Christian right targets Brighton GP treating young trans people

Last year, Taylor* was in a dark place. With his thirteenth birthday on the horizon, he says he “didn’t want to go outside”, because he felt he “was getting more feminine”.

Taylor first told his mum he was a boy when he was two. This remained consistent, so he was referred to NHS gender services when he was four and a half. The approach of his teenage years filled him with dread.

“I felt really horrible all the time and started having some thoughts about dark things,” he says. “I felt like I wasn’t allowed to be who I wanted to be, you know? And that was really hard.”

Thanks to gender-affirming care he’s received over the past year, Taylor says he isn’t in that dark place any more. And it shows: he’s beaming when he talks about his newly hairy knees, and is excited about his karate teacher calling him a “good lad”.

But Taylor’s future is uncertain. The GP practice where he was receiving treatment is being investigated following a legal threat sent by a lawyer with links to Christian right and gender-critical groups, Good Law Project has found.

Located over three surgeries in Brighton and Hove, WellBN has been operating since 2022 and offers a range of services including a Trans Health Hub, previously led by trans doctor Sam Hall. In April, WellBN was ordered to stop registering new patients under the age of 18 with the intention of providing gender care under threat of closure by NHS Sussex, which is now investigating the practice.

Paul Conrathe, the lawyer behind the action which prompted the investigation, has a long history of representing cases opposing abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

In 2020, Conrathe took aim at Gillick competence – a legal principle that allows people under 16 to give consent to medical treatment that is crucial to trans and abortion rights – when he acted for detransitioner Keira Bell in her case against the Tavistock clinic. Even though the judgment was overturned by Good Law Project, it marked the start of restrictions on puberty blockers in the UK. This year, he represented gender-critical activist Linzi Smith, who won a ruling in July that police officers were wrong to wear their uniforms when taking part in Newcastle Pride.

Conrathe has also worked with anti-abortion outfits such as the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, gender-critical groups including Fair Cop, and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Based in Arizona, ADF was central in overturning Roe v Wade in the US and Southern Poverty Law Center has designated it as an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group”. Conrathe acted alongside ADF for an anti-abortion student group at the University of Nottingham in 2019, and is connected to current and former ADF staff on Facebook and LinkedIn.

In Brighton, Conrathe is representing a parent opposed to gender-affirming treatment his sixteen-year-old trans daughter received from WellBN.

The young person is happy with the treatment she has received and is opposed to her parent’s position, Good Law Project has learned. We have also been overwhelmed with testimonies from dozens of parents of trans children about the life-changing – and often life-saving – impact of their treatment from Dr Hall at WellBN. 

While the blocker ban means WellBN can’t provide new prescriptions to under 18s for puberty suppressing drugs, known as gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogues, the practice continued dispensing them after the ban to people with existing prescriptions, as permitted by law.

Before the investigation, the practice, like many GP practices, was also dispensing other drugs to under 18s that suppress some of the effects of puberty. This includes the mini contraceptive pill, which is also given to cisgender women and girls to help prevent periods, as well as for birth control.

“Our service is based on informed consent and bodily autonomy,” WellBN said. “Prescriptions were provided in accordance with Gillick competence, and only with parental consent to under 16s.”

Now, Conrathe is asking the courts to deem unlawful hormonal treatment for those under 18 provided by WellBN, as well as NHS Sussex’s funding of this service. WellBN believes this could result in a total ban on hormone treatment for trans youth under the age of 18 in the UK.

Conrathe and ADF did not respond to Good Law Project’s request for comment.

NHS Sussex had supported WellBN’s work, and the practice was even approached by NHS Somerset last year to replicate its model in that county, which is now being rolled out for over 18s.

But Conrathe’s judicial review – even before a court decision – caused it to shift its stance, with potentially devastating consequences. NHS Sussex itself has admitted that its own investigation could bring an “increased risk of suicidal ideation and/or mental health problems including disengagement from schools”.

WellBN said it fears “most families are likely to go underground, find private care – to significant financial sacrifice – and disappear from the NHS’s eyesight.”

As NHS Sussex goes even further in its restrictions on trans healthcare than the controversial Cass review, Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham, fears the dangers are even more acute.

“We know the drugs WellBN was prescribing in response to Wes Streeting’s ban on gender affirming puberty blockers are safe and routinely prescribed to cis teenagers,” Maugham said. “We know Hilary Cass did not recommend banning puberty blockers. Families of WellBN patients are worried about what NHS Sussex’s attempt to forcibly detransition their kids will mean – and Sussex admits there is an increased risk of suicide. God forbid that the worst happens. But if it does, we are in corporate manslaughter territory.”

NHS Sussex said, “Our clear priority, and the focus of this investigation, is to ensure that children and young people are receiving the most appropriate care and treatment.”

“Following concerns raised about some prescribing for children and young people by WellBN in Brighton and Hove, that may fall outside of national clinical policy and guidance, we are working with NHS England and have launched this investigation to determine the right clinical care and support for these young people going forward.”

According to author and journalist Sian Norris, US organisations that oppose abortion and trans rights like the ADF are “seeking to grow their influence and spending in the UK.”

“What can often seem like grassroots, family-led initiatives are often linked to much larger and influential organisations,” Norris said. Their common goal, she argues, is rolling back rights “to restore a ‘natural order’ where women are inferior to men, LGBTQ+ people don’t exist, and stereotyped ideas about how men and women should be are treated as innate… to destroy any attempts at equality and freedom.”

When Good Law Project talked to Carole*, a parent of a trans child treated at WellBN, she was in floods of tears. “We try our hardest not to show him how stressed we are,” she says, “but he sees that I don’t sleep and that my husband doesn’t talk any more.”

Her 12-year-old son Louis is currently taking puberty blockers that were prescribed before the ban, but Carole knows this is only an interim measure and is scared of what a ban on all hormones could mean. She reels off the struggles Louis faces, from rolled back healthcare to being banned from the changing rooms at school.

“I’m watching them trying to kill my child,” says Carole. “I know that sounds really heavy, but that’s what it feels like.”

The names in this story have been changed due to the safety concerns of families interviewed.