Top Therapist ‘Ousted’ After Trans Activist Row
The leader of one of Britain’s biggest therapy groups says he was pushed out after flagging safety concerns about treatment for gender-questioning children. The Telegraph has the story.
Dr Christian Buckland, the former chairman of the UK Council of Psychotherapy (UKCP), had raised concerns that treatment for gender-questioning children was unsafe.
He claims to have been sent death threats by independent activists including a hand-written “rest in peace” sign as part of an intimidation campaign.
Dr Buckland said he was trying to protect gender-questioning children from policies that would encourage them to be trans and go on to receive life-altering drugs and surgery.
He is one of four former leaders from Britain’s biggest therapy institutions blowing the whistle on the profession’s failure to protect children with gender identity issues.
The row ignited when Dr Buckland, 47, withdrew the UKCP’s support for a ban on conversion therapy – the practice of attempting to persuade trans or gay people that they are not trans or gay. This came after children with gender dysphoria were included in the proposed restrictions. …
As a result of the withdrawal, Dr Buckland said he faced a backlash, which quickly became personal and culminated with him receiving a sign with the letters “RIP” delivered to his house, as well as a series of abusive phone calls, messages and emails.
One email sent to the UKCP included the phrases: “Your time will come” and “transphobic Nazi c***”.
Dr Buckland said that “the UKCP office and I received vile and threatening communications for trying to ensure children’s safety was prioritised”.
He also said he “felt abused by people both inside and outside of the UKCP” and was then “prevented from speaking about serious governance concerns or the abuse and death threats received”.
Martin Pollecoff, who was the UKCP chairman for six years, told the Telegraph he had only discovered he was a signatory on a revised memorandum including children two years after he had left the organisation, despite never having agreed to it.
He said Dr Buckland had shared with him “draft minutes” from the “one board meeting in six years” he did not chair, which was where the UKCP agreed to the new memorandum wording and adopted the new position.
He says he has since told the UKCP chief executive “to tear it up” because it’s “fraudulent”. …
The concerns raised by Dr Buckland and Mr Pollecoff have been echoed across the profession, with former leaders at Britain’s other two biggest membership bodies for therapists also telling the Telegraph about the risk of “significant harm” that the profession now poses to children, with members quitting the organisations in protest. …
More than 5,500 children are waiting to be seen by the NHS’s children gender hubs, of which six will be open by next year, replacing the Tavistock clinic, with waiting times currently upwards of two years on average.
Private gender clinics, including those offering therapy as well as methods to access drugs, fill the void in the meantime.
Dr Buckland said the therapy bodies’ policies “reflect the ideological viewpoints of certain activists within these organisations rather than practitioners”.
“I fear that it is currently almost impossible for parents to know if their child will see a psychotherapist, psychologist or counsellor who will put their child’s individual needs first over personal and ideological beliefs,” he said.
Worth reading in full.
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Some institutions may have now been completely ‘marched through’ by often a very small number of people dedicated to a particular aim.
Surely the people indulging in conversation therapy are the ones trying to persuade children to change their gender. I would be in favour of banning that.
XX is not XY and testosterone is not estrogen or progesterone.
This OAP recalls teenage years being a strange mix of exhilaration, confusion and angst. All about transitioning from one phase of life to the next.
Let nature take its course and most kids will come out the other side. What used to be quaintly referred to as growing up.
These ‘activists’ are now no more than violent thugs!
They are stalkers at best, and their intimidation and threats should be stopped by the police!
It is tragic that these ‘enablers’ will quickly move onto the next fad and their victims will have to live their lives with the mental and physical consequences.
Call then what they are, people who want to harm children, paedophiles.
Humanity is facing an existential problem if we can believe the population figures that indicate too few women willing to bear children to the point that replacement rate is now below death rate. This madness that contributes to an existential problem for Homo sapiens must be confined to those with physical i.e. chromosomal conditions. The question is, who is behind this “misguided Malthusian belief system” that thinks preventing people from procreating and actively selectively killing them will lead to a better outcome for them?
SO Laurence Fox was correct when he made a Swastika out of the latest iteration of the Pride flag?