Teenager in care yet to get state backing for ‘trans’ hormone drugs

Child protection authorities are yet to approve irreversible hormone treatment for a transgender-identifying teenager in care.

Child protection authorities have yet to give their backing to hormone treatment for a transgender-identifying teenager taken into state care after parents resisted the irreversible medical intervention.

It is believed to be the first Australian case of a minor put under a protection order because the parents were judged “abusive” and potentially harmful for failing to embrace their child’s self-declared trans “gender identity” and wish for cross-sex hormones.

The teenager, who was born a girl and taken from the family home by police at the age of 15 last year after reportedly discussing suicide online, cannot be identified for legal reasons, and The Australian has not reported the state where the case is unfolding.

The parents deny any abuse and favour non-invasive psychotherapy for their child, saying they believe factors other than gender — including a loss of friends, lack of social skills and a difficult start to puberty — may explain the mental and emotional distress.

The mother said she belatedly became aware after authorities intervened that the teenager had been active on social media platforms popular for up-beat accounts of gender transition.

In the Family Court on Tuesday, the teenager, now 17, is expected to seek an interim order allowing treatment with hormone drugs to go ahead, with the application handled by an independent children’s lawyer and funded by state legal aid.

It is the first known case in which the judges are being asked to enable this life-altering medical treatment for the bodily distress of “gender dysphoria” when both parents are opposed.

The state government protection agency has not yet supported the teen’s wish for testosterone to masculinise the female body, and has agreed to the parents’ request for a second opinion before any decision.

A spokesman for the agency told The Australian it could not comment on individual cases, but the safety and wellbeing of children was always the “number one priority”.

The independent children’s lawyer is expected to seek an order in the Family Court that as a “mature minor” the teenager be allowed to self-authorise gender dysphoria treatment, including testosterone and “any other treatment” recommended for gender transition by the public children’s hospital.

1: Listen to your child if they tell you they’re trans

It's vital to let your child voice what's important to them. You don’t have to accept it at face value, what matters is keeping communications open. If you don’t listen to them now, why would they listen to you later? pic.twitter.com/QKjRmbKRG5

— Bayswater Support (@BayswaterSG) December 16, 2019

A handful of Family Court cases allowing double mastectomies for biological females under 18 — two were 15-year-olds — has been identified by commentators but the court has said it is unable to confirm a total figure. In the US, trans mastectomy has been performed on minors as young as 13.

This month the US retail giant Target briefly pulled from its shelves the first mainstream book investigating the exponential spike in teenage girls around the world identifying as trans and seeking medical treatment. Trans activists want the book banned, and “gender affirming” clinicians say it wrongly attributes trans identity to peer influence and social media influence.

In her book Irreversible Damage, former Wall St Journal writer Abigail Shrier argues that social contagion has recruited teenage girls to a condition of bodily distress that used to appear among a tiny proportion of preschool boys, most of whom grew out of it.

On Tuesday the UK High Court will decide whether under-18s, often with multiple psychological and other complex issues, are capable of giving informed consent to puberty blocker drugs, given as young as 10, which interrupt normal development and have unknown long-term effects on brain and body.

The case has been brought by “detransitioner” Keira Bell, 23, who regrets blockers, cross-sex hormones and a double mastectomy, and fears she may be unable to have children. She is joined in the litigation by Mrs A, the mother of a 16-year-old with autism on the waiting list for the NHS Tavistock youth gender clinic in London.

Lawyers for Ms Bell and Mrs A argue that children under 16 lack the maturity and life experience to give informed consent to radical trans medicine with poor quality evidence and potentially harmful side-effects.

Trans health advocates say that blockers are reversible, pausing a distressing “wrong puberty”, preventing suicide and allowing the child time before the decision to progress to irreversible cross-sex hormones but those claims are contested.

Gender clinics following the “affirmative” approach say that medical treatments making the body more like the opposite sex promote wellbeing by easing conflict between biological sex and inner gender identity.

In the case of the Australian teenager taken into care, a children’s court magistrate granted state authorities a final protection order recently.

A psychiatrist from the children’s hospital gave evidence that the teenager’s risk of suicide would be “very, very high” if returned to parents whose attitudes about gender dysphoria were unlikely to change. The hospital said it had excluded mental illness as a competing diagnosis.

The teenager wanted no more parental contact, and could not be forced to see a psychologist nominated by them, the magistrate said.

The magistrate accepted that the parents loved their children, were “proactive” in seeking help for them, and the mother had taken the troubled teenager to see a clinical psychologist.

The mother told the magistrate “she does not (believe that) giving a child everything they want is loving or in the child’s best interests”.

In an affidavit, a child protection worker claimed the parents “hold strict Protestant views and consider that (the child’s) transition from female to male is immoral”.

The parents said the state agency had jumped to conclusions without talking to them.

They said they were mainstream Christians, and their opposition to hormone drugs was based on medical and ethical concerns raised in the international debate over the risks of youth gender clinics.

“How can you be born in the wrong body? There’s no scientific evidence for that,” the father told The Australian.

The parents said they had no idea their daughter identified as trans or was suicidal until after she was taken last November to the children’s hospital emergency department, where the day after arrival a sign on her room declared a new male name.

When the mother asked to talk to the teenager, she said the nurse forgot to mute the phone and asked the patient: “ ‘Will they use your correct pronouns?’ And (my daughter) said, ‘No, I don’t think so’. And (the nurse) said, ‘Oh, then, you don’t want to speak to them, what should I tell them?’ ”

"A global wave of criminal laws against any attempt to change someone’s 'gender identity' may end up putting young people who struggle with same-sex attraction on the path to risky hormone drugs and surgery, warns a new group @LGBAlliance_Aus." https://t.co/QiFeC0mzlt

— Bernard Lane (@Bernard_Lane) November 26, 2020

At the hospital’s gender clinic, there were 432 child and adolescent patients in September, 74 per cent of them born girls, according to data obtained under FOI law. And 76 per cent of the 63 patients receiving cross-sex hormones, which can cause infertility, were biological females.

In 2014-15, the children’s hospital reportedly had 51 patients with gender issues, so the 2020 caseload at the gender clinic represents an increase of 747 per cent.

There is no good public data on how much of the treatment offered by gender clinics involves medical interventions.

In a recent study involving this state clinic, just under 50 per cent of a group of 104 under-18 patients — with an average age of almost 15, and 76 per cent of them born girls — showed mild to severe autism features.

In an assessment appointment at the children’s hospital clinic, the father asked the clinical nurse what percentage of young people were found not to need gender treatment.

“She couldn’t think of any case that was rejected (for treatment), ever. I said, ‘What’s the worth of your assessment if everybody is assessed (as suitable for this treatment)?’,” he said.

The Australian sought comment from the hospital, and a support group representing parents of trans children.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14