Mick Hartley

The Sunday Times talks to David Freeman, who helped to conduct an audit of the first 124 young people referred to the Tavistock clinic 20 years ago. It was, he reveals, never followed up: 

A failure to maintain records on thousands of children seen by the Tavistock gender clinic has been described as a “monumental scandal” by the co-author of its only comprehensive patient audit.

David Freedman, 73, helped to conduct a clinical audit of the first 124 young people referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) from its inception in 1989. The London-based service, part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, is the only dedicated NHS clinic for transgender children.

Freedman’s paper, published in 2002, found that more than a quarter of young people referred to the clinic had spent time in care, almost 40 per cent had families with existing mental health problems and more than half had relationship difficulties with their peers.

The report said the “high percentages of mental and physical health problems in the families of children and adolescents referred” could be contributing to the “gender identity problem”.

Despite these findings, Freedman recently learnt the database was not maintained and information was not kept in an easily accessible format.

Freedman has decided to speak out following publication of the book Time to Think, by the BBC journalist Hannah Barnes, in which several former Gids clinicians raised concerns about the rush to prescribe puberty blockers to children suffering from gender dysphoria, and the lack of data collection on their long-term effects.

When he discovered his clinical audit from two decades ago remained the only one conducted by the service, Freedman said he was “gobsmacked”, adding: “This was a service that was sailing into uncharted territory with vulnerable children and adolescents, where one has an extra duty of care, and the failure to collect any data in a coherent form to look at what they were doing . . . it’s pretty mind-boggling.”…

Freedman added: “You expect data to be collected. The failure to collect this may well have had adverse effects on the treatment offered to young people. Clinicians had no data on which to compare clinical practice and outcomes because nothing was collected.

“The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a monumental scandal.”

He said that at the time of his audit he believed the clinic was doing “good work”, but is “very upset” for the young people owing to how the service moved to focus on medical intervention.

Ideology, it seems, took the place of responsible medical practice.