Pictured: Ritchie Herron says he was quickly cleared by the NHS to undergo life-changing surgery
Like many people who suffer from gender dysphoria, Ritchie Herron hoped that radical trans surgery to make his body better match his apparent female identity would transform his life for the better.
But instead he was left infertile, incontinent and in constant pain, which he says quickly led to “the biggest mistake of his life.”
Ritchie, who was born male and is now 37, has been living a nightmare for the past six years after he was allegedly “rushed” into undergoing extensive surgery to become a woman.
She has harrowingly described how it now takes her 10 minutes to slowly and painfully empty her bladder.
Her sex drive has been ‘killed’, her genitals left ‘shocked’ by the damage caused by an operation that was supposed to help combat her gender dysphoria.
But now, after years of struggling to get help, Ritchie has had reason to be optimistic in recent days.
Earlier this month, the NHS announced it would launch its first service to help transgender patients like Ritchie return to the gender they were born with.
Ritchie said he couldn’t be happier with the announcement.
“I can’t wait for the clinic to open. I will use the service immediately once it is up and running,” she said. The Daily Telegraph.
“The most important thing about this service is that it recognises those who are transitioning, something that has never happened before in the NHS. It’s a huge step forward.”
However, she warned that detransitioners would not want the new NHS clinic to be staffed by the same doctors who run gender dysphoria services and who, in some cases, patients blame for putting them in this situation in the first place.
“People who have stopped transitioning do not want to go back to gender clinics. We need to make sure that this service is run by professionals and not influenced by these activist groups through various consultations,” she said.
Ritchie is one of the faces of the so-called detransitioners, those who regret the radical surgeries and treatments they underwent to better fit their supposed gender identity, and now want support for the complications they are suffering.
Pictured: Ritchie dressed in women’s clothing and called himself “Abby” before his surgery.
He previously told The Mail On Sunday how, as a teenager, he buried his homosexuality, leaving him with depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, using repetitive behaviours to mask his unhappiness.
Then, when he was 20, he encountered the idea of gender dysphoria in an internet chat room. The older men on the forum convinced the vulnerable young man that he “must be trans.”
After a series of crises, in 2012 she decided to seek professional help.
He was referred to a psychologist, who did not dissuade him from the idea that he had gender dysphoria, and then to the Northern Region Gender Dysphoria Service, run by Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS Foundation Trust.
The waiting list for an appointment was long, so, obsessed with the idea, Ritchie paid for an appointment at a private gender clinic in March 2014.
According to Ritchie, he was diagnosed with “transsexualism” after two 30-minute appointments.
A psychiatrist recommended that she take drugs to block testosterone production, the first step toward gender reassignment.
She began living full-time under the name “Abby” and dressed in women’s clothing. The drugs she was given to suppress testosterone caused her to begin developing breasts.
In March 2015, I was attending appointments at the NHS gender clinic in Newcastle.
“The first question they ask you there is, ‘Do you want genital surgery?'” he says. “I wasn’t sure. But I had heard you could get therapy if you were on the waiting list for surgery, so I said yes.”
Less than six months later, in July 2015, Ritchie received a referral for vaginoplasty surgery, an irreversible procedure in which doctors remove the male sexual organs and create an artificial vagina.
Ritchie says he told the psychiatrist he wasn’t sure and turned him down, but continued to receive therapy.
In 2017, she was given another referral for surgery, to be carried out at Nuffield Health hospital in Brighton but paid for by the NHS.
Ritchie again declined, but said he was told that if he did not accept the referral he would be terminated from the service.
Pictured: Ritchie Herron as a child
Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass talks about the publication of the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (The Cass Review)
This left him in a very difficult situation, he recalls. He thought that this meant that he would also be withdrawn from the therapy, which had been a “lifesaver.”
At 10 a.m. on May 23, 2018, Ritchie was wheeled into the operating room. “I didn’t even see the surgeon,” he says. “I was in the mindset of, ‘Here I am, there’s no way I can stop this, even if I wanted to. ’”
For eight days he was on painkillers. His first thought when he regained consciousness was: “Oh God, what have I done?”
He is not alone. Data obtained under freedom of information laws shows that at least 64 former NHS gender dysphoria patients underwent treatment to become “detransitioned” transgender between 2010 and 2020.
While NHS England has confirmed its intention to launch a detransition service, it remains unclear when this might open.
It has only firmly committed to “establishing a work programme to explore issues around a detransition pathway by October 2024”.
The NHS announced the move as part of its plans to “transform” its care for gender-questioning children following the publication of the Cass Review.
The report, led by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, found that children were being sent for treatments that included powerful drugs and drastic medical interventions.
While Dr Cass said there was a lack of data showing how many people detransitioned after undergoing gender reassignment surgery, anecdotally it appears to be “increasing.”
Now the NHS has said there is no “defined clinical pathway” for people who want to return to their birth gender, and it will have to create one as there is no guidance on how to treat them at the moment.
