Farewell Susie Green, the CEO of Mermaids, a charity that describes itself as supporting ‘trans, non-binary and gender-variant children, young people and their families’. Green resigned rather abruptly on Friday, and the statement from its chair was short and to the point. An interim CEO will be appointed in due course.
Mermaids has found itself under scrutiny after deciding to bring a case against the LGB Alliance, the only UK-based organisation that focuses exclusively on same-sex attracted people.
Green, who has spoken of taking her own teenage child to Thailand for surgery, led Mermaids into battle with the LGB Alliance by challenging its charitable status.
Under Green’s leadership, Mermaid became far more prominent, gaining support of the likes of Prince Harry, US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and sponsorship deals with Starbucks. Green herself has been much lauded and was on the Pride Power List, 2016 as an ally.
Mermaids was set up in 1995 by a group of parents whose children had according to their definitions, gender dysphoria, or discomfort about their birth sex.
Where did it all go wrong under Green’s leadership? Well, for starters, there was the scandal of Jacob Breslow, a trustee of Mermaids who made a dramatic exit when it was uncovered by a journalist that he was a child abuse apologist. Then there was the fact that 14-year-old girls were being sent breast binders in the post, without the consent or knowledge of their parents.
There have been child data-breaches, and an ‘admission’ by two Mermaids witnesses in court that, they ‘haven’t read the Cass Review’, which says the current clinical model of a single specialist Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock, much praised by Mermaids, was no longer appropriate.
Then there is the fact that Mermaids chatrooms often referred families to online clinics, such as that run by Helen Webberly who was suspended by the GMC; as was her husband who also ran the clinic after his wife’s suspension.
I was a signatory to a letter to the Times in 2019 expressing concerns that Mermaids peddled the notion that children as young as two could have a gender identity.
A CEO resigning before a replacement is appointed doesn’t happen overnight, it is a sign of a charity in internal crisis. Mermaids claims to be under attack, as it stated in its recent crowd fundraiser, but it has brought it all on itself by attacking those that refuse to capitulate to gender ideology, and associating itself with the likes of Jacob Breslow.
Source: Where did it all go wrong for trans charity Mermaids? | The Spectator