Girls who don’t like dolls are treated as transgender, claims Tavistock clinic whistleblower
NHS services treat girls who "don't like pink ribbons and dollies" as if they have been born in the wrong body, a Tavistock whistleblower has warned.
Dr David Bell, a former governor at the gender identity NHS trust, said that under the influence of political lobby groups such as Stonewall, clinicians believe that the “only acceptable explanation” for a range of complex issues is that a young person is transgender.
The consultant psychiatrist described his former employer, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, as a “gateway to puberty blockers”, which put children and young people on the path of a lifetime of medical treatment.
Around 98 per cent of teenagers who were put on to puberty blockers went on to take cross sex hormones, he added.
Dr Bell said that rapid progression to drugs and even surgery in the NHS was “a form of conversion therapy” as with “proper” treatment, many of the children would go on to be gay or lesbian.
He told a conference organised by Genspect, a parental support group for those concerned about the treatment that their children are receiving, that those “unwilling or unable to conform to gender stereotypes” are “misunderstood” as being transgender.
Medical intervention was therefore supporting a “rigid, binary construction of gender”, he said, warning that the view was that “if you don’t like pink ribbons and dollies you are not really a girl”.
Dr Bell’s comments come after his retirement from the trust earlier this year, almost three years after he blew the whistle on serious concerns and concluded that the service was “not fit for purpose”.
During his time at the trust, the number of referrals to Tavistock's gender identity development service (GIDS) increased by almost 20 times.
It rose from 135 in 2010-11 to 2,565 in 2019-20, the conference heard. It fell slightly last year, to 2,242, though many health services were paused due to the pandemic.
In recent years, the number of girls being referred has increased dramatically. Last year 1,512 females were referred, compared to 704 males. In both sexes, children as young as three were sent to the service.
But Dr Bell called for gender-focused services in the NHS to be scrapped, saying that the issues should be looked at as part of general mental health treatment which considers all underlying conditions and causes of a person’s distress.
He said that as he was preparing the 2018 report into the Tavistock, around a quarter of all clinicians working in the London clinic contacted him to express “deep concern” about the treatment and some “were no longer sleeping because they felt that they were unwillingly being complicit in doing harm to children”.
But factors including the “influence of powerful political lobbies” such as Stonewall and Mermaids meant that staff feared raising concerns in case they were labelled transphobic.
“This closed down space for thought, doubt and exploration”, said Dr Bell, as he recalled instances where clinicians were taken off a case because they believed that the child was not trans but gay.
He said that many services were “openly hostile” to suggestions of other problems and that considering root causes was regarded as an “act of hostility as the only acceptable explanation is that the child is literally in the wrong body and all suffering is secondary to this 'fact'.”
A spokesman for the Trust said that GIDS work on a “case-by-case basis, with no prior expectation of what the right outcome might be',' and they welcome “people from all parts of the LGBTQI+ community”.
“We are aware that issues of sexuality and gender identity may be intertwined for any individual,” they said. “Trans and gay identities are not mutually exclusive, and an outcome around one does not preclude another.
“We are also well aware of the intense pressure young people may feel under when they express a non-conforming gender or sexual identity in our society. The service and assessment we provide are there to offer a space for exploration of these matters.”
