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Head of transgender youth charity Mermaids resigns

By Will Bolton

SUSIE GREEN, the chief executive of Mermaids, has left the transgender children’s charity after six years in the post.

Announcing the decision, the charity thanked Ms Green for “building Mermaids into the organisation it is today”.

The chairman of trustees, Belinda Bell, said an interim chief executive would be appointed shortly.

No explanation was given about what triggered the announcement.

A Telegraph investigation earlier this year revealed that the scandal-hit charity was giving potentially dangerous chest-flattening devices to 14-year-olds against their parents’ wishes.

Staff with no medical training were also found to have given advice to children, who they believe were as young as 13, that controversial hormone-blocking drugs are safe and “totally reversible”.

After the Telegraph’s investigation, the Charity Commission launched a “regulatory compliance case” over concerns about the charity’s “approach to safeguarding young people”.

In recent months, the charity has also found itself under intense public scrutiny for other controversies.

One was the charity’s decision to launch an appeal against the Charity Commission’s awarding of charitable status to LGB Alliance, which has been critical of “gender ideology’’.

The case is understood to be the first time a charity has tried to strip the legal status of another.

Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Leeds, with an office in London, Mermaids has about 44 staff members and 110 volunteers.

Before her appointment as chief executive in 2016, Ms Green worked as an IT manager for Citizens Advice from 2002 to 2015.

She has previously spoken about taking her child to the US in 2017 for puberty blockers when they were aged 12 and to Thailand for surgery on their 16th birthday.

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Daily Telegraph