Skip to content

12 year olds can’t give consent. That’s why people can’t shag them

And yet here we’ve a doctor thinking that 12 year olds can and should consent to medical treatment that prevents puberty?

A GP has been convicted of running an illegal transgender clinic, providing hormones to children as young as 12 despite being refused a licence by the NHS regulator.

Dr Helen Webberley, 49, ran the clinic from her home, treating children who wanted to change sex, charging between £75 and £150 an hour.

She also provided online advice, calling herself the Gender GP, prescribing children and teenagers who had been denied treatment on the NHS.

27 thoughts on “12 year olds can’t give consent. That’s why people can’t shag them”

  1. Hang on, she is a doctor, one of God’s anointed

    And she has been helping this year’s winner in Oppressed Minority Top Trumps

    Surely she has therefore played her get out of jail free card?

  2. Can’t shag them?
    Experience of some 12 year olds suggests that shagging does take place. So ‘can’t shag them’ becomes ‘not allowed to shag them’. As obviously some do.

    We already have under 16s in this country deciding multiple matters for themselves. Including whether to remain homeless, whether to have sex, whether to drink, whether to smoke. Why should they not also decide to change sex?

  3. Belgium, wasn’t it? That allowed terminally-sick kids to be put to sleep.
    (Pick your euphemism for “killed by a doctor).

  4. Webberley, from Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, insisted she was innocent and warned that closing down her service meant that patients could come to harm.

    “Keep the cash coming or the puppy gets it, understand?”

    Why isn’t she in prison? If she had been a black male illegally selling these drugs to 12 year olds she would be in jail.

  5. Why isn’t she in prison? If she had been a black male illegally selling these drugs to 12 year olds she would be in jail.

    I think the “black” is probably superfluous here…

  6. “the concept of statutory rape seems to have disappeared in Britain.”

    Not for white people……..ask that teacher who did time for shagging one of his 15 yo students and then running away to France together.

  7. I think the “black” is probably superfluous here…

    Yarp. I reckon a black, white, brown, yellow or aquamarine bloke would’ve been sent down for illegally selling body-altering, sterilising drugs to kids.

    The vagina defence is real.

  8. Bloke in North Dorset

    “Why isn’t she in prison? If she had been a black male illegally selling these drugs to 12 year olds she would be in jail.“

    Unless mummy’s a Labour MP.

  9. Sheesh! Is this some sort of subtle reading comprehension test?

    1. If 12 year olds cannot give consent for medical treatment, then wouldn’t you suppose by the same reasoning that children under 16 cannot legally be medically treated for anything? Buggers up pediatricians, doesn’t it?

    2. There’s zero point in prescribing puberty-blockers after puberty. Every doctor does the same.

    3. The only reason this hit the courts is that she didn’t fill the forms in to register the business. Only bureaucrats care.

  10. NiV

    Strawman.

    12 year olds can’t give consent for elective treatment. Ditto tattoos, piercings, plastic tits and so on.

  11. It would be interesting to get the figures for these cases for single mother versus biological father present.

  12. “the concept of statutory rape seems to have disappeared in Britain.”

    Our legal system seems to be degenerating to a point where there’s one law for people who can get hundreds of brothers, uncles and cousins (very often the same chap) out on the street and a more rigorous one for those who can’t.

  13. “The only reason this hit the courts is that she didn’t fill the forms in to register the business. Only bureaucrats care.”

    Bollocks. Read the article before trying to whitewash what she did. She was ‘refused’ a licence to practice by the NHS, so had ‘filled in the forms’, just didn’t like the decision she got, so went ahead and did it anyway.

  14. “She was ‘refused’ a licence to practice by the NHS, so had ‘filled in the forms’, …”

    Mr Davies said: “Here was a doctor who was providing care, information and advice that was very much needed. But her business was not registered.

    “It was never anticipated by Webberley that the registration of the company would be in any way controversial.

    “She didn’t appreciate that the company needed registration until it was pointed out to her.

    “Webberley always followed the international guidelines for transgender care, but what she didn’t do was to state how many patients there were, how old they were and what treatment was included.

    “It is regrettable that she didn’t provide that information. She didn’t provide it due to confidentiality and that was misplaced.

    If you don’t fill the forms in properly you won’t get a licence. How can you get a licence if you don’t fill the forms in?

  15. Todays story was that the forced marriage law should be changed as people don’t want to turn in their parents, contrast this with the whining that not enough men have been convicted under the controlling behaviour law

  16. “If you don’t fill the forms in properly you won’t get a licence. How can you get a licence if you don’t fill the forms in?”

    Well which is it then? Did she fill some forms in or not? You said she hadn’t, yet your above sentence also says she did, but wrongly.

    If you need a licence to do X, doing X without one is illegal. And will get you prosecuted. There’s a million and one jobs and careers that people have to jump through bureaucratic hoops in order to operate legally in, why should kiddie fiddlers (sorry, child gender reassignment specialists) be any different?

  17. @Jim, all

    The licensed/registered issue has me wondering:

    In USA is there any job which is unregulated in every state?

  18. “If you need a licence to do X, doing X without one is illegal. And will get you prosecuted. There’s a million and one jobs and careers that people have to jump through bureaucratic hoops in order to operate legally in,…”

    Yes. It was illegal. She got fined.

    But it was about the failure to jump through the proper bureaucratic hoops, not – as a casual reader of Tim’s headpost might suppose – anything to do with underage consent issues or mistreating patients. Only Statist bureaucrats would care.

    If being 12 and unable to give consent was a barrier to medical treatment, pediatricians would be out of a job. It’s just Tim finding another excuse to troll for another a flame-war on TGs again.

    Whether or not you agree with treating children for dysphoria, there was apparently nothing abnormal or non-standard about what she was doing medically. Doctors routinely treat children with parental consent – this is just another medical treatment as far as they’re concerned. It’s just the usual business of government being crap, and the NHS being full of waiting lists and delays and bureaucracy, but you’re not allowed to compete and do a better job than them.

  19. @ NiV
    Tim believes that 12-year-olds are not generally mentally (ignore physically) mature enough to decide on life-changing gender reassignment surgery.
    I am inclined to agree even with caveats that a family court should be able to authorise treatment in the very few cases where it is appropriate.
    Ms Webberley was charging £175 per hour so about £300,000 to £400,000 a year – do you really think that she was doing this as a charity?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *