Pictured: Ritchie Herron says he was fast-tracked by the NHS into life-changing surgery
Like many people suffering from gender dysphoria, Ritchie Herron hoped having radical trans surgery to have his body better match his apparent female identity would transform his life for the better.
But instead, he has been left infertile, incontinent and in ongoing pain and claims he was fast-tracked into making ‘the biggest mistake of my life’.
Now 37, Ritchie, born male, has been living a nightmare for the past six years after being allegedly ‘rushed’ into having extensive surgery to become a woman.
He has heartbreakingly described how it now takes him 10 minutes to slowly and painfully empty his bladder.
His sex drive has been ‘killed’, his genitals ‘shell-shocked’ by the damage wrought by an operation that was supposed to help combat his gender dysphoria.
But now after years of fighting to get help, Ritchie has in recent days had cause for optimism.
Earlier this month the NHS announced it was launching its first service to help transgender patients like Ritchie return to the gender they were born as.
Ritchie said he couldn’t be happier with the announcement.
‘I cannot wait for the clinic to open. I would use the service straight away once it’s up and running,’ he told The Daily Telegraph.
‘What is most significant about this service is it actually acknowledges detransitioners and that hasn’t ever happened before in the NHS. It’s a huge step forward.’
However, he cautioned that detransitioners would not want to the NHS’s new clinic staffed by the same medics that that run gender dysphoria services who, in some cases, patients blame for putting them in this situation in the first place.
‘People who have detransitioned don’t want to go back to gender clinics. We need to make sure this service is run by professionals and not influenced by these activist groups through various consultations,’ he said.
Ritchie is one of the faces of what are called detransitioners, those who regret the radical surgeries and treatments they underwent to better match their supposed gender identity, and now want support for the complications they are suffering.
Pictured: Ritchie dressed in female clothes and went by ‘Abby’ before his surgery
He previously told The Mail On Sunday how, as a teen, he buried his homosexuality which left him with depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, using repetitive behaviours to mask his unhappiness.
Then, in his 20s, he stumbled across the idea of gender dysphoria in an internet chatroom. Older men on the forum convinced the vulnerable young man he ‘must be trans’.
After a series of breakdowns, in 2012 he decided to seek professional help.
He was referred to a psychologist, who did not dissuade him of the notion 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 appointments was long so , consumed 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 he take medication to block his testosterone production – the first step towards gender reassignment.
He began living full-time under the name ‘Abby’, dressing in female clothes. The testosterone-suppressing drugs he was given meant he began developing breasts.
By March 2015, he was attending appointments at the NHS gender clinic in Newcastle.
‘The first question you get asked there is, ‘Do you want genital surgery?’ ‘ he says. ‘I wasn’t sure. But I’d 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 where medics remove the male sex organs and craft an artificial vagina.
Ritchie says he told the psychiatrist he was unsure and turned it down, but continued to receive therapy.
In 2017, he was given another referral for surgery, to be performed at the Nuffield Health hospital in Brighton but paid for by the NHS.
Ritchie refused it again – but said he was told that if he did not accept the referral he would be discharged from the service.
Pictured: Ritchie Herron as a young boy
Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass speaking about the publication of the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (The Cass Review)
This sent him into a ‘tailspin’, he recalls. He believed it meant his therapy would also be withdrawn, which had been a ‘lifeline’.
At 10am on May 23, 2018, Ritchie was wheeled into the operating theatre. ‘I didn’t even see the surgeon,’ he says. ‘I was very much in the mindset of ‘I’m here now, there’s no stopping it even if I wanted to.’ ‘
For 8 days he lay in a blur of painkillers. His first thought as he recovered his lucidity was: ‘Oh God, what have I done?’
He’s not alone. Data obtained under Freedom of Information laws shows at least 64 former NHS gender dysphoria patients who underwent treatment to become transgender ‘detransitioned’ between 2010 and 2020.
While NHS England has committed its intent to run a detransition service when it could open remains unclear.
It has only firmly committed to ‘establish a programme of work to explore the 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.
This report, leading paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, found that children were being hurried down treatment pathways that saw them given powerful drugs and drastic medical interventions.
While Dr Cass said there was a lack of data to show 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’s no guidance on how to treat them at the moment.
