I’ve been left in lifelong pain, says detransitioning man

A MAN who had an NHS sex change operation says he was “betrayed” by doctors who left him with lifelong pain because they told him he was trans – when his real problem was that he did not want to be gay.

Detransitioner Ritchie Herron, 35, says he was “very vulnerable” when he told doctors and psychiatrists that he was confused over his gender.

But rather than examine the homophobia he had experienced or why he felt that way, his therapists told him that it was because he was trans, he says.

Mr Herron is now preparing a legal case against the NHS trust that paid for the operation to remove his genitals.

“Regret is not a word that should be used for things like this. This … is more than regret, this is grief, this is anger, this is betrayal,” Mr Herron told the LGB Alliance conference in London.

He said he “nearly bled to death” during the operation to remove his penis and testicles, has trouble using the lavatory, and has no sensation.

He was 26 when he had the removal surgery, then went on to have vaginoplasty on the NHS four years ago. “It is catastrophic and has killed my confidence. I am never going to be the same ever again, there is no reversal,” he said.

Mr Herron said people often say to detransitioners that it is their own fault, and they should have researched properly, but: “I wasn’t writing the assessments and I wasn’t holding the scalpel.”

Mr Herron, from Newcastle, said the doctors blamed his obsessive compulsive disorder for his regret. But the same people insisted his doubts over his gender could not be connected to OCD.

“One of the reasons I transitioned was because I did not want to be a gay man,” he said. “I said to my therapist I cannot see myself as a man with another man, but I can see myself as a woman with a man, and she said ‘Yes, that is because you are trans’.

“Not because I hated myself because I am gay, not because I suffered horrific homophobia in school and growing up in the north-east of England.”

In June, the Trust said it could not comment on an individual, but added: “Care plans are collaborative and tailored to each patient, and treatment decisions are made following an assessment in line with national guidance.”