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The judge who led Australia’s Family Court when it green-lit liberalised access of puberty blockers to gender-distressed children in 2013 has revealed she now has doubts about the landmark ruling, in an extraordinary intervention into the trans medicine debate.
Former Family Court chief justice Diana Bryant says it may be better for parliaments to step in now and regulate the field of pediatric gender medicine rather than rely on whatever disputes come before judges.
[I]t was under her leadership just over a decade ago that the Family Court accepted expert evidence that puberty blockers were reversible, safe and a no-regrets option to give children time to explore their gender identity.
In the 2013 case involving a 10-year-old boy known as Jamie – who had long identified as a girl and was well advanced in male puberty – Ms Bryant wrote the key decision abolishing the rule that, even if parents agree, court approval is necessary before a child with gender dysphoria can start on puberty blockers.
This was hailed as a human right victory at a time when the transgender movement was taking off in Australia and the rest of the developed world. The Re Jamie ruling has been the law ever since.
When Jamie’s case first went to the Family Court in 2011, Justice Linda Dessau drew on an expert report by “Dr MW” and remarked that as puberty blockers were “fully reversible, without long-term effects on fertility, the child will be free to change her mind at a later date, when she is more cognitively able to grasp the long-term implications of the decision”.
Ms Dessau went on to become governor of Victoria in 2015.
In the ensuing 2013 appeal case, the court accepted an argument by the Australian Human Rights Commission that the risk of a child being wrongly prescribed blockers was not too serious because anonymised experts in the proceedings had asserted the drugs were “fully reversible” and had “no side-effects”.
In her decision, Ms Bryant invoked then recent changes to the federal Sex Discrimination Act – the subjective concept of gender identity unrelated to biological sex was added under Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard – as a sign that “those who are transgendered are an identifiable group in our society and their right to live as a member of the sex with which they feel compatible is to be respected”.
Although Justice Dessau had imposed strict suppression orders in 2011, saying “it could only be damaging for Jamie to be identified”, the court waived this four years later – and Neighbours star Georgie Stone emerged as a role model for trans youth and an “ambassador” for the RCH Melbourne gender clinic with its offer of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The clinic had just begun to experience a dramatic increase in patient numbers under Dr Michelle Telfer.
Stone starred in a 2016 ABC Australian Story episode entitled About A Girl, with an emotive introduction by Victoria’s then Labor premier, Dan Andrews.
Alongside Dr Telfer, she appeared in publicity material for the RCH Melbourne Foundation, which has used alarming but misleading suicide statistics to raise money for the gender clinic, and Stone encouraged others like her to “reach out to the gender service and get the help you need”.
Although the Family Court still supervises these medical treatment decisions for minors when parents disagree, Ms Bryant said hormone drugs are reportedly available online beyond the control of judges and “it probably would be better” for state parliaments to codify consent rules.
A pivotal moment came in April when the court’s Justice Andrew Strum dealt a series of hammer blows to the foundations of “gender-affirming care” and made orders protecting “Devin”, a 12-year-old gender-nonconforming boy, from puberty blockers at an anonymised gender service later identified as the clinic at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.
Following a public interest application by The Australian, that clinic’s former director, Dr Telfer, was identified as the anonymous “Associate Professor L” rebuked by Justice Strum for failing in her duty to give objective expert evidence to the court and for presenting a misleading account of the Cass review of gender dysphoria treatment.
Earlier this year, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody argued that Queensland’s pause in puberty blockers – not the drugs themselves – could “harm the physical and mental wellbeing of children”.
The commission did not reply when asked about RCH quietly backtracking on its once confident claims about puberty blockers.
Source: Ex-judge admits doubts over landmark ‘pro-trans’ ruling