DR ANJA RAVINE, MURDOCH CHILDREN\u2019S RESEARCH INSTITUTE:\u00a0 It’s a scary time for trans people globally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
REPORTER:\u00a0 The topic of gender has also been on the executive order list.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DONALD TRUMP, US PRESIDENT:\u00a0There are only two genders, male and female.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ANJA RAVINE, MURDOCH CHILDREN\u2019S RESEARCH INSTITUTE:\u00a0 We can see the rising anti-trans rhetoric. We hear it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
REPORTER:\u00a0 It\u2019s the bombshell ban that has left teenagers in Queensland facing an uncertain future.<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER, REPORTER:\u00a0Dr Anja Ravine, a specialist in transgender youth health and wellbeing, discovered an alarming trend – decades old studies are shaping decisions affecting the lives of trans kids today.<\/p>\n
ANJA RAVINE:\u00a0 One of the papers I came across was an old paper from 38 years ago published in Australia, and it’s become prominent again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 The 1987 report in the Medical Journal of Australia describes a little-known treatment program for trans and gender diverse children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It ran from 1975 to 1980 at a state-funded psychiatric hospital in Perth.<\/p>\n
ANJA RAVINE:\u00a0 They were referred to as \u201cgender disordered\u201d children. It’s implicit that they were expecting gender identity to return to what was expected. So that is really within the definition of conversion therapy.<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 The paper is currently being cited favourably by opponents of gender affirming care in submissions to lawmakers, US courts and medical regulators around the world.<\/p>\n
Even in Australia, the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists, has written a clinical guide on how doctors should care for gender diverse youth. It also cites the paper.<\/p>\n
ANJA RAVINE:\u00a0 Efforts to suppress or change, conversion therapy, is illegal in many parts of the country.<\/p>\n
Also, we know now that people who’ve been exposed to this actually carry long-term psychological scars. It’s very harmful.<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 The report, written by WA\u2019s then director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Services, Dr Robert Kosky, said the children\u2019s gender non-conformity was influenced by their parents.<\/p>\n
ANJA RAVINE:\u00a0 It was decided that the way of dealing with this was to separate the children from the parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 It referenced the experience of eight primary school-aged children who were hospitalised, one at a time, for up to six months.<\/p>\n
Thirty-eight years later, Dr Anja Ravine thinks she may have found one of those kids.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 When I looked at the actual admissions sheet, it actually stated on there that my reason for admission was to stop me from being transsexual in an adolescence.<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 Through mutual friends, Anja came across Jayne McFadyen.<\/p>\n
Jayne was admitted to the Stubbs Terrace Children\u2019s Psychiatric Hospital in Perth, in 1975. She was 10.<\/p>\n
In the National Library of Australia Jayne can access the research paper.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 No conscious attempt was made by staff members to encourage masculine or feminine role behaviours. Pfft. That’s wrong.<\/p>\n
When I was young and knew the difference between boys and girls, I always thought for some reason my body was wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My mum caught me with some girl\u2019s clothing on and being sort of mid-seventies, not knowing what else to do, um, she went and spoke to our local family doctor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 Jayne says once admitted, she was closely monitored by staff at the facility.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 I was subjected to random checks of my clothing just to make sure I wasn’t wearing any sort of female under clothes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Had to sort of go to the toilet, if I was going to a cubicle, have the door open so they could check that I wasn’t just sitting down to pee. That I actually stood like a boy and urinated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 After being hospitalised for nearly six months, Jayne was finally allowed to go home.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 When I came out, I had suppressed my sense of gender so far down. because I was worried that I would be sent back to the psych hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 The study checked in on her one year later and again when she was 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 Age last seen 18. Cross-dressing occurred three years previously but stopped of its own accord.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 After being discharged, it would take 22 years for Jayne to come out.<\/p>\n
Before then, she fell in love and started a family but over time, her wife Deb noticed Jayne was hurting.<\/p>\n
DEB:\u00a0 I said what’s going on. And she kind of told me, and then she told me what happened at Stubbs Terrace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So I said, why don’t you just like, move out for a bit and decide who you want to be or who you need to be, um, and then we’ll see what happens from there.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 I was in a stage where I started suffering quite a major depression. My personal view was I could only see two ways out. One was suicide and the other one was to transition.<\/p>\n
After that I made the decision to transition. I felt a lot lighter in myself that I could finally see myself being who I always believed myself to be.<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 Jayne, now 60, was not aware her experience at the facility may have been one of eight case studies in Dr Robert Kosky’s report.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 The one I immediately identified with was case study five.<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 Because of privacy laws, the actual names of the children who were admitted aren\u2019t accessible, but Jayne’s hospital admission and medical records align with case study five.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 Ten, male. Well that fits. I was 10 when I went there. Wears females under clothes. Wants to be a girl. Yep.<\/p>\n
ANJA RAVINE:\u00a0 From what I\u2019ve learnt from Jane, these other people, it would be very surprising if they haven’t had similar life experiences as Jayne and that is deeply troubling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 Now Jayne, Dr Anja Ravine and a team of researchers have written a critique of Dr Robert Kosky\u2019s 1987 report. Ahead of its release, they\u2019ve revisited the site of the facility in Perth.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 At the front was the living type space. Supposedly they’d, in their words, cured me. I’ll summarise it into their words as having cured me. And yet here I was, I was trans.<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 Their report has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia today.<\/p>\n
ANJA RAVINE:\u00a0 I think it’s important for the lawmakers, the courts and policy makers to be aware of this report and to understand that past reports like this are really in the category of misinformation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MON SCHAFTER:\u00a0 Dr Robert Kosky, the author of the 1987 paper, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Through the ups and downs, Deb has been by Jayne\u2019s side. They remarried in 2019.<\/p>\n
DEB:\u00a0 Jayne’s outer shell was different, but intrinsically she was still the same person and, it was really nice for her to be able to be a bride as well.<\/p>\n
JAYNE MCFADYEN:\u00a0 I absolutely feel good in my skin now. I know who I am. I’m Jayne, that is it. If you don’t like me, you don’t like me. If you do like me, you do like me. But this is who I am.\u00a0<\/p>\n
SARAH FERGUSON: \u00a0And if you need help now, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DR ANJA RAVINE, MURDOCH CHILDREN\u2019S RESEARCH INSTITUTE:\u00a0 It’s a scary time for trans people globally.\u00a0 REPORTER:\u00a0 The topic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,121706,137,500,32286,46785],"class_list":["post-193823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-conversion-therapy","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-sexual","tag-transgender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}