Court Says Girl, 13, Can Have Sex Change Treatment

An Australian court has allowed a 13-year-old girl to have sex-change treatment in a decision which has set the country's medical and psychiatric professions at odds.

The child, who was named as Alex in court documents, wants to take reversible hormone treatment to prevent menstruation before she starts at secondary school. She will not go ahead with sex-change surgery until she is 18.

The court in Canberra was told that Alex had become fixated on a sex change after her father, who had raised her as a boy, died when she was five or six years old.

Alex was introduced at social occasions as a boy, had beaten all her male classmates at arm wrestling, and was the only girl to be accepted in the boys' cricket team at school. She would wear nappies to school because she was not allowed to use the male toilets and refused to use the female ones.

A child psychiatrist who has seen Alex over the past 16 months told the court she had dreams about having a penis.

"[He] has repeatedly stated his desire to be a boy and has behaved as such, going to boys' toilets, dressing in boys' clothes, boys' hairstyles and boys' games and activities.

"[He] has stopped having relationships with girls as a heterosexual type relationship. [He] feels angry and cheated that [his] body is female and angry that [he] has periods," he said.

Justice Alistair Nicholson ruled that hormonal treatment would be in Alex's best interests and would benefit the child's mental and emotional health, but the decision has divided medical experts and ethicists.

The president of the Australian Medical Association, Bill Glasson, said it sent a mixed message to the public.

"On one hand we're saying ... 13-year-olds are not allowed to go and see their doctor unless their parents are with them and the parents have access to their medical information.

"Yet on the other hand we're saying ... a 13-year-old child has the ability to receive full informed consent about such an important decision," he told ABC radio.

But Louise Newman, chair of the Royal Australia and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said the move would be beneficial.

"I think that children who don't have anyone to discuss these questions with or confide in become very isolated. They might become quite depressed and withdrawn. In a sense, they grow up with what becomes a secret, and that can have profound effects on their emotional health," she said.

Alan Finch, a 36-year-old who had a male-to-female sex change operation when he was 19 and is now suing an Australian health authority for encouraging him to go ahead, said the process ruined lives.

"How can someone who is suicidal, threatening self-harm, be capable of making a stable decision about having irreversible therapy done? They are left with a body that has been mutilated," he told Australian Associated Press.