 to 2,728 in 2019-20, the tribunal heard, leading to individual caseloads rising and putting “considerable pressure” on staff.
Also hinting that maybe just maybe there is some social influencing going on.
Last night, Appleby said taking the NHS trust to an employment tribunal was an “overwhelming decision”.
“I am naturally extremely pleased about the outcome and want to thank my legal team and all those who supported me during the tribunal process,” she said.
Good.
This is great news.
I remember reading that clinicians with safeguarding concerns were discouraged from going to Appleby, who was of course the person appointed to deal with safeguarding concerns.
I’m reading Helen Joyce’s Trans and she made an interesting point regarding the introduction of puberty blockers, the “Dutch Protocol.” It was long known by the gender specialists working in the Netherlands that many children with dysphoria became reconciled to their sex as adults. Those who didn’t, however, would find it harder to “pass” if they didn’t receive cross-sex hormones at a young age. They needed to come up with a way to separate those two groups early on. It wasn’t predictable. Many of the most insistent children and teens would desist later on.
So they experimented with using puberty blockers. It would give them time. For all the children who would change their minds about being transgender, no hormones. For those kids who wouldn’t, no puberty. Wait for the split before preceding with what couldn’t be undone.
The doctors were very surprised at what happened. After taking puberty blockers, an unprecedented 100% chose to continue transition. There was no split. This was replicated again and again. There’s obviously something about the brain undergoing puberty which allows the gender dysphoric to grow comfortable with their bodies. And something about puberty blockers which actively prevents it.
So in addition to all the health problems involved with puberty blockers, they act as a fast track to an inevitable transition. And,when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterilization and the probable loss of sexual pleasure.
That’s the one Q the “Scientific TRAs” can never answer.
If there is scientific evidence, then there should be a way to predict who will / will not become trans. That is a key point of scientific theory – replicability and prediction.
Roj:
They could begin with finding a way to determine who is/isn’t trans already.
“There’s obviously something about the brain undergoing puberty which allows the gender dysphoric to grow comfortable with their bodies.”
Suggesting that perhaps the problem to be researched isn’t how to make someone the opposite sex, but how to prevent the failure of puberty to have this effect?
Once again, I strongly suspect that cognitive dissonance has a lot to do with it as well. As Abigal Shrier writes on the topic of “social transition”:
How much harder must it be to take it all back if you have already started altering your own development in ways that make you physically distinct from your peers.
Puberty blockers leading to cross-sex hormones could be iatrogenesis:
That could include social dynamics between practitioners and patients, adding to what Bjarte suggested about social dynamics with others.
Good point, I hadn’t thought of that.