Mother faces police for using wrong trans pronoun
A CATHOLIC mother of five has been asked to attend a police interview after being accused of using the wrong pronoun to describe a transgender woman.
Caroline Farrow was contacted by the Surrey force to inform her they were investigating an allegation that she had made transphobic comments on Twitter.
Mrs Farrow is being investigated for a possible hate crime under the Malicious Communications Act, an offence that carries a prison sentence of up to two years. While the 44-year-old has been invited to attend the interview voluntarily, she says she has been threatened with arrest if she fails to go.
Posting on Twitter, she wrote: “I have done nothing wrong, nothing illegal and will happily do jail time for my right to say that people cannot change sex.”
Mrs Farrow, whose husband Robin is a Roman Catholic priest, often comments on social issues and is known for her deeply held conservative religious views.
Last September, she appeared on ITV’S Good Morning Britain with Susie Green, a transgender rights campaigner, to discuss the Girl Guides’ policy of not telling parents if a transgender child joins. Following a heated onair debate, Mrs Farrow allegedly continued the spat on Twitter, during which she was accused of using the wrong pronoun in an exchange over Ms Green’s transgender daughter.
Mrs Farrow said she could not remember the offending tweets: “I probably said ‘he’ or ‘son’ or something.” She added: “I have pointed out to the police that I am a Catholic journalist [and] commentator and it is my religious belief a person cannot change sex. I now need to tell my children that Mummy is in trouble with the police because there was this girl, who was born in a boy’s body, whom I might have inadvertently referred to as a boy.” Ms Green, who made the complaint, insisted the comments had been “distressing and spiteful”.
A police spokesman said: “A thorough investigation is being carried out to establish whether any criminal offences have taken place.”
Since the row, Mrs Farrow said she had been subjected to online abuse and threats to her family, to which police responded: “We have been made aware a number of allegations have been made on Twitter and we will contact the person concerned.”
The police involvement is likely to reignite debate on the use of resources at a time when officers are struggling with high levels of violent crime and knife violence.
Sara Thornton, who has just stepped down as the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, recently said that forces needed to get back to core policing rather than focus on issues such as hate crime. Her comments were echoed by Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has also said that police ought to prioritise the issues people cared about the most, such as violence and knife crime.
WHEN Caroline Farrow, a Catholic commentator, and Susie Green, the transgender-rights campaigner, agreed to take part in a television debate about a controversial Girl Guides policy, producers would have expected differences of opinion.
But while the conversation on screen was certainly heated, it was what happened off-air when the pair continued the debate on Twitter that resulted in a six-month-long police investigation.
Mrs Farrow, a mother of five with strong religious views, allegedly used the wrong pronoun when referring to Ms Green’s transgender daughter.
Ms Green was so angered by what she described as a “distressing and spiteful” attack that she lodged a formal complaint with Surrey police.
On Monday night, they contacted Mrs Farrow and asked her to attend a voluntary police interview.
The response by a police force which, like all others, is struggling to cope with violent crime and knife violence, will raise eyebrows and further fuel the debate around police priorities. But campaigners who support transgender rights insist it is the police’s place to bear down on those alleged to flout the Equalities Act and seek to cause harm and distress to vulnerable people.
The television debate, with Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, took place on Sept 26 following a decision by the Girl Guides to dismiss two leaders who refused to apply its policy not to inform parents when a transgender child joins.
Ms Green passionately defended the policy, arguing that telling people that a transgender member had joined could lead to the youngster being singled out or “othered”, leading in turn to possible bullying and abuse.
She told viewers: “The reason they are identifying as female is because they don’t identify with their body, so they are far more likely to have issues around that. There is no evidence whatsoever to say that trans girls are a threat and any issue around abuse has never happened. This policy is a couple of years old, has been around a long time and it seems like every time there’s an opportunity to have a go at trans girls [people take it]; these are children who want to be with their friends.”
Mrs Farrow replied she would be unhappy to let her daughter join the Guides as she believed the policy risked girls’ safety.
She said transgender girls should be kept separated from other girls for the same reasons boys and girls were kept apart in other matters.
The spat continued on social media and three weeks later the police assigned to an officer to establish whether there had been a breach of the Malicious Communications Act. This involves material that is grossly offensive or threatening or is false or believed to be false and that is sent with the intention of causing distress or anxiety.
Officers contacted Mrs Farrow again on Monday, despite Ms Green indicating that she no longer wished it to be a police matter.
Perhaps understandably, Mrs Farrow described her outrage on Twitter at the development, posting: “I have pointed out to the police that I am a Catholic journalist/commentator and it is my religious belief that a person cannot change sex [and] that we are in the middle of a national conversation about what it means to be male and what it means to be female.
“Nonetheless, following my appearance on national television, the CPS [has] decided I need to be interviewed under caution for misgendering Susie Green’s child.”
She went on: “I don’t even remember said tweets. This was in September. I have done nothing wrong, nothing illegal and will happily do jail time for my right to say that people cannot change sex.”
Mrs Farrow also pointed out that since the row had blown up on Twitter she and her family had been subjected to abuse and threats by internet trolls.
She said one had even published photographs that identified her children as well as bombarding her with sexually humiliating insults.
Last night a police spokesman confirmed that officers were looking into those complaints.
Ms Green heads up Mermaids, Britain’s leading transgender charity, which helps support youngsters and their families who are dealing with such issues. The charity provides advice to government agencies, NHS staff, the police, social workers, the Scouts and nursing students.
Ms Green’s daughter, Jackie, 25, became the youngest person in Britain to transition when she changed her sex from male to female almost 10 years ago.
Since then, Jackie has reached the semi-finals of Miss England and models around the world, describing herself as “just a normal girl with a bit of an interesting history”.