Tavistock gender clinic ‘converting’ gay children

The Tavistock has been at the centre of controversy over its treatment of young people for gender dysphoria

ALAMY

Emily Dugan and Sian Griffiths

Sunday June 20 2021, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times

A gay psychologist who worked at the NHS’s only gender transition clinic for children spoke of his fears that the clinic was running “conversion therapy for gay kids”.

Dr Matt Bristow said he feared the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust was ignoring the possibility that boys and girls who said they wanted to change sex might simply be gay.

Bristow’s claim has emerged in witness statements for Sonia Appleby, a psychotherapist responsible for safeguarding children at the gender identity clinic, who is suing the trust.

She told an employment tribunal last week she was “vilified” for raising concerns about the safety of children undergoing treatment, which included the clinic referring children as young as 12 for puberty blocking drugs.

The Tavistock has been at the centre of controversy over its treatment of young people for gender dysphoria.

There has been an explosion in the number of children wanting to change sex in recent years. In 2009 40 girls under 18 were referred to doctors for gender treatment in England. By 2017 the number had soared to 1,806.

The use of puberty blockers was banned in the UK last year by the High Court which ruled, in a ground-breaking judgment, that children under 16 could not give informed consent to such treatment. The judges said clinics must obtain the court’s permission because such treatment was experimental.

The case was brought by Keira Bell, who regretted the drugs she had received, starting as a teenage girl who at that time thought she wanted to be a boy. An appeal against the ruling in the Bell case will be heard this week.

Bristow said he was one of several gay members of staff at the clinic who felt concerned that patients’ homosexuality — and the possibility that gay children were saying they wanted to change sex because they were being bullied — was ignored. He told staff at the Tavistock clinic that they were doing “conversion therapy for gay kids”.

In an exit interview when he left the trust, which forms part of Appleby’s legal case, Bristow said that he was particularly concerned about gay children who were referred to the service having been bullied. This may have motivated some to say they wanted to change sex and that he “tried hard not to let [them] get drawn into the service”.

Bristow told the clinic that gay staff felt they “had to keep sexuality on the agenda, as otherwise it was completely ignored as a topic”. He said there was a group of gay clinicians with these worries and that four had left at the time of his exit interview.

A spokesman for the Tavistock said: “The trust strongly refutes the claims. It will vigorously defend its position in the employment tribunal. The trust does not accept that it has penalised anyone for raising concerns.”