Police in West Yorkshire are investigating after the UK’s largest charity supporting transgender children received a stream of abusive messages online.



Mermaids UK reported a sharp rise in abusive and threatening comments on social media, saying it had been forced to block 20 people a day on Twitter.



The charity, which supports transgender children and their families, said it had been falsely accused of “enticing” children by attending recent Pride UK events.



One tweet sent to the charity included a poster that described Mermaids UK as a “dangerous cult”, saying staff planned to “groom gay kids”.

Mermaids UK’s chief executive, Susie Green, said she was falsely accused of forcibly castrating her transgender daughter. “They [people on Twitter] have referred to my daughter as my gay son and I have been accused of chemically castrating her,” she said.

Green’s daughter, Jackie, who is 24 and lives in Italy, said: “Not only are their words incredibly hurtful to me but it is also horrible to think someone would write something like that, and that they are trying to discredit my mother. If my mum had not helped me I would not be here today.”

The charity put the rise in abuse down to negative media coverage, citing an article in the Mail on Sunday which explored the number of children receiving puberty-blockers. The article quoted a “trio of top US doctors” who described these blockers as being “‘unsupported by rigorous scientific evidence”.

Mermaids UK was awarded the Community Group of the Year Award at the 2016 National Diversity Awards and has won the Charity of the Year in the Children and Young People Now Awards.

Green said: “[It’s got worse] because of the massive changes in the US, for example Donald Trump’s recent ban on transgender people serving in the military ... we have also attended double the number of pride events ... so we are becoming more visible.”



She added: “We are just a support organisation – we use our lobbying power through the voices of young people and the families we support.”

Green warned that the social media backlash may put people off coming to the charity for help. She said her staff were finding it “really disturbing” and “distressing.” She added parents had also noticed the messages and have been concerned about them.

Writer and broadcaster Paris Lees said: “Susie Green is saving lives and I wish my parents had known about Mermaids when I was growing up ... there was no information about transgender people in public life and anything there was, was misinformation or wide stereotypes and fearmongering. Because of that my parents were not able to support me in the way I needed to be supported and that caused me years of misery. The work Mermaids is doing is saving lives.”

The number of British children who want to change their gender has grown in recent years. At the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust gender identity development service in London the number of referrals went from 1,419 in 2015-16, to 2,016 between 2016-17.

One parent, who wanted to be anonymous, said their family had been helped enormously by Mermaids UK. “It makes me feel very angry [to hear about the abuse] and it makes me feel that unless you’ve been through this before – or been close to someone who has transitioned – I don’t understand how people can understand how it feels. I am the mother of a six-year-old female to male child and I often get those sorts of criticisms and it really hurts.”

Rebecca Stinson, head of trans inclusion at Stonewall, said: “It’s concerning that people might be detracted from seeking support due to this abuse. We want to make sure those who need it have access to help.”



West Yorkshire police said they had received an allegation of a hate incident last month and that it was being investigated.