Agony of parents with children in the gender ‘cult’
Families are being ignored as schools instantly affirm teenagers who decide they wish to change identity
W‘My daughter needs help, she doesn’t need to change her identity every day. I have been treated like I am her enemy’
‘The school set it up to make us look like monsters’
hen her 13-year-old daughter announced she was a boy, Anne wanted a psychiatrist to explore the reasons behind this sudden change in identity.
But she was already too late. Her daughter’s school had socially transitioned her. They changed her names and her pronouns without discussing it with her mother.
Teachers at the West Midlands private school saw no harm in instantly affirming a belief that the mother believed was harming the teenager, and, when questioned, told her they would accept any identity the student chose.
“Somebody may want to be called a banana one day and if that is going to make them have a safer Tuesday, then we will do it. If on Wednesday they want to be a table then it is our job to make them feel safe and included in that moment,” the teacher said.
Anne’s daughter has Asperger’s, and she believes is responding to traumas in her life, including the damage that has been done to her mental health by lockdown. “My daughter needs help, she doesn’t need to change her identity every day. I would do anything to protect her, but I have been treated like I am her enemy,” said Anne.
“I feel like my child is dead, but I don’t have a grave to go and cry over.”
Anne’s experience echoes that of other parents who have agreed to speak to The Sunday Telegraph about their experiences as their children are swept into a gender “cult”.
Many of the teenagers are autistic or suffering with mental health issues and the parents believe that they are using the label to make sense of the world, a box in which to contain the confusing experiences of puberty.
Those who have struggled to make friends are suddenly celebrated for their decision to come out as trans, often encouraged by their teachers.
Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, shares her fears of “gender dysphoria spreading by social contagion” through schools in today’s Telegraph. Mrs Braverman says she knows of teachers who believe their freedom of speech has been “hugely impinged” because they fear being sacked if they misgender a trans girl as biologically male.
While most parents see little harm in their son wearing a dress or their daughter having short hair, their fear is the race toward medicalisation. Powerful puberty blockers could lead to lifelong harm or irreversible surgery. The parents, whose stories are rarely heard in this increasingly toxic debate, have been labelled bigots and “monsters”, cut out by teachers and medical professionals and told they cannot question the decision.
Some of the five families who have agreed to discuss their experiences on the condition of anonymity – all names have been changed – have been cut out of their children’s lives completely. Others are rebuilding relationships, and one 13-year-old has stopped believing he is trans.
Anne’s now 15-year-old has gone to live with her father, despite a court granting the mother custody after their divorce, as he has agreed to sign the forms consenting to medical treatment. Anne’s daughter, who the father refers to using he/him pronouns, has not spoken to her mother in almost a year.
Anne has no idea now whether her daughter is having medical treatment, as the doctors did not notify her that they were referring her to a gender clinic at the age of 14.
Hundreds of schools are paying LGBT charity Stonewall to be a part of its “School and College Champion Programme”. The membership includes training from the trans rights lobby charity, which has been accused of misrepresenting equality laws.
Other campaign groups receiving taxpayers’ money have told teachers to stop using gendered toilets and language – and not to tell parents if they change their child’s identity.
Sarah believes that her 13-year-old son’s decision in 2016 that he was a girl was sparked by a gender identity lesson suggesting that if he did not fit a male stereotype, he might be a girl.
“His belief was definitely prompted by the school,” Sarah said. “After the lesson he went online, and he got into Reddit and other sites and he found a community of other children who all felt that they didn’t fit in.”
Though Sarah’s son decided that he did not wish to change the way he dressed or his pronouns, and did not want to see a GP to talk about medical treatment, he told the school he was trans and they did not tell his parents. “He goes by she/her online, but not in real life, this whole thing has played out online,” she said.
“Schools are telling children lies about the fact that you can change your biological sex. If he hadn’t been indoctrinated to the ideology in a lesson at 13 then he wouldn’t have gone searching on the internet for it.”
It was only during lockdown that he became “obsessed” with transitioning and the police came to her home to take him to a friend’s house as they claimed his parents were “keeping him hostage”. Sarah, who lives in the West Midlands, could do nothing as her son was now 18. “We have been treated like criminals, but all we wanted was for somebody to help us.”
Diana, in Kent, said that teachers thought it would be “harmless” to change the name and pronouns of her 13-year-old son, who has suspected autism. “Schools should view a request to socially transition with great caution”, she said. She believes that her homosexual son felt safer being a girl and was swept up in a “social contagion” as “being trans/non-binary is often higher status”.
Within a year, he had changed his mind but “now he is stuck with a girl’s name that he can’t change without losing face or being bullied. A teenager’s peers may be prepared to accept a new gender identity, but not a reversal, which is often seen as a lie.”
She noted that the Cass Review, commissioned by NHS England, has found “there is a disproportionate number of children on the spectrum, in care, same-sex attracted or with trauma in their background who identify as trans.”
The ongoing independent review, led by Dr Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was commissioned amid concerns about the way the NHS’s gender identity services were treating young people.
“Schools are not qualified to decide if a child is trans, especially given the high number of children who selfidentify as trans with existing mental health issues. Will schools be sued in the future for enabling a social transition that led to a medical transition?” Diana asked.
Charlotte’s 15-year-old daughter decided she was a boy at the beginning of lockdown. It took “a five-minute period” for her home counties school to transition her – but they did not inform the parents.
Charlotte had an email from the school using the new name and was told that, as her daughter was now 16, she had no say. “Teachers at the school have no qualifications to make decisions impacting on the mental or physical well-being,” she warned.
At the time, the family had problems at home, and her daughter had finally found a group of friends who accepted her – many of whom were trans.
“I’d always imagined that name changes only happened after proper therapeutic exploration, that we would all sit down and discuss it and agree,” Charlotte added. “When it happened to us I could see it was a vulnerable person grasping onto something who needed help.”
On a school trip, her daughter was due to sleep in the boy’s dorm because of her self-identification and a teacher made her tell her parents. Her husband David said: “The school set it up to make us look like monsters. They set it up so that we had to tell our child that she can’t go on this trip of a lifetime because it was a safeguarding issue”.
Charlotte believes that school “absolutely” made it worse. “We’ve always told our children to learn from the teachers and respect them. Having them say you are a boy has a massive impact.”
Anne was also shocked with the speed at which her daughter, who had always been a tomboy, had socially transitioned. It was the beginning of lockdown and she spent all her time online, where she found a community of people who “indoctrinated” her. Eventually, Anne found a therapist and her daughter was assessed as having Asperger’s.
There is growing evidence of a crossover between autism spectrum disorder and gender dysphoria. The largest study to date, by Cambridge University, found that transgender and gender diverse people were up to six times as likely to have autism than the rest of the population and had “significantly higher” self-reported measures of autistic traits.
The Cass Review found that a third of young people referred to gender identity clinics have autism or other types of neurodiversity. Charlotte, whose daughter has had a working diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, said they think she grasped at being trans as a “simplistic explanation for why she felt so bad”.
In another case, Bonnie, whose daughter came out as trans during her first year of university, can understand why the little girl who had never fitted in would want to be part of a “community that accepted her without question, celebrated her revelation, her epiphany”.
Lockdown accelerated the feeling for many. The number of children seeking treatment at the NHS’s Gender Identity Service at the Tavistock and Portman trust rose by more than a fifth to 5,500. A decade earlier in 2010-11, just 138 children were referred for treatment.
Studies have found higher rates of mental health conditions and mental distress in transgender people. Charlotte’s daughter took an overdose and ended up in A&E. Desperate with worry, she noticed that the second question her daughter was asked by the nurse was: “Do you have any other names? Then the next question was ‘and what are your pronouns?’”
The hospital changed her gender on forms and Charlotte “realised that I was in actual danger of being accused of child abuse because I am not affirming my child”.
When David arrived, it took him nearly an hour to find them because the names and gender had been changed after admission.
Her daughter was referred to NHS mental health teams but “they wouldn’t speak to me unless I was using the new name... I just needed advice about how to put the knives away.”
The idea that a child’s decision to change their identity is sacrosanct is echoed in the Cass Report, which found that doctors felt pressured to “adopt an unquestioning approach”.
But what if children regret their decisions? There is growing evidence from detransitioners, who say that they were rushed through medicalisation and are now physically deformed and mentally damaged.
It’s hard to know how many detransitioners there are because there is no data. Even murkier is the number who have desisted from their belief that they are trans.
Recent data from one gender identity clinic suggest that 56 per cent of patients completed their treatment and 7 per cent detransitioned. Data from a GP clinic found that around 10 per cent detransitioned and double that number stopped treatment.
Bonnie, who lives in London, was unable to stop her 18-year-old when she decided to use money that she had been saving for years to train as a doctor to fund a double mastectomy.
“She signed up to a private clinic and was fast tracked. Within six months she was on hormones and six months after that she had been offered a double mastectomy,” Bonnie said.
“The psychologist only had twohour long sessions with her online before he recommended surgery.”
She wrote raising concerns that her daughter was autistic and had body dysmorphia, having been bullied throughout school for her large breasts. Surgery was paused while she saw another psychiatrist, who said she did not have dysmorphia.
She had the mastectomy less than two years after coming out, and now lives with her boyfriend as a gay couple and does not speak to her family. Instead of studying medicine, she now has an OnlyFans account where she sells pictures of herself in revealing lingerie as a “fem boy”.
There is a feeling that the tide may be beginning to turn. These parents have found a way to come together, to share research and talk openly through the Bayswater Support Group, which has 450 members across the country.
The Department of Education is the latest government department to stop paying Stonewall for advice on trans inclusion, citing concerns over free speech. A spokesman has said that they “recognise that gender identity can be a complex and sensitive topic for schools to navigate” and they have asked the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to help develop “the clearest possible” guidance for schools. He added that school should be “a safe space for all pupils, regardless of how they identify”.
For Sarah, her son has come home. They have not raised his transition, because they are too scared that he will leave home again. He does not appear to have taken any medical steps.
But for some parents, like Bonnie, it might already be too late.
“This is irreversible. She can survive without breasts, but the longer she is taking hormones the more damage it will do. The testosterone turned her from someone who is gentle and creative into someone aggressive who tries to be physically domineering.
“There is nothing I could do. If the word trans were not involved I could probably get her sectioned on the basis that she is doing irreversible damage. But because of the trans label, I have to leave her spinning in the wind.
“If she walked in the door tomorrow, she wouldn’t have anything to be ashamed about, we would just welcome her back with open arms and tell her we love her.”
‘If she walked in the door tomorrow, we would welcome her back with open arms’
Suella Braverman has had enough of the “collective frenzy” over some rights that sees the “basics of biology… turned upside down”. The Attorney General sees this phenomenon in Halifax’s “flippant” statement last week that customers unhappy with their staff wearing badges displaying their “preferred pronouns”, should close their accounts.
“What is the impact on the old lady in Fareham, who actually depends on that bank to get her cash? I think Halifax’s position is flippant and doesn’t take account of the real-world impacts on many members of our society.”
Braverman, 42, is preparing a significant intervention in the equalities debate, in a keynote speech at a Westminster think tank. Sitting in her dimly lit Commons office, she sets out her concerns in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, with the deliberateness of someone who has been exploring the topic in some depth. One of the conclusions she has drawn is a risk of gender dysphoria – the unease or distress experienced by those who feel at odds with their sex – spreading by “social contagion” in schools. She says she is concerned both as a politician and as a mother of two young children.
The MP for Fareham, and former Brexit minister, is becoming increasingly influential in government, where she is at the heart of decisionmaking over issues ranging from post-Brexit negotiation with the EU to Westminster’s response to Nicola Sturgeon’s push for a second referendum on Scottish independence. Last month, The Telegraph revealed that it was Ms Braverman and Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, leading a charge to toughen up domestic legislation designed to override the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Convention dictates that the Attorney General cannot discuss specific legal advice that she has given to ministers – such as the advice she is thought giving to ministers such as Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, as he navigates the issue of trans rights in schools, and Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, who urged sports governing bodies to stop transgender athletes competing against women.
But she does say that she believes that the “rights culture” in Britain has “spun out of control”. Braverman partly blames this on the European Court of Human Rights, which, she says, is responsible for an “expansionist, politicised application” of the European Convention on Human Rights. At the same time, Gordon Brown’s Equality Act, which introduced new “protected characteristics”, failed to anticipate just how much those protections might clash with each other, such as the battle between trans and women’s rights.
“The culture, the litigiousness around the rights-related culture, has turned on its head a lot of commonsense decisions, which are consistent with British values,” says Braverman, who was a barrister specialising in immigration law, before becoming an MP in 2015.
“The root of that, I believe, has its origins in the elastic, expansionist, politicised application by the Strasbourg Court of the European Convention of Human Rights.
“We’re seeing so many problems play out in the UK now, because of stretched and strained interpretations of Article Eight, the right to a private family life, and Article Three, the prohibition against torture, and so many other rights, whether it’s in the field of our ability to deport foreign national offenders [or] the deportation of illegal migrants. We saw a few weeks ago how the Strasbourg Court cut across decisions made in English courts, to halt the take-off of the flight to Rwanda.
“The rights-based claims have stymied a lot of our immigration and asylum policy.”
Meanwhile, Braverman signals a potential constitutional clash with the Scottish government over a legal change prepared by Nicola Sturgeon that would allow people to change their legal sex in Scotland. Braverman indicates that she is considering a move to challenge or block the change.
“I think there are incredibly serious implications of what the Scottish government is proposing, and I will be considering whether there are constitutional issues,” she says.
“Effectively the Scottish Parliament, if this is enacted, will be approving a form of self-identification. And we will have a two-tier system within the UK.
“I can’t foresee how that is workable, whereby north of the border, you may be able to selfidentify, but a bit south of the border that might not be recognised. What effects does that have on our public institutions, our state? It is incredibly worrying and causes a huge amount of uncertainty.”
But her concerns about contemporary clashes over rights are not confined to legal wranglings. As a mother of two-year-old George, and 16-month-old Gabriella, Braverman says she is concerned both as an MP and a parent about the way in which gender debates are playing out in schools, where, she says, some teachers are concerned about a “takeover”. Zahawi is currently drawing up guidance to help head teachers on issues including whether trans girls have a right to attend all-girls schools and use female changing rooms.
The current legal uncertainty, says Braverman, stems from a lack of clarity in the Equality Act over the protection afforded to “gender reassignment”, which the legislation says relates to someone who is “proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process… for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex”.
“I think at the time of drafting and enacting the Equality Act in 2009 and 2010, it was not foreseen how that would be interpreted,” says Braverman. “You don’t have to have undergone surgery, you don’t have to have obtained a gender recognition certificate. So it’s quite broad.
“That is posing a lot of practical problems for authorities, schools, sporting bodies, prisons and the NHS. That’s why the guidance emerging from Government is welcome.”
She adds: “I also think the risks of social transitioning were not anticipated.” Referring to the potential implications of teachers and healthservice staff taking an “unquestioning” approach to children who say they are trans, she insists: “It’s not to be seen as neutral or passive. It can be dangerous if it’s prematurely undertaken. I think there’s also an issue about social contagion, actually, and that, particularly among children, there’s a risk of gender dysphoria spreading by social contagion, within a school, for example. And fundamentally, I think this also comes down to the ethos of respect for truth and reality, respect for freedom of thought, conscience, belief and speech.”
Braverman says she has heard from teachers who “feel their freedom of speech has been hugely impinged upon” because they could, they believe, be sacked or accused of a hate crime if they described a trans girl as biologically male. “I think that’s a way in which this rights culture, and the proliferation of that rights culture has spun out of control,” she says.
“We cannot be living in a society whereby people are terrified of pointing out the basic facts of biology, for fear of losing their job, and that is happening within schools. I’ve heard from people who want to remain anonymous, because they are very scared of the repercussions.
“And I think we are seeing a cultural creep whereby a minority group, which has been very well organised have accumulated an influence, which I believe is disproportionate, and is dictating what the majority should be doing.”
Braverman adds: “I have huge amounts of sympathy for a child, an adult who is going through the process of realising that they may well be in the wrong body, and they’re suffering from gender dysphoria, and they want to go through the sometimes irreversible, incredibly intrusive treatment of surgical gender reassignment… However, I do have fears about what’s happening in our schools, as a parent, and I have heard of many stories in my own social circle in my own constituency.
“It seems to be more prevalent among girls… teenage girls are presenting with emotional challenges, and that’s being played out through gender dysphoria.” She adds: “Teachers are sometimes acting without the knowledge of parents. They are allowing these teenagers to proceed down a route, which can be very damaging for them in the long run.”
Braverman believes that there are varying approaches in different schools, reflecting a “cultural approach” by some local education officials. “We also know that many teachers don’t necessarily subscribe to this takeover, as they see it,” she adds. “And that’s why I think guidance will be welcomed from the Secretary of State on the subject.”
Similarly, Braverman says Dominic Raab’s Bill of Rights will go “some way” to address the “rights culture” but warns: “Ultimately, we are still subject to a very interventionist court.” She will not say whether she backs withdrawing from the European
Convention on Human Rights altogether, or making changes to the Equality Act itself, simply stating that “all options are always on the table”.
When Braverman and Rael, her husband of four years and a manager at Mercedes-Benz, discovered that she was pregnant for the second time in 2020 she was “nervous” about telling Boris Johnson. There was no provision for the Government’s most senior legal adviser to take formal maternity leave. “The constitutional and political importance of the law office of the Attorney General is such that you can’t just job share, and you can’t dip in and out – there needs to be an Attorney General in place. So I would have had to resign, just because I was pregnant.
“It’s always very nerve-racking, telling your boss that you’re pregnant and saying, ‘Boss, I’m going to need a bit of time off.’ But telling the Prime Minister is on a whole other level.
“From the moment I told him, he was so supportive and incredibly reassuring.” Johnson gave his approval for a bill, devised by officials, to enable Braverman to take six months’ paid maternity leave.
The bill provoked controversy in the House of Lords because, as Braverman puts it, “politically correct drafting” resulted in the legislation peppered with gender-neutral references to a “pregnant person” rather than simply, “pregnant woman”. “It was a really disappointing distraction, because actually, the bill, and what that bill represented, was groundbreaking. It was a moment of celebration, when Parliament came together to support a woman having a baby.
“Unfortunately, because of politically correct drafting, the debate became about trans rights.”
Having arrived in Parliament fresh from the morning nursery run, Braverman says she disagrees with Stella Creasy, the Labour MP who wanted the freedom to bring her baby into the Commons chamber when she was looking after her.
“I have never brought either of my children into the chamber. That is a workplace, and I don’t believe that a baby should be in the workplace.”
Braverman has little time for claims by Theresa May that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which seeks to unilaterally override the post-Brexit agreement, is unlawful.
Braverman quit as junior Brexit minister under May over the then Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, despite parliamentary colleagues claiming that the move would amount to “suicide for my political career”. She was later among 34 pro-Brexit “Spartans” to vote down the deal in an act of defiance she admits was “quite uncharacteristic”, having never set out to be a rebel.
“I don’t think I have felt as much pressure before or since in my professional life,” she recalls of the conversations with Conservative colleagues and No 10.
Now, she says of May’s opposition to Johnson’s Brexit legislation: “What Theresa May and her allies advocate is for more negotiation. I’m afraid we’ve been doing that for two years, and it hasn’t worked.
“I have a lot of respect for her – she had a great tenure as Home Secretary – but her time in No 10 was no success.
“When she started talking to Jeremy Corbyn, and when she started talking about a second referendum, that was one of the factors as to why I held out on the MV3 [third “meaningful vote” on the deal] and became a Spartan, because I was sickened by the prospect of talks with Jeremy Corbyn, a second referendum, extending article 50 yet
‘The chamber is a workplace and I don’t think a baby should be in the workplace’
‘I became a Spartan, because I was sickened by the prospect of talks with Jeremy Corbyn’
again, paralysis within Parliament, [and a] breakdown in our constitution and our democracy.” She adds: “Losing our majority and leading us to one of the worst results in our 300-year history takes some doing.”
The Attorney General rejects demands by some pro-EU rebels for a new “meaningful vote” to give Parliament a say on any new arrangements the UK might agree with Brussels.
“I think a meaningful vote would take us back to the days of Oliver Letwin and Speaker Bercow, and I actually think it would be very damaging for the raison d’etre of this bill. We need to get these powers on the statute book.”
In 2016, Braverman took a risk in defying David Cameron to back Brexit – no easy decision for an ambitious MP less than a year into the job. “Many of my friends and colleagues told me not to do it,” she says. “I’m glad I stuck to my convictions.”
Now Braverman cites the Government’s speedy roll-out of Covid vaccines and sanctions against Russia, together with its freeports policy, as evidence of Johnson taking advantage of Brexit freedoms. But she clearly believes that much of the work is still to be done.
“I think we are flexing our muscles as a new democracy,” she says. “And, like someone getting back into the gym, it takes a bit of time and maybe a bit of pain to get those muscles back into shape. Our Parliament has been subjugated for 40 years.”
There is, she says, “a great opportunity to peel back” some of the “tens of thousands” of EU regulations that still apply in the UK, in order to reduce costs on consumers.
“That consumer can be your pensioner in Fareham who has extra burden and extra costs on their pension fund because of the compliance costs flowing from EU directives. I think there’s a direct benefit to the cost of living.”
Ministers are, though, struggling to get some of these changes through the civil service, Braverman says.
“Something I’ve learnt not only during my time as Attorney, but also during my time as a Brexit minister, is that some of the biggest battles that you face as a minister are, in the nicest possible way, with Whitehall and internally with civil servants, as opposed to your political battles in the chamber. That was something I didn’t expect, if I’m honest.
“There are thousands of civil servants. In large part, they are brilliant. They work really hard. I’m supported, in particular, by a team of brilliant lawyers and officials. Don’t take this as an opportunity to bash the civil service.
“But what I have seen time and time again, both in policymaking and in broader decision making, [is] that there is a Remain bias. I’ll say it. I have seen resistance to some of the measures that ministers have wanted to bring forward.
“Because there’s an inability to conceive of the possibility of life outside of the EU.”
It sounds like a challenge ripe for a Spartan.