Judges took action after it emerged the boy was just seven years old
High court judges in England have banned a transgender charity from contacting a family after it advised a seven year old boy to live as a girl.
Mermaids UK was also slated for publicising same day hormone treatment for children against NHS guidelines which advises against treatment for anyone under 16.
The Sunday Times said Justice Hayden removed the seven-year-old child, known as “J”, from his mother after finding she had caused him “significant emotional harm” and “pressed him into a gender identification that had far more to do with his mother’s needs and little, if anything, to do with his own”.
Social services had declined to act against the woman, saying she had “appropriately taken on board support from . . . Mermaids”.
However, the judge accused social workers of “summarily disregarding” many concerns expressed by police and healthcare professionals about J because they “did not wish to appear to be challenging an emerging orthodoxy in such a high-profile issue”.
Mermaids challenged the decision at the time it was taken, insisting J wanted to be a girl and said there was “no evidence at all to support this judge’s views”.
However in separate Facebook posts it has now emerged that the charity admitted it had been “ordered to have nothing to do with this child following their removal”.
Mermaids website featured a message from Dr Birgit Möller, a Hamburg-based doctor, offering fast-track trans-sex hormone treatment for children. “If the families are interested we would set up a long evaluation appointment at our clinic (3-4 hours) and afterwards an appointment with the endocrinologist [hormone specialist],” Möller wrote. “In case of an indication for hormone treatment he would prescribe it the same day.”
Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of Transgender Trend, a website for parents questioning the diagnosis and treatment of children as transgender, said: “I am concerned that Mermaids is indoctrinating children, scaring parents into thinking that transition is the only way and intimidating professionals.”
Mermaids claimed that it was not the subject of the court order.
"Contrary to what is implied in the Times article, Mermaids has not been banned from contact with the child by the high court, and Mermaids was directly referenced only once during proceedings, to state that the mother had been receiving support from the charity,” said a statement on its website.
“Following the proceedings, the mother informed us that the judge had ordered the child should have no further contact with the charity. While we have not received any legal notice to support this statement, we have respected this request.”
