A trans charity has had to take action after receiving an “intolerable” amount of abuse.
Mermaids, a charity that supports gender variant and transgender youth up and down the country including Liverpool, have closed their helplines and webchat services for two days after receiving hate. The group have also decided to reduce their opening hours next week as well as a result of the abuse.
The advocacy organisation, which was founded in 1995 by a group of parents of gender-nonconforming children and became a charitable incorporated organisation in 2015, took to social media to share the news.
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On Twitter, the charity wrote: “Due to intolerable abuse, we have made the decision to close the helpline and webchat services for the rest of today and tomorrow. Next week, to enable us to take all volunteers off the rota, we will reduce hours to 9 am to 6 pm only. We do not make this decision lightly, but our duty of care towards staff and volunteers necessitates a harm reduction approach to protect our dedicated staff and volunteer team. We hope to be able to resume normal working hours as soon as possible.”
Mermaids confirmed to the ECHO that their helpline will be back on Monday, October 10, giving staff a few days to “deal with and get a breather” from the abuse and allowing them time to access the charity's counselling services should they need to.
However, for now, out of the 131 volunteers, 19 of them working on the helpline have now been taken off for the next week “to protect them”. To help those who remain on the helpline the charity is providing their helpers with more regular breaks and reducing hours. A spokesperson for the Mermaids also told the ECHO: “Our safeguarding team will be reporting the abuse staff have been experiencing over webchat, emails and the phone, to the police as a hate crime.”
Although the direct reason behind the charity’s backlash remains unclear, the leading national LGBTQ+ charity has been making headlines in the last week after it became public knowledge that a trustee from Mermaids quit their role over revelations that he spoke at an “academic” conference hosted by B4U-ACT - an organisation that promotes support for paedophiles.
The Times revealed that Dr Jacob Breslow attended the event as a PhD student. B4U-ACT, which was founded in 2003 by convicted sex offender Michael Melsheimer, calls for paedophiles to have the right to live "in truth and dignity", holds workshops and gives presentations about the needs and rights of people "with an attraction to children and adolescents", and runs support groups for both them and their friends and family members. All of which Mermaids have said is “completely at odds” with its values.
Since the news broke, Mermaids have confirmed they will review its recruitment process and the trans youth charity’s chair of trustees, Belinda Bell, issued an apology.
She said: “We want to apologise for the distress and concern this news has caused. It is clear that Dr Breslow should never have been appointed to the board, and as chair of the trustee board, I am horrified that he was. All trustees and staff are subject to background checks including enhanced DBS searches, social media reviews and other due diligence. On this occasion, we also placed weight on the fact his employer is a globally renowned institution that would have carried out its own checks. Clearly, none of this was enough.
“You will want to know what steps we are taking to ensure that we are more rigorous in future. First, we are commissioning a review of our trustee recruitment process to be carried out by an external expert body. We will enact its recommendations. Second, we are evaluating our policies and procedures, again in conjunction with an external expert body. Third, we have updated the Charity Commission on the matter and the steps the charity intends to take to ensure there is transparency about what happened.”
She also added: “We should also say that Dr Breslow was a trustee for a very short period of time [from July until last week], during which he had no interactions with any of our young people or families and only attended one regular quarterly board meeting. Mermaids will continue to provide a wide range of support to the thousands of young people and families who need us. We want to apologise for shaking your faith in us.”
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