Raising whistle-blowers' concerns about children's charity Mermaids
Earlier today I asked the Prime Minister if she agreed that it has taken too long for whistle-blowers' concerns about the children's Charity Mermaids to be taken seriously and whether she believed there should now be a Police investigation into the activities of Mermaids and its staff following serious revelations about some of its activities.
I was reassured that the Prime Minister responded by saying that such issues "should be properly looked into" after revelations about the Charity emerged.
Prime Minister's Questions | October 12 2022
"Over the past week serious safeguarding failures by the children's charity Mermaids have come to light. Revelations that the Charity sent breast flattening devices sent to young girls behind their parents back, promoted harmful medical and surgical procedures to children, hired a trustee with links to paedophile organisations, and a digital engagement manager who posted pornographic images online including of himself dressed as a schoolgirl.
For years despite whistle-blowers raising alarm Mermaids have had unfettered access to vulnerable children.
Does my Right Honourable friend agree that it has taken far too long for these concerns to be taken seriously and does she also agree that it is high time for a Police investigation into the activities of Mermaids and its staff."
"It is very important that under eighteens are able to develop their own decision making capabilities and not be forced into any kind of activity, and what I would say on the subject of the investigation she raises of course those matters should be raised and properly looked at." The Prime Minister, Liz Truss
Miriam Cates MP | The Telegraph | October 2022
Trans charity Mermaids is at last getting the scrutiny it has long deserved
The abuse and exploitation of children rightly causes public outrage. Yet for all the past scandals we remain too slow at picking up on it.
Few scandals provoke more universal condemnation than the abuse and exploitation of children. Although we know it happens all too often, we are still shocked when tragic cases come to light and we cling to promises by those in authority that lessons will be learned.
While no defences are ever infallible, sophisticated safeguarding practices have been developed in recent years to protect children and make sure that action is swift when alarms are raised.
It is therefore almost unbelievable that it has taken so long for significant safeguarding concerns about children’s charity Mermaids to be taken seriously. Mermaids is an organisation that subscribes to extreme gender identity theory and actively recruits children to its political cause. For years, desperate parents have tried to alert schools, the media and politicians to Mermaids’ activities, which include encouraging children to keep secrets from their families and leading them towards a path of medical and surgical transition. I have spoken to parents who, following a visit from Mermaids to their children’s school, have seen their confused teenage daughters turn against them and their families destroyed. These parents have been ignored.
But finally – mercifully – the wheels are coming off, and Mermaids now faces intense public scrutiny. In an act of extraordinary hubris, Mermaids initiated an appeal against the LGB Alliance, complaining that the organisation was anti-trans and should have its charitable status revoked. The ensuing court case laid bare the true agenda of Mermaids and paved the way for a superb investigation by The Telegraph. The investigation revealed how the charity sends breast flattening devices to children behind parents’ backs, helps them change their names in secret and misleadingly promotes experimental puberty blocking drugs to children as totally reversible. The Charity Commission has launched an investigation, trustee Jacob Breslow has been forced to resign over disturbing links with paedophilia, and the National Lottery announced that it will suspend funding to Mermaids.
But why have the concerns of whistle-blowers - including parents’ groups like Safe Schools Alliance, Bayswater Support Group and Transgender Trend - repeatedly failed to gain public attention? Why have established safeguarding procedures been so blatantly disregarded to allow Mermaids – and others – continued access to vulnerable children?
Far too many intelligent, educated people have accepted without question the new radical orthodoxy that says that gender identity trumps biological sex and children who experience gender distress should be enabled and encouraged to transition.
Teachers, doctors, politicians, and even therapists, have failed to ask why there has been an exponential rise in the number of children who believe they have been born in the wrong body and who are being referred for treatments that can result in lifelong loss of fertility and sexual function.
Against this background of naïveté and suspension of disbelief, it has been easy for Mermaids and others to claim that anyone who questions this narrative is a bigot, a transphobe and a danger to ‘trans’ children. And that is exactly the deflective defence that Mermaids continues to make, releasing a press statement on September 25 claiming that the accusations of safeguarding failures are “an attack on the trans community as a whole”.
Just as the horror of child abuse in Rotherham was covered up for political reasons, so concerns about Mermaids - and the welfare of children - have been swept aside in the pursuit of a political agenda. Where our institutions could once be trusted to protect young people from radical ideologies, now many schools, universities and NHS trusts have abandoned safeguarding practices and are actively promoting gender identity theory to children despite growing evidence of its harms.
The Mermaids scandal is just the tip of the iceberg; expect many more revelations to come.
This article was first published in The Telegraph in October 2022
