Pity the children

Jolyon Maugham KC’s latest wheeze, for which the Good Law Project duly passed around the begging bowl, is to fund private ‘treatment’ at Anne Health for 24 children.

The organisation says it will pay for their drugs abroad for three years, or until they turn 18, whichever comes first. Anne Health offers access to puberty blockers and “masculinising” or “feminising” hormones through overseas clinicians.

The service was co-founded by Susie Green, the former chief executive of Mermaids, the scandal-plagued child transition charity which was found by the Charity Commission to have been mismanaged. Her new venture promises “personalised gender-affirming healthcare” based on guidance from bodies including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The influential US-based membership and advocacy organisation recognises “eunuch” as a gender identity. Green, a former IT manager without clinical qualifications, helped write the children’s chapter of its latest guidelines, from which WPATH removed proposed minimum ages for hormones and most forms of surgery.

The 24 children include 17 former patients of Brighton’s WellBN clinic from what the Good Law Project (GLP) calls the “hardest up” families, along with another seven from similarly impoverished households. The specific crowdfunder has now closed, with GLP promising to top up the proceeds from its own coffers.

Maugham, a tax barrister turned gender Jesus, declared in a video that the healthcare of what he termed “young trans people” (aka children) has “everything to do with politics and nothing at all to do with your best interests”. He claimed that the closure of WellBN’s child services meant that “something over 100 children faced being forcibly detransitioned”.

But the clinic was not closed on a political whim. Its GP gender service for under-18s was shut down following a damning independent investigation led by NHS Surrey and Sussex, with support from NHS England.

Investigators found that clinicians had been inappropriately prescribing medications to treat gender confusion in children. Between January 2023 and December 2025, 78 under-18s received gender-related medication through the practice. Those prescribed puberty blockers included a child aged just 11. An accompanying NHS assessment found that WellBN prescribed certain medications at rates more than 80 per cent above the average for general practices across the ICB area.

In 20 cases, medication was prescribed before a face-to-face appointment had taken place. The records of 53 patients indicated possible neurodevelopmental issues. Necessary physical tests were often not carried out, medical records were badly kept and serious concerns were raised about informed consent.

The NHS concluded that none of the clinicians examined was professionally competent to initiate or assume responsibility for the prescribing without specialist gender-service oversight. The overall approach, it said, “fell far short” of safe or appropriate care, with potential harm caused to all 78 patients.

Maugham’s response was not to wonder whether the investigators might have had a point. It was to raise money to place more children on a private medical pathway abroad.

Puberty blockers suppress puberty, stunting the development of reproductive organs and compromising bone density. They have also been associated with falls in IQ. Yet in an article accompanying his video, Maugham claims that “suicide rates for trans children are soaring”. The available evidence does not support that assertion.

An analysis produced by the National Child Mortality Database examined completed Child Death Overview Panel reviews of deaths between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2025. It identified 647 cases in which “suicide or deliberate self-inflicted harm” was recorded as the primary category of death.

Of these, 46 involved children recorded under the NCMD’s broad “trans” umbrella, which encompassed those described as transgender, non-binary, gender-questioning, transitioning or experiencing gender dysphoria. Eleven records contained the specific term “gender dysphoria”. In six cases, a Child Death Overview Panel recorded gender dysphoria as a factor that may have contributed to vulnerability, ill health or death.

The annual totals fluctuate markedly, while recent years remain incomplete because some deaths have yet to be reviewed. Maugham’s assertion that suicide rates are “soaring” is unsupported and irresponsible, as is the claim that prescribing puberty blockers reduces deaths by suicide.

Suicide-reporting guidelines warn against attributing deaths to a single trigger and against emotive or sensational framing. Maugham is either unaware of this or, so convinced is he of his cause, does not care.

Green, meanwhile, has form for taking a child overseas for treatment unavailable to minors in Britain. She took her son, Jackie, to Thailand for genital surgery at 16. Thai professional rules now require patients undergoing such surgery to be at least 18, with parental consent required for those under 20.

In a 2012 documentary, Green explained that the penile-inversion procedure had been complicated because Jackie “hadn’t developed through full puberty”, meaning “there wasn’t much there to work with”. She laughed immediately afterwards, adding: “Sorry, Jackie. She’ll hate that.”

It was a revealing moment. The failure of normal genital development was not random, but the intended consequence of suppressing male puberty: a decision Green made in what she believed were her child’s best interests.

Now Green’s service stands ready to ‘help’ another 24 children embark upon a medical pathway abroad, funded by a lawyer who insists that the real danger comes from the NHS trying to stop them.