Rules transitioning

Bid to allow kids swap sex without court consent

THE Family Court is to hear a landmark case that could clear the way for children as young as 11 to begin hormone treatment to change sex without having to get judicial consent.

Instead the child would only need approval from the medical profession and their parents.

The case comes as a growing number of children seek help with gender issues.

Gold Coast psychiatrist Dr Morris Bersin, who is in private practice with sexual health specialist Dr Stuart Aitken, said he has seen more than 200 children with gender issues in the last five years.

Dr Aitken said families were stressed by the spectre of having to go to court to seek permission for therapeutic treatment.

The Family Court case concerns a 16-year-old, Kevin, who was born female but who has identified as a boy from the age of nine.

The court has already decided that Kevin is competent to understand what is involved in beginning the hormone treatment. But now Kevin’s father is asking the court to step out of the process altogether.

Associate Professor Fiona Kelly, the editor of Australian Journal of Family Law, said yesterday: “A number of judges have expressed the view that this is not a matter that should be before the court.

“They don’t feel it is necessary for them to participate, and it should be a question for the parents and the doctors,” Prof Kelly said.

About 60 applications involving children with gender dysphoria have come before the Family Court since the first, involving a ward of the state, in 2004.

The court has never refused an application treatment.

In 2011, the Family Court ruled judicial approval was needed only for hormone treatment. Stage one of a sex change – to suppress puberty – was found to be fully reversible, and therefore therapeutic.

However the child must still be assessed by at least five doctors, including a psychiatrist, an adolescent physician and an endocrinologist, and a detailed for hormone history must be taken from the family.

Georgie Stone, who in the 2011 case became the youngest person in Australia to get court approval to begin treatment to transition from a boy to a girl, was just 11 at the time.

Ms Stone, now 17, and her mum, Rebekah Robertson, said that having to go to the Family Court to seek permission to begin the hormone treatment was cruel and discriminatory, and “a change in the law would alleviate the suffering greatly”.