Kid scooters danger alert
NEARLY 1,000 lethal fake Disney kids’ scooters have been seized at Britain’s largest container port.
They were among 13,000 dodgy items, destined for UK shops and street markets, impounded at Felixstowe, Suffolk.
A Trading Standards spokesman said the scooters had no back brakes and were unsafe. LIKE many young women, Ria Cooper dreams of one day getting married and having children.
But the 23-year-old knows the odds are stacked against her.
Not only because she was born a boy, but because she has now switched gender an astonishing three times in her short life.
Ria – who was born Brad – became Britain’s youngest sex-swap patient at 15. Doctors controversially backed her belief she was a girl in a boy’s body.
She was given blockers to stop her going through puberty, followed by injections of female hormones to impede face and chest hair and trigger the formation of breasts.
But with her life spiralling out of control as she struggled with her new identity – and the fears of never being accepted as a woman – Ria decided to transition back and live her life instead as a gay man.
Before having crucial surgery, she ended her treatment and became Brad again soon after her 18th birthday.
It turned her into the unwitting poster boy for those who claimed teenagers were too young to be given gender reassignment.
But five years on Ria is more certain than ever that is not the real her – and is making her second attempt at becoming a woman to have the future she always dreamed of.
She said: “I’ve always known I was female – it was everyone else who was confused, not me. I was wearing make-up and heels at the age of 12, there was no question.
“But I felt under so much pressure from society that six years later I caved in. I was torn. I knew exactly who I was, but I also wanted to conform and be ‘normal’.
“Only now I realise that made me even more unhappy. Now I’m going to be me – and I hope I will finally be happy.”
ROMANCE
Stung by critics who accused her of “wasting” thousands of pounds of NHS cash on her abandoned transformation, Ria has vowed she will fund her own surgery.
She has paid £5,000 to get her dream 34EE breasts, and will have an op next year for her genital transformation.
But as well as finally finding peace, she hopes it will allow her to find the romance and the family she longs for.
Ria said: “One reason I switched back to being male was because I was worried I’d never find love as Ria.
“My past was always just too much for men to take on board when I transitioned the first time.
“They’d fall in love with me, knowing my background – but as soon as their friends found out, I’d be dumped. I began to doubt I would ever feel happy again.
“But I’m older and wiser now and know exactly who I am. I’m Ria and I’m a woman. There’s no turning back.
“If I can find a man who accepts that and loves me for who I am, that’s perfect. If not, I’d still like to be a mum.”
When Ria became the youngest person in the UK to be prescribed female hormones, they played havoc with her mental health, sending her into a spiral of self-destruction.
By 18 she had twice attempted suicide. She had turned to drugs, gone through violent relationships and, to her regret, dabbled in prostitution.
At rock bottom, she decided to quit the hormones and go back to being Brad.
Ria knows her torment raises questions over whether she had been too young for gender reassign- ment. Yet despite it all, she insists that is not the case. “I wasn’t confused. But people around me confused me,” she says. “My mum Elaine let me dress as a woman. But whenever a male relative came round I’d wipe off the make-up and get back into boys’ clothes – I knew they wouldn’t approve. “Growing up on a tough estate in Hull, I had to put on a really hard act to cope. “On the surface I was hard as nails, but underneath it hurt like hell. The puberty blockers and hormones made me moody and angry, I was all over the place.