The heartbroken mum of a trans teen who took his own life is calling for a second inquest after finding he had hormone treatment from a pair of unregulated online doctors
Jayden Lowe, 18 – born female – paid £30 a month for private therapy after facing a six-year wait with the NHS , his inquest heard.
He had treatment for “a few months” before stepping in front of a train last September.
But mum Claire Lowe, 49, had no idea the online service was unregulated – or that married couple Helen and Mike Webberley who ran it have since been suspended.
Claire has also just discovered the Webberley’s online clinic GenderGP – which gave sex-change hormones to children as young as 12 – is moving to Spain to carry on.
Claire said: “You’d have expected this to come out at the inquest. We don’t know why it didn’t.”
Coroner Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp was satisfied Jayden took his own life and recorded a suicide verdict at an inquest in March.
She said delays in Jayden’s treatment were a “significant factor” but added: “The precise details of what was going through his mind will never be known.”
She also heard that he had recently split up with a girlfriend.
Claire said: “Going through the inquest was traumatic but in the light that what this online clinic did was wrong, I feel we need answers and another inquest.”
CONCERN
Talented artist Jayden came out to his parents aged 13 in a text that read: “Mum, Dad, I’m transgender, I hope you understand.”
By 2018 he had already been on the adolescent waiting list for two years before being told he was too old and must now wait four more years on the adult list.
Shop worker Claire said she and her husband Neil, 55, of Meldreth, Cambs, agreed to Jayden seeking help from the private online clinic despite their concerns after he’d told them: “I can’t live like this.”
She said: “He was going to turn 18 pretty soon, so we knew he would go along and do it anyway.”
Online doc Helen Webberley, of Abergavenny, was fined £12,000 last December after being found guilty of illegally providing healthcare services from her home.
It emerged that between March 2017 and February 2018, the firm operated without a licence.
She received an interim suspension from the General Medical Council in November 2018, and her husband was suspended in May.
In a statement on their website Dr Webberley said: “Mike and I are unable to prescribe any more but we have taken safe and secure steps to make sure nobody is without care while we wait for the NHS to step up to the mark.
“We have moved the management hub of GenderGP and the medical care outside the UK until it is safe to bring it back.”
If you need to speak to someone, Samaritans are available 24/7 by calling 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org
