Mermaids II: The Paedophile Trustee & Other Safeguarding Fails
On the revelation that Mermaids had an obvious paedophile as a trustee from July 2022. It sounds unbelievable - but here we are. PLEASE let this be it.
I don’t feel like I can even give it a week before my next post, as this latest revelation about Mermaids in the last day or so is SO beyond shocking. Except for those of us who have been watching all this for many years, joining dots, shouting about it, and have been demonised for our trouble, it isn’t actually that surprising. As anyone who understands how abusive gaslighters, propagandists and predators of all kinds, including sex offenders, operate, In Plain Sight and Going Big (aka The Big Lie) are known and very successful tactics to get people to allow you free rein to do whatever you want, remove opposition and boundaries, and normalise damaging beliefs and actions, including sexual abuse and violence. All they need are naive, stupid people with weak boundaries who don’t understand red flags or safeguarding principles, using them as enablers, footsoldiers and enforcers, et voila.
Enter Mermaids. Again. A charity for vulnerable children and young people demonstrating their incompetence once again, and complete lack of even the most basic safeguarding principles or, it now seems, any due diligence whatsoever.
So not only have we seen numerous safeguarding fails on their own forums, including poor data privacy for thousands of vulnerable kids and their families, the flouting of basic safeguarding principles like sending teen girls physically damaging breast binders behind their parents’ backs, directing young people to struck-off pill-pusher doctors the Webberleys to get puberty blockers, directing them to other forums for discussion where sexual predators have been known to lurk. Turns out they do no due diligence at all enabling known paedophiles to work for them in senior, influential positions.
The Latest Revelation: Jacob Breslow, Academic, Paedophile Apologist (At The Very Least) & Virulent Anti-Woman Activist. On board of Mermaids from July 2022. Now Resigned
Yesterday things went crazy, even from when I started writing this post. If you’ve missed any of it, you can find the detail of this person’s prior activities on Graham Linehan’s Substack here.
Suffice to say, Jacob Breslow, Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality at LSE, who identifies as a “feminist”, is openly pro-paedophile and reserves his most virulent hatred for those women he calls “TERFS”. Often, it seems, because of their commitment to child safeguarding. Uh-huh.
Of course, many of the blue tick enablers are still trying to excuse Mermaids here for their absolutely shocking lack of even the most basic due diligence (Breslow’s activities were easily Googelable and come on, The Charity Commission is pretty clear about safeguarding protocols), and excuse their own lack of critical thinking, their own enabling behaviours, twist things around so in their tiny little uncritical minds it’s our and “the right wing media’s fault” for pointing out the massive obvious safeguarding loopholes with Mermaids that women have been shouting about for YEARS. Or the dot-joining we’ve all been doing FOR YEARS from information readily available in the public sphere about the obviously sinister nature of any ideological drive that explicitly seeks to dismantle boundaries, excuses paedophiles, treats all and any safeguarding as “bigotry” and “apartheid”. And demonises and lies about any potential opponents (so often the women who understand safeguarding) so successfully that it’s those who point out the issues who become publicly vilified, sent death and rape threats, lose jobs, get arrested, become social pariahs.
It’s notable too that so many of the women who first picked up on glaring red flags here were women who had previously experienced DV or CSA. The gaslighting tactics of the gender fundamentalist movement have been glaring and in play the whole time. The only astonishing thing is that more people didn’t pick it up; once you see it, you can’t unsee it, I’m afraid. It’s like one of those magic pictures.
Anyone gonna say sorry or “We were wrong?” I doubt it. Apologies to all those who have been unfairly vilified and lied about for trying to flag this all up would be very well deserved. But of course, they won’t be forthcoming from the many useful idiots who’ve been enabling all this at Mermaids and elsewhere, helping spread misinformation, smears and propaganda about those who were trying to raise the alarm. There are SO many of them who should have known better, many influential people, all of whom gleefully stepped on the bandwagon and ALLOWED this to continue as the evidence mounted up over the years. Journalists, academics, politicians, celebrities, organisations.
@FemmeLoves has been compiling an alphabetical list on Twitter. Please do check it out.
And to all these useful idiots: We told you. WE TOLD YOU. We are hopefully at the beginning of the end now, but it has taken FAR too long. How many kids have been damaged because of these people and orgs refusing to see? I’ve been aware of this stuff for around five years now, many campaigners much, much longer. We have always had plenty of evidence that something was amiss; and yet, so many people and organisations with the power to stop it have let it carry on, and decided to demonise and monster us instead. I can only hope history judges you, as it judges others who have ignored and demonised whistleblowers in the past. Because let’s face it, none of you have ever been really “kind”. Or demonstrated much intelligence either, for that matter.
Update: 25th November ‘22
Susie Green steps down (suddenly) as CEO of Mermaids
… and now we know why:
Update 2nd December ‘22
Formal Inquiry Launched Into Transgender Charity Mermaids (The Times)
The Charity Commission has launched a statutory inquiry into the transgender charity Mermaids after identifying concerns about its management.
The regulator said the inquiry — its most serious form of investigation — was triggered by “newly identified issues” around the youth charity’s “governance and management”.
The inquiry, which opened on 28 November 2022, will examine:
The administration, governance and management of the charity by the trustees including its leadership and culture.
Whether the trustees have complied with and fulfilled their duties and responsibilities as trustees under charity law; in particular whether they had sufficient oversight of the charity’s activities and compliance with its policies and procedures and in line with its charitable objects.
Whether there has been any misconduct and/or mismanagement by the trustees.
It is the Commission’s policy, after it has concluded an inquiry, to publish a report detailing what issues the inquiry looked at, what actions were undertaken as part of the inquiry and what the outcomes were.
A useful thread of things the inquiry SHOULD be looking into, from Maya Forstater.