How DOES a mo her little girl tur LAUREN AGED 3

. . . with grief for her lost daughter and love for her new boy, as mum Karen bravely reveals in a riveting documentary inside a sex change clinic

ON HER bedside table, Karen Parker has a treasured photo of her daughter, Lauren. An adorable smiley toddler, Lauren is dressed for a Christmas party in sparkly tights and a pretty dress. It’s the last thing Karen sees before she goes to sleep and a poignant reminder of the little girl she has lost.

For Lauren has gone for good. In her place instead is a young man called Lucas, complete with buzz cut, stubble, a deep voice and impressive pectoral muscles. Three years ago, at the age of 18, Lucas revealed to his mum he felt he had been trapped in the wrong body and would henceforth be living as a man.

It was the starting point of a journey which, via hormone treatment, culminated eight months ago in Lucas having his breasts surgically removed.

It is a dramatic choice which has proved emotional and on occasions harrowing for both mother and son. It has been particularly hard for Karen, 52, who has had to navigate the grief she has felt — and continues to feel — for the daughter she has lost while supporting the son he has become.

‘Everyone in the family has struggled to get used to it and we still have slip-ups. Everyone has had to deal with it in their own way,’ she says now.

‘I’m grieving for a daughter but welcoming a new son. It’s not always been easy but at the end of the day it’s about love — Lucas is my child. I’d never abandon him.’

Karen and Lucas are one of several stories featured in a compelling documentary series in which, over the course of a year, cameras were given unprecedented access to a private clinic which specialises in helping those who believe they have been born in the wrong body.

It’s a growing industry. Last year 28 people from Ireland received HSE funding to undergo treatment abroad to change their sex. Gender reassignment surgery is not performed in Ireland but can be carried out in another jurisdiction under the HSE’s treatment abroad scheme.

Many of those head to Britain for treatment involving psychiatric assessment, counselling, hormonal therapy, surgical reconstruction and other procedures which change how the person looks.

A number of private clinics offering gender reassignment have sprung up in Britain in recent years as a result of the increase in demand. Among them is London Transgender Surgery near the English capital’s Harley Street.

FOUNDED a decade ago by plastic surgeon Christopher Inglefield, one of the country’s leading transgender specialists and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, the clinic offers surgical procedures along with hormone treatment, voice coaching and even make-up lessons.

Over the years, people from all walks of life have entered his clinic, from firemen and soldiers to shop assistants and office workers.

‘Patients come to us having made a conscious decision to change their identity and that is a huge decision,’ says Inglefield. ‘It’s a huge responsibility because it’s our job to give our patients the life that they have chosen.’

This is a life which can involve multiple treatments and surgeries over many months, from breast augmentation and breast removal through to full male to female gender confirmation surgery, in which male genitalia are removed.

The clinic performs around 12 such operations each year at a cost of more than €25,000 a time, although it does not offer the more complex multiple stage female-tomale surgery.

Facial feminisation surgery — in which features such as noses and chins are tweaked and smoothed to be rendered less masculine at a cost of between €6,800 and €25,000 — is among the most popular procedure requested by male-to-female patients.

‘We’re not just changing a face,’ says Inglefield. ‘It’s about empowering people to live as you or I want to live.’

It’s a sentiment which underpins the three-part series, which reveals the poignant and sometimes dramatic struggles many of the patients have endured.

Among them is Emma, a 52-yearold shop assistant who has lived as a woman for seven years and attends for breast augmentation.

Having lived in denial of her feelings for most of her life, she reveals she has never had a relationship and remains a virgin. ‘It is not an existence,’ she says simply.

It’s a feeling 50-year-old Stephy recognises all too well. Today she’s an attractive bobbed blonde, but until three years ago she was a grey-haired firefighter called Mark, married for 22 years with two grown-up sons.

Yet throughout it all, she had also battled with the belief that she was really a woman.

Only a recent nervous breakdown led Stephy to acknowledge that she had to transition, a decision that led to the loss not only of her wife and her home but her two sons, who broke off contact.

Stephy is attending the clinic to undergo facial surgery, and weeps when she describes the heavy price she has paid to become what she believes is her real self. ‘You have to understand that I didn’t chose this,’ she says through floods of tears. ‘If there was a choice I’d be back home but sometimes we don’t get a choice in life.’

Also attending the clinic for facial feminisation surgery is former Marine commando Danny, who wants to look more feminine before transitioning publicly as a woman, a lifelong desire.

Danny is accompanied by Sue, to whom these feelings were revealed only four months after their 2015 wedding.

Sue says: ‘I had a few weeks of shock where I didn’t feel anything. I was numb. And then I had anger... when Danny said: “I have to do this for me, even if that means losing you.” I had to weigh things up. But I was too much in love.’

Sadly, by the time of 34-yearold Danny’s surgery, the couple had separated.

Also there for facial feminisation surgery is Juno, who until 2014 was a successful children’s author called James Dawson. Juno knows she is lucky.

Her family has supported her decision; her father even helped fund the surgery. ‘Not all transgender people are so lucky,’ she says.

At his mum’s home, Lucas, now 21, is the first to acknowledge he is among the fortunate ones, too.

Today his relationship with mum Karen remains close — his father died some years ago — with both of them able to tease the other about the extraordinary events of recent years. ‘I wouldn’t be here it wasn’t for her — she just baked me wrong in the oven,’ Lucas says.

‘I guess you could say I got the recipe wrong,’ Karen smiles.

Yet both acknowledge that their closeness has been hard-fought, and on occasions remains so.

‘It’s not a secret that I still find it hard. I will never be the mother of the bride, I will never experience the special bond you have with a daughter having her first child. That’s all been taken away,’ Karen admits. ‘Silly things can set you off. Last year there was a TV advert with a dad walking a daughter up the aisle and the mother dabbing her eyes and it made me cry.’

Karen recalls how her daughter started rejecting ‘anything girlie’ when she was at primary school

‘I would put her in a summer dress and by the time she came out she would always be in her PE kit, claiming she had spilled paint on it or some other excuse.

‘I remember buying her a Barbie doll and she threw it to one side, saying she wanted an Action Man. Everyone said she was such a tomboy, and I thought it was a phase she would grow out of.’

She didn’t. At just 13, Lauren announced she was a lesbian.

‘It was the only language I had at the time,’ Lucas recalls now. ‘I knew I wasn’t interested in boys, so being a lesbian was a category that seemed to make what I felt acceptable to everyone else.’

Even that did little to combat what Lucas now calls the ‘nightmare’ of the onset of puberty.

‘Growing breasts felt like a prison sentence,’ he says. ‘I remember mum giving me a training bra and hurling it back at her. I even tried to bind them to pretend they weren’t there.’

Only after moving away from