Trans Youth Suicides Covered Up By NHS, Cass After Restrictions, Say Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers allege that the NHS in Great Britain covered up a large spike in suicides after restrictions on trans care. The number of suicides appears to have been omitted from the Cass Review.
Note: This edition of Erin In The Morning is brought to you by Mira Lazine, who is guest writing for Erin In The Morning after the passing of Erin’s mother. Mira Lazine is a freelance journalist covering LGBTQ+ issues, politics, and science.
On Thursday, Jo Maugham - director of the United Kingdom legal advocacy organization The Good Law Project - wrote a detailed thread on X/Twitter in which he alleges that there has been a substantial increase in the number of suicides for young trans people on the National Health Service (NHS) waitlist, and that the NHS has been suppressing the evidence. Maugham says that this occurred after the infamous 2020 Bell v. Tavistock ruling that restricted care for those under 16. While this ruling has since been overturned, the damage from it is still being felt today.
Maugham, who first announced some of these claims in a Good Law Project fundraiser opposing the British puberty blocker ban, says that he spoke with two whistleblowers. “I have seen their staff IDs and each has provided me with some internal Tavistock documents. There is no doubt they are who they say they are.”
The first whistleblower reportedly said that prior to the 2020 Bell ruling, only one young trans person died from suicide in seven years and that since the ruling, there have been sixteen deaths. This data is reported to come from an anonymous doctor referred to as “Named Doctor for Safeguarding Children.”
He then goes on to say that the whistleblower tried to alert higher ups about this, including a director at the Tavistock gender clinic and Dr. Hillary Cass. Cass is the primary person behind the infamous Cass Review, a systematic review that has led to the temporary prohibition of puberty blockers for transgender youth in Great Britain. Details related to the whistleblower’s concerns aren’t apparent within the Review, suggesting that Cass ignored concerns as the Review was being drafted. Cass, who has no professional history working with transgender young people, collaborated with people who had ties to SPLC-designated hate groups like Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. During the writing of the Review, she met with Ron DeSantis-appointed members of the Florida medical board.
Maugham reached out to Tavistock and Cass for comment. Tavistock did not respond, while Cass referred Maugham to paragraph 5.65 in the Review, where she offhandedly discusses these suicides while underplaying the link between the NHS, Gender Identity Service (GIDS), and these deaths. Additionally, Cass fails to mention the total number of suicides in the Review from either before Bell or after.
The second whistleblower claims to be able to substantiate the claims made by both the first whistleblower and the “Named Doctor for Safeguarding Children.” They claim that staff planned an open letter in response to these allegations, and that Tavistock retaliated and threatened them with disciplinary action before suppressing the material. Maugham then substantiates the allegations made by both whistleblowers by revealing meeting minutes that show Tavistock staff members were well aware of these deaths. He points out that this ignores attempted suicides and does not necessarily capture all deaths. Additionally, he shows additional notes that suggest that some data was deliberately left out of Freedom of Information Act requests.
Maugham continues, “Good Law Project has supported several inquests into the deaths of young trans people on NHS waiting lists, I have spoken to the families of young trans people who have taken their lives whilst on the waiting list, and my inbox is full of emails from terrified parents.
Our debased national discourse around trans people - the harassment of clinicians; its politicisation by some Ministers, journalists, cheerleaders, in the NHS has, I think on the evidence, led to young people taking their own lives. This is a profound, emerging national scandal.”
Erin in the Morning was able to confirm at least some of these deaths in an independent investigation conducted alongside activist and clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, Alejandra Caraballo. Based on publicly available inquests and news reports, at least eight transgender youth have committed suicide since 2020. Of those youth, three have been confirmed to have been either on a waitlist or in GIDS. The other five have no information regarding whether they were transitioning, with many of the inquests failing to examine the exact cause of these deaths.
One example is the death of 15-year-old Virgil Rhone, which appears to be clear-cut in interpretation - they hung themself and left potential suicide notes in a notebook. Yet this was not ruled as a suicide because the “intent was uncertain.” This opens questions as to how transgender people are handled in suicide cases, as it is not clear whether coroners examined the role the NHS played. Additionally, this begs the question as to how other trans youth suicides are treated.
Another example is the case of 17-year-old Max Sumner, whose family lawyers identified 13 failures from Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in treating his mental health issues. They failed to work with other agencies, failed to follow up on his diagnoses, did not do a risk assessment, and did not involve his family in treatment.
Even for cases where we know that the youth were on a waitlist, this fact is not always treated as a notable factor. The case of 17-year-old Charlie Millers shows this, as his gender affirming care was nothing more than a footnote in the inquest, with no examination given as to whether waitlists or barriers to care might have played a role in his death.
An investigation from The Guardian two years ago reveals that there are systemic failures in the United Kingdom’s mental health service which is attributable to many suicides, including some for transgender youth. Considering that several adults also died due to suicide while on waitlists, and that the majority of people on waitlists for gender affirming care have been there for more than 18 weeks, it’s possible that there are additional suicides unaccounted for
This investigation, alongside the allegations made by Maugham, opens up substantial questions about how seriously medical professionals treat suicides of transgender youth. If Maugham’s allegations prove true, one of the country’s biggest medical scandals in history may unfold.
The Good Law Project did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Update: The NHS disputes the rise in suicides in a recent report.
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The callousness of those who claim to have children's interests in mind is an extreme example of hypocrisy both in the UK and the US by politicians who in reality simply either hate trans people or using us in order to get or keep power and money. Certainly the "news" media in many instances, e.g. FOX, and the silence of so many makes all them essentially complicit. Keeping the electorate uninformed or feeding them both disinformation and misinformation serves their quite evil purposes.
They know what they're doing is wrong, or they'd feel no need to cover it up- and they're making a conscious choice to 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 doing wrong, or they'd have reversed course when the damage they were doing became apparent.
The only word for that is 𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭.