New name, new parents: the teen who divorced her family
Kate and Martin thought they were working through their teen’s mental health issues. But when gender dysphoria was diagnosed, they were sidelined from her healthcare – then removed as parents.
Two parents sit at a dining room table in the cold winter gloom, nursing mugs of hot tea and trying to explain the cascading events that led their teen to divorce them.
It wasn’t a divorce in a strict legal sense – that’s confined to the dissolution of a marriage – but the effect was the same: their child secured a legal and permanent separation from their family.
No more mum and dad, no further contact with siblings. A new name and a new family, all approved by the Family Court.
Two years on, the parents sit in their suburban home on a cold June day and ponder the loss. “We can’t ignore that someone is missing from our family,’’ dad Martin* says. “It’s devastating when you’re essentially removed as a parent.”
After years of dedicated parenting and supporting their child, Charlie*, through schoolyard bullying, depression, anorexia and self-harm, there is still a sense of shock that they could be so easily discarded.
“We bounced from one issue to the next,’’ says mum Kate*, describing the psychologists, psychiatrists, school counsellors and dietitians they engaged to help Charlie.
But then came the diagnosis, “gender dysphoria”, and everything changed. Martin and Kate wanted time to assess the news that their teen, born a girl, now said she wanted to become a boy.
They believed their 13-year-old’s gender and sexuality were still evolving. “In the last six months she was with us she had moved from being a homosexual girl to being pansexual to being a homosexual boy, back to being a girl who liked boys,’’ Martin says.
But now a pathway opened up for her to begin hormone treatment at a gender clinic and nothing they could say, no request for second opinions or suggestions of a “wait and see” approach, would alter its course.
“We’d been looking after her medical care up until that stage, and then all of a sudden, when gender dysphoria popped up, we were not allowed to make any decisions.
“It was all child-led, she could choose her doctors, she could choose a team. It was scary because we were shut out,” Kate says.
Soon Martin and Kate were permanently shut out. Charlie, at 13, found a new home, first with a family member more encouraging of gender transition, then with parents of a mate who supported her new identity.
These new parents, supported by Charlie, applied for parental responsibility in the Family Court and the old parents were advised to give in; there was little they could do to fight it. “There was a ruling giving our daughter away to the other family,’’ Kate says through tears.
And then came the final blow: Charlie successfully fought to have her first and family names changed on the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriage.
Family Court judge Jenny Hogan said the teen considered the birth name a “dead name” that was associated with trauma and sadness. “When the child sees it or hears it … it brings great distress and a sense of panic,” Hogan said.
It’s not uncommon for transgender people to change their first name to reflect their new identity but Charlie, by then 15, wanted her new family’s surname, as if to cleanse any association with the birth parents and siblings still waiting in their big family home for their missing child to come back.
In this new world, the parents had to abide by new rules: they could not see or communicate with Charlie, nor allow their other children to do so, unless Charlie requested it.
They agreed “not to attend a place where (Charlie) is and if they do inadvertently attend such place, do not approach or speak to the child unless invited by the child to do so”.
The judge’s broad summary said: “The rationale underpinning the expressed wish to change the name recorded on the child’s birth certificate … is that a consequence of the child’s asserted lived experience with the parents, the child’s exposure to their beliefs in relation to the issue of gender dysphoria, and their refusal to consent to the child receiving treatment associated with this has resulted in the child suffering significant distress, upset and harm, including by way of panic attacks and self-harm.’’
Gender-affirming care is seen by many gender clinicians as a lifesaving measure, and parents who appear resistant are said to risk harming their children by denying their true identity.
Hogan said that if Charlie was prevented from changing her name, the risk of further self-harm was unacceptable. She had already threatened to kill herself if she had to return home, and in Family Court matters the welfare of the child is paramount.
It was a blunt, legalistic end to a complex family crisis.
Kate and Martin are quietly spoken professional people of deep Christian faith who still struggle to understand how things spiralled so quickly. There was no mediation, no attempts to find a way to preserve this family unit.
“There was no investigation into whether we were unfit parents, even,’’ Kate says.
Just like a divorce, relations between child and parents irretrievably fell apart as old grievances and allegations exposed deep fault lines.
Charlie wanted out and it was considered to be in her best interests that she leave her family – and name – behind.
‘Born in wrong body’
In Australia some 178,900 people aged 16 and over, or 0.9 per cent of the population, reported their gender was different to their sex recorded at birth, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ first-ever snapshot of the LGBTI+ community, released last December.
The 16-24 age group was the most likely of all age groups to be trans and gender diverse but the data did not capture the growing number of younger adolescents reporting that they were born in the wrong body.
It’s the steep rise in minors being referred to gender medical services that has raised concerns in Australia and other parts of the world experiencing similar trends.
The adoption of gender-affirming care – based on the premise that children can make decisions about their gender and that affirming their stated gender is crucial to their mental wellbeing – has heightened controversy around the best way to support these adolescents.
Pediatrician Hilary Cass, in her landmark review of youth gender services in the UK, noted the divergent reactions of parents. Some fought to get their children on to a medical pathway, she said.
“Others have felt a medical pathway was entirely the wrong decision for their child and have described their dismay about actions taken without their consent and in ignorance of the various other difficulties their child may have been through, such as loss of a parent, traumatic illness, diagnosis of neurodiversity, and isolation or bullying in school.”
This was the response of Martin and Kate. They were cautious of the gender dysphoria diagnosis and they didn’t believe a medical pathway should have opened up so soon, seemingly in isolation to all the other struggles in their child’s life.
Gender-affirming practitioners assert their care is evidence-based and achieves good outcomes, but Cass noted the evidence on youth medical intervention, such as puberty blockers and hormones, was “remarkably weak”.
In this maelstrom of claim and counter claim, Charlie’s parents tried to work through the options.
“I think (Charlie) thought that if she could get a foot in the gender clinic, her problems would be solved, because that’s what everyone was telling her at the time,’’ Martin says.
“It was revealed later that the doctors had been telling her that it might cure her mental distress, and it’s obviously quite appealing when someone offers you a solution to make it go away.”
They’d been aware their teen had become gender-exploratory, wanting to wear masculine clothes and asking to be called a boy’s name, but there had also been experience of same-sex attraction with another girl.
They had questions: Was she gay? Was she suffering gender dysphoria? Or was she experimenting with different identities? As Cass noted, we don’t know the “sweet spot” when someone becomes settled in their sense of self.
In this devoutly Catholic household, these were never going to be particularly easy conversations, but Martin and Kate insist they were always clear in their love for Charlie and their desire for a collaborative approach.
“I was always accommodating, I rummaged through her brother’s clothes and asked if she’d like to wear that, if that made her more comfortable. We allowed her to experiment within a safe boundary,” Kate says.
Martin adds: “We definitely weren’t supportive of her, I guess, putting on a male persona … we were always encouraging her to work within the skin she was in.”
Kate says Charlie only revealed she wanted to change gender after she left home. “And we were unable to suggest a less reversible treatment, which was a ‘wait and see’ approach,’’ she says.
The more they researched this developing area of medicine the more concerned they became, so they launched legal action challenging the gender dysphoria diagnosis and the gender clinic’s assessment that their child was Gillick competent (able to consent to medical treatment without parental permission).
In Australia, adolescents can access hormone treatment if both parents consent – if there is disagreement the Family Court will decide whether the treatment is in the child’s best interests.
Some of these cases lead to one parent losing parental decision-making – in the recent case of “Devin”, Justice Andrew Strum granted sole parental responsibility to the father who had adopted a “wait and see” approach, rather than to the mother who wanted the 12-year-old to start puberty blockers.
In the case of “Blake”, the 17-year-old was granted permission to begin stage two hormones and change his surname from his father’s name to that of his mother, who had been a source of affirmation and support to his gender identity.
In “Morgan’s” case, sole parental responsibility was issued to the mother, who supported hormone treatment for her 16-year-old, who was born male but identified as female. The father’s objection was based on his Christian faith, the court heard.
In Charlie’s case, both parents lost a child to a family more accommodating of the teen’s wishes.
‘Serious allegations’
Kate and Martin’s lawyer, Joshua Anderson, says most family law cases revolve around conflict between parents and sometimes involve a child siding with one of the parents.
“It’s very unusual, and this would be the only case I’ve had in a career of about 10 years, where there’s been this level of conflict between both parents and their child,” he says.
“It’s one of the saddest matters I have seen.”
Anderson initially joined the gender clinic into the court action to stop it treating Charlie with hormone therapy but this issue fell away when it was revealed that Charlie had decided against hormone treatment after all.
“The court didn’t actually have to determine the questions of Gillick competence or the appropriateness of the proposed hormone therapy, because (Charlie) just said, basically, at the last minute, ‘I don’t want to pursue this’,” he says.
“The child backed away from the treatment because she felt that her identity was fluid and she didn’t want to be locked into having male sex characteristics.”
This just left the issues of parental responsibility, which transferred to the new family; and Charlie’s name, which the judge ordered to be changed, against Kate and Martin’s wishes and despite the reservations of the independent family consultant who advised the court.
However, Hogan’s judgment also noted the changing nature of the teen’s presentation.
The judge said Charlie had dropped her female birth name and taken on a male name, but by the time the case was heard in court, in 2023, the teen had decided this was “distinctly male-gendered” and had chosen a new “non-binary” name for the birth certificate.
“It is said that this name, in a sense, has been chosen because the child regards it as better fitting the child’s identity,” the judge said.
She also noted that Charlie had been able to “deliberately present as binary male and very masculine so as to be taken seriously within the medical system and the courts”, and was able to refrain from expressing a “non-binary gender” due to concerns about its impact on the court proceedings.
The judge noted that the teen wanted to be referred to as “a child” of the new family but tolerated her new mother calling her “son” because “I don’t want to disappoint her”.
All of this suggested to Martin and Kate that their initial hunch was correct and their child’s gender identity was fluid, not fixed.
But there was no going back. Kate reflects on the hurtful barbs thrown her way during the legal proceedings and the serious allegations that came to light.
The couple say they were blindsided when Charlie revealed she’d been raped as a seven-year-old by an adult visitor to the family home and claimed her mother was dismissive and disbelieving when she’d divulged it.
“It was worse than that,” Kate says quietly. “She said I told her it was her own fault it happened. That just wasn’t true. I would never say anything like that.”
Her parents recall no such conversation, “but when it came up we took it seriously”, Kate says. Alarmed at the prospect of a rapist on the loose, they pressed for a police investigation but were told Charlie did not want to pursue it or talk about it.
“There were others things that were said to make it seem that this home was toxic, unsafe, and she was going to hurt herself should she stay here any longer. A lot of it was directed at me,” Kate says.
The couple feel their religious beliefs were used against them too, with allegations that they imposed their religion on Charlie and were overly controlling. “But if you go through all my text messages, my emails, my notes to her, you will see that I was always saying ‘we love you, we love you no matter what’,’’ Kate says.
In this big family home they still try to keep Charlie’s memory alive and show photos to her siblings, who are doing well despite the rupture in their lives. “Despite everything, we always tried to maintain joy in the home,’’ Kate says.
“I’ve had bouts of depression. I’m not going to lie, it’s not been an easy ride, but I didn’t want them to have a sad mum for four years, because four years is a long time in an unhappy home.”
If Charlie reached out to her siblings she is sure they would be loving and welcoming. “But they’ve been affected because they’ve been rejected too,’’ Kate says.
She hasn’t seen Charlie for three years, for Martin it’s been four years. They’re not sure how she identifies, what she looks like; whether they have a missing son or daughter.
But they haven’t given up hope there will be a knock at the door one day.
*Names have been changed.
* Names have been changed. For help contact: Lifeline 13 11 14; beyondblue.org.au
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