A Church of England primary school has been slammed for an “alarming lack of knowledge regarding both safeguarding and law” after a local vicar resigned as the school’s governor over the gender transitioning of an eight-year boy.
In his resignation letter, Rev John Parker, Governor of Holy Trinity CofE Primary School, Eight Ash Green and Aldham, in Colchester, raised safeguarding (child protection) concerns like self harm by genital removal, puberty-suppressing drugs, hormonal therapy and reconstruction surgery that the radical transgender activist group Mermaids had “advocated enthusiastically” in his school.
Headteacher Ceri Lee Daniels, who invited Mermaids to conduct a training day after a pupil said he was transitioning from a boy to a girl, ignored legal advice from the governors asking her to exercise caution and to inform parents.
“If a child starts puberty blockers at Tanner stage 2 and subsequently progresses to cross-sex hormones at age sixteen as almost all children on this pathway do, permanent infertility will be the result as eggs or sperm will not have developed,” wrote Dr Nolland, Convenor of Marriage, Sex and Culture Group, Anglican Mainstream.
Clergy and experts in the discipline of sexuality have written to Amanda Goh, Diocesan Safeguarding Officer, expressing their “safeguarding concern about the act of importing Mermaids UK into the school to deliver training.”
“Given that £7million was spent on safeguarding in the Church of England last year, I have to wonder about the situation involving Mermaids, Holy Trinity CofE Primary School and Chelmsford Diocese,” sex historian Dr Lisa Nolland, asked Ms Goh.
“If a child starts puberty blockers at Tanner stage 2 and subsequently progresses to cross-sex hormones at age sixteen as almost all children on this pathway do, permanent infertility will be the result as eggs or sperm will not have developed,” wrote Dr Nolland, Convenor of Marriage, Sex and Culture Group, Anglican Mainstream.
“Again, if the CofE is really concerned about safeguarding children, why the silence about what is involved in the long term?” queried Dr Nolland, accusing Mermaids of promoting “flat earth science” in schools.
She also raised issues of safeguarding the girls in the school, “some of who have entered puberty while still in primary school, needing to share loos and changing rooms with biological boys,” and the danger being reported to the authorities for transphobic speech if anyone complained.
In another letter, the Rev Matthew Firth, Priest in Charge of St Cuthbert’s and Holy Trinity, Darlington, accused the school of promoting the Mermaids “largely untested” approach of “unsafe and unhealthy option of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and operations,” which was contributing to severe mental health problems among children.
[caption id="attachment_177529" align="alignnone" width="2674"]
Holy Trinity, Eight Ash Green, Colchester, Google Maps[/caption]
“It is therefore unsafe, and raises a safeguarding concern about Mermaids UK teaching being introduced into the school,” he wrote to Ms Goh.
Catholic journalist Caroline Farrow told Human Events how “both the Mermaids trainer and the headteacher displayed an alarming lack of knowledge regarding both safeguarding and law.”
“The protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ only applies to adults, since children are unable to apply for or obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate. The protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ in the Equalities Act is specific to transsexuals only. The terms ‘transgender’, ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity have absolutely no meaning in UK law,” Mrs Farrow emphasized.
“It is terrifying too, that the school seeks to prevent other members of their community from being aware that a child identifies as transgender; since other pupils and their parents will be directly impacted, they have a right to know,” she added.
Farrow, who is Campaign Director of CitizenGo has launched a petition to “Tell the Health Secretary: Stop Medically Transitioning Children.” The campaign highlights major safeguarding failures in the case of gender dysphoria treatment including prescribing cross-sex hormones to a 12-year-old child.
The petition states that 80 per cent of people who experience gender confusion during childhood and adolescence find that this resolves in adulthood with no need for any kind of medical intervention.
It calls for new laws to safeguard children and vulnerable people who have been confused about their gender identity.
“The medical treatment of young children with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is not a political issue of LGBT rights, but a pressing matter of public health and child safeguarding,” the petition stresses.
“Safeguarding is a word which has been weaponized in order to push the progressive agenda of Cultural Marxists, rather than to actually protect children from harm,” Mr Kurten explained.
Human Events asked politician David Kurten, Member of the London Assembly, why church schools were disregarding the issues of transgender promotion as an urgent matter of safeguarding.
“Safeguarding is a word which has been weaponized in order to push the progressive agenda of Cultural Marxists, rather than to actually protect children from harm,” Mr Kurten explained.
“Harm was always understood physically: to safeguard a child was to ensure that they did not come to any physical injury. Now safeguarding is understood primarily to mean protecting a child from ideas, thoughts and beliefs which are considered by the progressive elite to be politically incorrect, and therefore harmful, rather than simply protecting a child from physical danger,” he noted.
“Transgender activists are using the appallingly-drafted Equality Act 2010 to insist that anyone who disagrees with their point of view is engaging in ‘hate speech’ which is ‘harmful’ to children who self-identify as ‘transgender,’” he said.
Kurten added: “It is they who children need safeguarding from: their insistence on being allowed into schools to confuse children with unscientific transgender nonsense, who are then pumped full of chemicals and finally have parts of their bodies cut off, is a brutal assault on children both mentally and physically.”
A press statement from Mermaids has defended its training at Holy Trinity CofE Primary School pointing out that the Church of England recommends their work in its guidance on support for transgender people.
The Archbishops’ Council Education Division has approved 52-page guidance: Valuing all God’s Children. It also endorses the radical pro-LGBT campaigning group Stonewall.
Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Chelmsford, who supported his headteacher inviting Mermaids into his church school, has not commented.
Human Events approached the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer for comment but has received no reply.
In 2017, the Church of England Education Office which runs 4,700 schools serving more than a million pupils, published guidance encouraging children to experiment with their gender identity. For primary and nursery school children, in particular, this must be a period of “creative exploration” of gender identity, the guidance said.
The Rev. Dr. Jules Gomes, B.A., B.D., M.Th., Ph.D. (Cantab) is a journalist, academic and editor of Rebel Priest. (www.julesgomes.com)
