Mermaids - helping children & teenagers to deceive their parents

Worryingly, (and also in the linked article) as well as being funded from the government and the Lottery, in common with Stonewall, Mermaids raises money by running training courses for teachers, police forces, NHS and social services.

This perpetuates the idea that assuming a child should be encouraged to transition is the correct approach and should be the first line of 'help'. The reach of organisations like this means that there is little chance of a child getting alternative advice - wherever they turn, the people who are supposed to help them have been 'captured'.

Just seen your post, FN. Yes, more evidence that the tide is finally turning, thank goodness.

"The Charity Commission has launched a regulatory compliance case and has written to Mermaids' trustees.

A spokesperson for the regulatory body said: "Concerns have been raised with us about Mermaids' approach to safeguarding young people. We have opened a regulatory compliance case, and have written to the trustees. We now await their reply."

Mermaids, which was established in 1995, has said it will reply to the Charity Commission in "due course" but that it will not be commenting further at this stage."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63081644

I'm just catching up with the last few pages.
On the topic of Gillick competence, are you aware that NHS doctors will refuse a sterilisation operation to a young woman who doesn't want children because they believe she is likely to change her mind later?
Sterilisation is unlikely to be done until a woman is over 30, especially if she has no children.
Claiming, in that situation, that the woman is Gillick competent or is an adult will get her nowhere.
Clearly, the wishes or demands of an individual can be disregarded by a doctor.

It is not the case that being Gillick competent, or being an adult, means you can, or should, get everything you want.

I hope they’ll investigate the expectation by Mermaids that children will get an email address that their parents can’t access, ?
or that they have asked children requesting binders to provide a separate address where they can send them?,
or that they can direct them to sources for puberty blockers?
or that they have told children that if their parents don’t support them, “we are your family now”.?

Imagine having someone saying 'we are your family now' to your child/grandchild?

On one hand that's quite chilling, but on the other it reminds me of Papa Lazarou.

An article by Janice Turner in Friday's Times -

"In 2019, a serious data breach by Mermaids, for which it was fined £25,000, gave a glimpse into its residential weekends for parents and children. “Huge respect to the guys who showed us (upon request) their top surgery scars,” said one post, “saved a lot of dodgy Google searches.”

Girls, who are taught at such camps how to bind, are introduced to those who’ve graduated to double mastectomies — they even pass down their old binders."

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fba8aeca-40f3-11ed-b24d-96120f17513d?shareToken=ad6ea308105c0b12ca7072fe8efba5c6
(No paywall)

From today's Times (1st Oct) :

"The first red flag was the “dick pic”. Katie had no idea her 14-year-old son was communicating with strangers in secret on the Mermaids website, until she found several sexually explicit images on his phone.

Her autistic son, who had been teased at school for possibly being gay, had visited the school nurse, who in turn did what so many schools, local authorities and child mental health services across the country now do when presented with a gender-non-conforming child in distress: referred him to Mermaids."

12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-charitys-chatroom-for-children-condemned-as-irresponsible-free-for-all-hwgzvdhzj

Thank you for the links etc. FarNorth

Someone asked about detransitioners, earlier.

'I now know that I am not a trans man': Woman, 26, who underwent double mastectomy and hormone therapy to become male after just TWO HOURS of counselling tells of her regret as she begins detransitioning back to female

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11070129/Woman-26-underwent-double-mastectomy-hormone-therapy-detransitioned.html#l8jzht0z730fqzeh8up

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202210/medium-528900-screenshot-20221001-192539.png https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202210/medium-338587-screenshot-20221001-192623.png https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202210/medium-606057-screenshot-20221001-192745.png

.

Those stories are heartbreaking, FN. Yet we are supposed to be the ones who 'don't care about self-harm' because we want children to wait before rushing into life-changing surgery.

Thanks for the links FN. Those are really heartbreaking stories and they emphasise how final the treatment can be.
Yet still, as DD says, we are being accused of not caring, just because we feel children should have counselling before taking such drastic and almistcirrevocable steps.

A tweet from Allison Bailey :

This has been said before but it needs to be said again. Breast ironing and genital mutilation when perpetrated by black & brown people are horrors to be condemned but the very same practices perpetrated by white liberals in the West are life affirming, even euphoric. Go figure.

The intentions of those doing breast ironing are good - to protect young girls from male harassment and from early marriage.
Good intentions don't make it a good practice.
Similarly with binders, if Mermaids do actually have good intentions.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trustee-of-the-transgender-charity-mermaids-quits-over-speech-to-paedophile-aid-group-jkjn2jrk9

The Charity Mermaids said that it was unaware of his appearance at the conference until contacted by this newspaper. It would seem to indicate a lack of safeguarding screening of trustees. Are there others whose background checks have been less than thorough?

Rosie51 quite probably, and not just trustees of Mermaids. It’s quite a challenge to research them though. School governors have to fill in a form which identifies any possible conflicts between our personal life our role as a governor.
Do trustees not have anything similar, or did he just lie?

Thank you Rosie51.
Here is the article without a paywall.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trustee-of-the-transgender-charity-mermaids-quits-over-speech-to-paedophile-aid-group-jkjn2jrk9?shareToken=22e180cf284edbae4d06b438d5c449e8&fbclid=IwAR1JTCXRnmJMqkF9YVq73QCLYaSKRWwp8XMikXLUCk0L8MKLUblf-vw3fac

Thanks FarNorth I didn't realise it was behind a paywall, I got to read it and don't have a subscription. I think The Times sometimes does allow free access.

I could only see the start of it, from your link.
The link I posted uses a share token - got it from a friend, I think you have to have a sub to get them.

I'm sure you're right, it's the subscription that gives share tokens. I was expecting not to get through on the link, when I did I thought everyone would If other mainstream press pick this story up, then at the very least perhaps Mermaids will do basic due diligence on every single employee/trustee on their books. Maybe they could also revert to their stated ethos which I linked to up thread that clearly said "few will go on to transition". I feel though that they can never be trusted again, even though they may have started out with good intentions and good practice.

Mermaids seems to be trending on Twitter at the moment. I have been encouraged by the fact that I haven't seen any support for this man.
It does sort of show that Mermaids have been a lax in recruiting their trustees.

Catching up with this thread. I may join the times free thing to access all the article posted by Rosie.

I’ve asked the mermaids supporters several times on these threads, for their views on the Cass report. There’s never a response.
Simplyfiying complex mh problems in adolescents is disasterous, as we GC posters have repeated endlessly on these trans discussions.

I now have the Bjork song Its oh so quiet running through my head ?

MerylStreep

I now have the Bjork song Its oh so quiet running through my head ?

It's very quiet in lots of places........ on Twitter the Mermaids advocates are remarkably noticeable by their absence. I wonder how many are regretting their nasty vendetta against LGB Alliance. I'm hearing this trustee came to light not because he was listed on their website list of trustees, he wasn't, but because they had to provide a full list of trustees for the Charity Commission case they brought. If this is so, and I've no reason to doubt it, I wonder why he wasn't listed on the website?

So refreshing and heartening to read on MN this morning that members are asking for banned posters to be re-instated.

They were banned because they were warning posters of the Danger of Mermaids

At least we now know where this company stands on these issues.