A transgender woman who suffered years of discrimination and abuse in the UK has been granted residency in New Zealand on exceptional humanitarian grounds.

The 57-year-old woman was granted New Zealand residency by the immigration and protection tribunal in Auckland, who decided the woman was safer to remain in her adopted country where she had experienced no abuse or discrimination since arriving in 2009.

The tribunal deemed it would be “unduly harsh” for the woman to be forced to return to the UK, where she suffered years of “persecution” due to what the court documents described as her “gender identity disorder”, now commonly referred to as gender dysphoria.



The woman, who works as an IT specialist and has a degree in engineering, was described as a vulnerable but “highly intelligent and skilled” individual by a psychologist who assessed her. The woman declined to be interviewed by the Guardian.

In 2005, whilst living in the UK, the woman transitioned from a male to a female, after decades of escalating confusion and mental health problems arising from her gender dysphoria.

Although the woman felt like a female from the age of seven, her single-sex grammar school in the UK was an unending experience of violence, abuse and trauma that caused her to suppress her true identity and conceal it from friends, family and colleagues for most of her life.

At the age of 42, the woman decided to transition as she felt becoming a woman or suicide were the only options left to her.

After her gender reassignment surgery the woman experienced overt discrimination at the large multinational company where she was employed in the IT department.

The woman said her colleagues regarded her as a “freak”, and her work assignments and responsibilities were downgraded.

“After complaining to the human resources department about a specific incident of bullying, the perpetrator confronted her and threatened that if she ever complained again he would ‘rip her head off’,” the tribunal’s decision said.

It added: “This work environment was homophobic and overtly hostile to ‘tranny freaks’.”

In her private life the woman became increasingly hermit-like, and suffered severe panic attacks, clinical depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and PTSD.

Due to frequent hostility and verbal and physical abuse from strangers, the woman resorted to doing shopping in the middle of the night when the supermarket was quiet and she could limit her contact with strangers.

Despite her precautions and isolated existence, the woman experienced frequent verbal and physical assaults from strangers, including being stalked, pushed off pavements and screamed at. She also had people grab her breasts to see if they were real, and ask “what are you?”.

In 2009 the woman relocated to New Zealand to escape the abuse, and to be closer to her parents and sister who lived in the country.



In the eight years the woman has lived in New Zealand her depression and anxiety has receded, and she has not experienced any discrimination or abuse.

In pleading for the woman to be allowed to remain in New Zealand, her lawyer, Kar-yen Partington, presented 20 articles to the tribunal detailing transphobic hate crimes in the UK.

Recent data from the UK shows transphobic hate crimes against LGBTQ people have soared by nearly 80% in the last four years, with more than one in five LGBT people being the victim of a hate crime in last 12 months.

Lynda Whitehead,a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Transaction in New Zealand, told Radio NZ that Kiwis tend to be fairly tolerant of transgender people.

“In certain areas on this planet the violence and prejudice that is shown against trans people is quite horrendous,” she said. “I’d like to think that Kiwis have got a fairly open-minded and relaxed view of things.”

The woman is “safe, happy, settled and accepted” in New Zealand, the tribunal reported in its decision, is involved in community activities and employment, and has made a number of friends.

“She is unlikely to maintain the equilibrium she has developed in New Zealand if she is required to return to the United Kingdom,” the tribunal noted, when approving her residency.

More than 40 asylum seekers have been granted refugee status in New Zealand because of their sexual and gender orientation, with the numbers approved by Immigration New Zealand tripling since 2012.