From the Telegraph - Trans charity Mermaids giving breast binders to children behind parents’ backs:
A transgender children’s charity is giving potentially dangerous chest-flattening devices to 14-year-olds against their parents’ wishes, an investigation by The Telegraph has found
Mermaids, which receives funding from the taxpayer and runs training for schools and the NHS, offered to send a breast binder discreetly to a girl they believed was only 14, even after they were told that she was not allowed to use one by her mother.
Evidence obtained by The Telegraph shows that the charity’s staff have offered binders to children as young as 13 who say that their parents oppose the practice.
Chest-binding has been described by parent groups as a form of “self-harm” and it can cause breathing difficulties, chronic back pain, changes to the spine and broken ribs.
Dr Hilary Cass, the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics, who is leading a review of trans children’s services for the NHS, describes it as “painful and potentially harmful”.
Campaigners and MPs said on Sunday night that there were “massive safeguarding red flags” over Mermaids and called for an immediate investigation by the Charity Commission.
The Telegraph has uncovered evidence of the Mermaids online help centre offering advice to users who present themselves as young as 13 that controversial hormone-blocking drugs are safe and “totally reversible”.
In the last month alone, this newspaper has seen discussions in the charity’s moderated forum for 12 to 15-year-olds on how to raise money to start taking drugs and the best way to take testosterone.
A moderator also publicly congratulated a teenage user for deciding that they were transgender by the age of 13 and deciding that they wanted drugs and “all the surgeries”.
Mermaids' enthusiasm for medical mutilation originated with chief executive Susie Green. Her husband didn't like the way their son played with girly toys, so they decided to "change his sex" and make him a girl rather than live with a potentially gay son - so off to Thailand with him on his sixteenth birthday to be castrated and be medically refashioned.
And yet she's celebrated as a some kind of ground-breaking hero:
Mermaids holds a privileged position in public life. The controversial charity is paid to train teachers, police forces, NHS staff and social services on dealing with transgender issues.
In recent years, it has received more than £20,000 in taxpayer’s money from grants and more than £500,000 from the National Lottery.
Staff have met government officials, given advice to the NHS and were identified as influential at the soon-to-be closed Tavistock Clinic as it was dolling out drugs to children.
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