In February 2020, writing for Gript, Tim Jackson looked at the very serious concerns Irish medical experts had expressed about Irish children being referred to the Tavistock sex-change clinic, not just in the UK, but at the Children’s Hospital in Crumlin – who flew in staff from Tavistock to provide services.
He noted that consultant endocrinologist Professor Dónal O’Shea and consultant psychiatrists Dr Paul Moran and Dr Ian Schneider had warned the HSE that the services being provided by Tavistock for children were ‘unsafe’. The doctors had serious concerns about how children were being diagnosed and started on unsuitable hormone treatments, and that mental health problems for some children were being ignored.
At that time, journalist Shane Phelan wrote that even though the doctors said the practices were “unsafe” and should be “immediately stopped”, their concerns were instead “suppressed” by the HSE. In fact, their concerns were not even noted in the minutes of the meeting with hospital management.
As Jackson noted, Prof Dónal O’Shea wasn’t just ignored when he tried to protect vulnerable children, he was attacked. A Soc Dems Councillor, Owen Hanley, described him as “the barrier for trans people seeking the healthcare they need to improve their lives,” adding that the clinician “should not be in charge of whether or not people can access trans healthcare.”
More seriously, the then Health Minister, Simon Harris assembled a new HSE’s gender identity panel with appointees who opposed O’Shea’s expert opinion on how best to treat transgender patients, favouring the ‘self-identity’ model of assessment.
With O’Shea unable to take part on the panel, it meant that it continued with absolutely no clinicians experienced in gender dysphoria, and was “as close to a farce as you can get” according to the clinician.
His words were to prove prophetic.
Now, the Tavistock clinic in the UK has been closed down because it was deemed ‘not safe’ for the children who were rushed along a path that has brought horrendous and unnecessary surgery for some, and significant anguish and regret for others.
Mark Tighe in The Independent reported that in April 2019 – more than 3 years ago – Dr Paul Moran put his “extensive concerns” about Tavistock on the record, saying the absence of psychiatric assessment meant the clinic was “incapable of providing a safe pre-treatment assessment.
Why did the HSE, and a succession of Ministers for Health, and Ministers for Children, ignore this expert medical advice? Why did Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, say that he favoured proposals to make it easier for children under 16 to change their sex – even after O’Shea, Moran and others had lodged their concerns?
Why was the ever-spineless Micheál Martin, talking up moves to allow teenagers to change gender by an act of simple self-declaration, rather than first undergoing a psychiatric assessment? The government’s actions were like a collective middle finger to the actual experts who were ringing alarm bells about the harm being done to children.
Not that the so-called Opposition were any better. On what basis did Sinn Féin’s Fintan Warfield tell a conference that the party would allow children under the age of 16 to take their parents to court in order to change their legal gender without the parents’ consent?
Why did all these people feel they could ignore the mounting evidence of the damage being done to children? As Tim Jackson pointed out, that evidence was already public information.
A Tavistock whistleblower, for example, had supported the claim that children were being rushed into sex-change treatment, and also agreed with the mother of an autistic girl, aged 15, who said the clinic attempted to start her daughter on treatment to transition to a boy, against the mother’s wishes.
One of the reasons that the activists and extremists felt they could shout down doctors was that most of the Irish media were worse than silent, they were compliant. It seems their fear of the ridiculous charge of transphobia outweighed the obligation they had to report the truth or investigate the facts.
And even now, RTÉ, the national broadcaster, seem to be continuing their absurd and frankly outrageous policy of seeing no evil when it comes to Tavistock and the safety of children.
Last week, when Tavistock was finally closed down by the British NHS, because it was found to be unsafe, RTE News just ignored the story. It was incredible.
The Irish Times did report that the clinic was being closed, but managed to exclude any mention of the unsafe services or the disturbing findings around Tavistock’s clinical practices until the last line of the piece. As an article which revealed more than it concealed, it was pretty skillful reporting.
But RTÉ didn’t even bother trying to bury the lede. They just ignored the scandal altogether.
Some 234 Irish children have been referred to Tavistock’s services. 32 of those children were under 10 years of age. Dr Paul Moran told the Independent that 90% of the cases of children presenting with gender issues involve people with autism.
And these children were sent to a clinic where they may have been rushed into treatments, some of them which may prove to be irreversible, because the concerns of medics were swept away in a rush of madness which saw activists and extremists overruling clinicians and scientific evidence.
Yet RTE doesn’t feel this merits a news report.
Columnist Éilis O’Hanlon posted this tweet last night which perfectly challenged Morning Ireland and RTÉ’s silence on this scandal.
If Paul Moran isn't on Morning Ireland and Today With Claire Byrne tomorrow to discuss what he has revealed about the warnings he and others issued to the HSE about children being put in harm's way at the Tavistock, then RTE cannot call itself a public service broadcaster.
— Eilis O'Hanlon (@OHanlonEilis) August 7, 2022
She was proved right of course. Crickets on this issue from Morning Ireland.
She is right in this assertion as well:
The idea that so-called progressive journalists in Ireland would have stood up for victims of scandals in the past is a joke. Right now they're staying silent about harms done to children as young as 5 because they don't want to upset trans activists. Socially compliant cowards.
— Eilis O'Hanlon (@OHanlonEilis) August 7, 2022
‘Nothing to see here folks’ is the line from Montrose.
Tavistock aren’t the only ones to blame here. And neither are they the only tax-payer funded body that should be closed down. What’s the point of a public service broadcaster that won’t even report the news?