I am on holiday but my mentions and DMs have gone a bit mad.

To clarify:

1. I did not ask James to tweet about my Mermaids screenshots. He did so & did not tell me (second tweet below). I did happen to see it & mentioned it in DMs at which point he said he hoped I didn’t

1/n

https://twitter.com/ayrshirelass13/status/1829411423778193919

mind that he had tweeted it.

2. I was unaware that a year later he had quote tweeted himself taking credit for “revealing this material” as per the 2nd screenshot in @Ayrshirelass13 post. He did not tag me in that tweet, nor did he tell me privately that he had tweeted it

2/n

Would have been nice to have been given credit for this. 🤷‍♀️

For the record, I sent James my screenshots from the Mermaids Youth Forum. He unsuccessfully tried to get them published.

I (and 2 other parents) later completely independently worked w/the Telegraph who did…

https://twitter.com/jamesesses/status/1829211413803610560

break the story and the Charities Commission complaint then resulted.

There have been concerned parents who quietly gathered the evidence in the background, spoke to the press and complained to the CC.

Would be nice if this weren’t forgotten.

Side 🧵 Part 4 on the development of Watson’s @gwc_news “transgender pupil” guidance.

The one where they made the Telegraph

telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/2… Around the time of my complaint to the Registrar, the school actually did put their policy on the school website for a few months.

Hurrah! The secret keeping policy was no longer secret!

Side 🧵 Part 3 on the development of Watson’s @gwc_news “transgender pupil” guidance.

As part of the school’s submission to the Registrar, Watson’s duly submitted the guidelines I posted in Part 2.

Helpfully, Gordon Boyd also provided notes, incl the first mention of age 12…





According to Gordon, the new school guidelines were signed off by the Governing Council on 13 June 2022 and were now also applicable to the Junior School which is run under the leadership of George (he/him) Salmond.

Side 🧵 Part 2 on the development of Watson’s @gwc_news “transgender pupil” guidance.

Here’s the full original internal guidance though as I said before, as parent, you would have no way of knowing it existed as it wasn’t on the parent portal

Will take 2 posts to screenshot





I don’t know exactly when it was finalised but it was certainly in place by Nov 2021 when I was instructed to request it via SAR.

It’s a bit vague (the school will become more and more explicit on its secret keeping policy in future versions as they doubledown)

Side 🧵 on the development and insanity of Watson’s “transgender pupil” guidance

Here’s a taster of the sort of crazy I was unwittingly dealing with. The link is to this by @transgendertrd which I think we all will agree has stood the test of time very well indeed, unlike…

1/n Watson’s @gwc_news incoherent rambling.



When Dom Greig told me way back in Oct 2019 that it was school policy to affirm a pupil’s gender identity and so we had no say as parents, he wasn’t being completely truthful.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/upl…

Dom Greig 🧵Part Three

The one where he tells me he will not consider the clinical advice we received and actually backs that up in writing.

Again, Dom was the head of the LGBT club at Watson’s, one of my daughter’s Year Heads and a Spanish teacher.

1/n I met with Dom in Oct 2019. I’d had niggles that he was going to ignore our phone call and ensure the school continued to support our daughter’s social transition. Turns out I was right. 😡

I have a lot of new followers, so here’s a sidetrack 🧵 on how Watson’s @gwc_news ended up playing a not insignificant role in the Charity Commission’s opening an investigation into Mermaids.

I have a dossier on the Mermaids Youth Forum.

1/n It formed part of the breaking Tel article on Mermaids which in turn helped lead to the Charity Commission opening their investigation:



I did my utmost to repeatedly raise my concerns about Mermaids to the school

https://x.com/rogdmum/status/1578776485489389568?s=61&t=8CxL28ZCFDq66yuIWhY6_Q

Dom Greig Part 2

If you thought part 1 was bad, do read on. Again, Dom was the head of the LGBT club at Watson’s, one of my daughter’s Year Heads and a Spanish teacher

The following autumn, my daughter told Dom she was now a boy and wanted to use he/him pronouns at school

1/n Dom had already changed her pronouns at her request to they/them some months before- without our knowledge and against clinical advice.

He did not tell us our daughter now identified as male.

Oh no.

Instead, at our daughter’s request, he pulled her *brother* into a meeting.

Let’s start with Dom Greig

Here he is on the left celebrating Watson’s being awarded LGBTYS Gold Award. That’s Melvyn @roffeme & Head of the Senior School Gordon Boyd on the right. Big smiles all round!

I’ll cover Mel/Gordon separately but let’s go right back to the beginning..

Dom was the leader of the school’s LGBT club. As exceptionally bad luck would have it, he was also one of my daughter’s Year Heads. He’s also a Spanish teacher.

When our daughter initially told us she was non binary at the age of 13, Dom did phone us.

2/n

I’m going to go way off topic and do a nice thread. A thread to convince everyone to go visit Georgia which is where I was while the Cass Report broke.

It is a breathtaking country and I only scratched the surface.

Tbilisi is achingly beautiful

1/n It has all the balconies and I mean ALL the balconies

2/n

Before I start on my individual profiles of every single decision maker at Watson’s @GWC_News I should also highlight the school’s LGBT club and the utter lack of safeguarding under the school’s leadership.

Here’s Richard Travers dismissing my concerns.

A 🧵about the club 1/n Described as “the jewel in our rainbow crown” on a page no longer on the school’s website (good thing I had the foresight to mass archive



the school makes it clear the LGBT club is a place to be affirmed in your identity 2/n archive.ph/2020.12.13-195…

I’ve had a number of @GWC_News parents and prospective parents ask me for a list of the professional monsters (my description) who kept our daughter’s social transition secret from us and/or reported us to social services, lied to us etc.

These were the decision makers… Melvyn Roffe @roffeme Chief Professional Monster (leaves school this year)

Dom Greig, Year Head, former LGBT Club leader, Spanish teacher and Chief Secret Keeper

Emma Henderson, Year Head, Drama teacher, Chief Reporter to Social Services

Paul Dean, Guidance Guy, Chief Betrayer

It’s now a full 6 weeks since I wrote to the Master of the Merchant Company, owners of George Watson’s College @gwc_news to complain about Melvyn Roffe, GWC Principal (see screenshots). I was promised a response but none has been forthcoming & my patience has run out

Thread 🧵





I doubt it will surprise many people that Watson’s was my daughter’s former school.

I have spent nearly 4 years on Twitter not naming the school. I can no longer, in good conscience, continue to not link the school to my account. On the back of the Telegraph article about Melvyn

I briefly tweeted this screenshot the other day, but it needs a thread of its own, AKA the Karpman Triangle thread 🧵

The school (yes, that Edinburgh @SCISschools school) is worried if they tell parents about their child’s social transition against the child’s wishes, trust will will be broken.

It’s worth highlighting that the school has no such concerns about breaking the trust of the parents- only the child’s trust matters here

This is the Karpman Triangle with the school being the “rescuer” of the child “victim” away from their parent “persecutors”

I haven’t really tweeted about the Registrar’s investigation into that school. His determinations are signed off by @JennyGilruth . This means Jenny has no problems with a school holding policies which enable them to: 🧵

- Keep a child’s social transition at school secret from their parents (from the age of 12)

- Tell an unaware sibling that their brother/sister is now the opposite gender at school and to keep it secret from their parents

- Continue to support the social transition even after the parent has reminded the school that they have

Parents can’t win.

Our daughter’s school now cites our temporarily removing her phone as a major factor in their referring us to social services citing their professional belief that she was at the threshold for child protection

Example of why we removed her phone in next tweet

https://twitter.com/citysamuel/status/1666553555866591234

We’d found she had gotten herself into a dark and frightening online world with her peer group encouraging self harm/suicide ideation etc. We thought we were doing the right thing by reporting this to the school.

They turned it round on us, initially saying the referral was

I have spoken to a LOT of parents who have been blindsided by their child’s school supporting a social transition without their awareness, let alone support.

The best advice I can give is to document *everything* from the very beginning. Make sure every meeting is minuted (and if the school is taking the minutes, make sure you get a copy and are completely happy with them. Otherwise do you own and send them to the school.

Avoid phone calls- if the school insists on making decisions over the phone, minute these phone calls and send them to the school

Prospective @SCISschools @HMC_Org independent school parents, please be aware that if you should be unlucky enough to ever need to file a formal complaint with the school, you may well find that normal expectations of school/parent engagement no longer apply.

Short 🧵 For example, going back to the supercilious assistant to the Principal…

We were astonished to find the Principal’s report to our formal complaint to be littered with factual inaccuracies. We assumed these would be easy to correct

Oh no!

I first wrote to the supercilious one:

The former Director of @SCISschools says they use “qualified CP expert trainers”

As it happens, they are running CP training tomorrow

I wonder if it was @SCISschools or this trainer (if not who?) who told our Governors that there was no need to make records of a CP referral? 🤔 After the school had refused to discuss the social services referral with us at all, we included questions about it as part of a subject access request during the formal complaint process.

Nothing came back on that issue so I wrote back to the school:

Over the next few months, @SCISschools @HMC_Org prospective parents will be starting to think about where to apply. There are loads of guides giving suggestions of what to consider/questions to ask when considering independent schools.

I’ve got a few suggestions too… The guides generally include something on school culture/ethos, but these schools are very good at saying the right things and painting a pretty picture. My suggestion would be to try to find out how the school handles it when things go wrong: