Joanna Cherry to represent Marion Millar!

It's turning into a great year

In the best news since the Maya Forstater win, Joanna Cherry is taking charge of Marion Millar’s defence. “After my election to Parliament in 2015 the demands of my duties as a front bench spokesperson precluded me from accepting any instructions in my capacity as an advocate. Now that I no longer have those responsibilities, I hope to be able to take on human rights and public law cases from time to time, as my duties as a constituency MP allow.”

Marion is the mother of two autistic children who was arrested by East Kilbride police for a series of tweets, including this photo of a Suffragette ribbon.

Millar’s ordeal is the latest in a series of proceedings against gender critical people who are reported to police by trans rights activists in order to silence them as individuals and to serve as a warning to the rest of the growing movement. The police, disgracefully, appear to jump at the chance to put their flawed Stonewall training into action.

Helen Islan vs Miranda Yardley

Outrageously as far as almost everyone, including the judge, was concerned, Helen Islan’s accusations of transphobia against Miranda Yardley, who is transgender, made it to court. A discussion about self-ID on Twitter had led Islan to accuse Yardley of harassment and outing her child, who she claims is transgender. The case was initially investigated by West Yorkshire Police and then passed to Essex Police who pushed for charges against Yardley, who faced losing his career. The trial was halted on the first day, during which Judge Woollard said: ‘Where is the evidence [of harassment] taking into account the need for free speech? You have to show a course of conduct and at the moment we have one tweet. Where is the evidence for Miranda Yardley outing Ms Islan’s son?’

Helen Islan

Islan or @mimmymum is a former employee of Mermaids and parent of a female child she claims is transgender. Like Susie Green, she spends much of her time online attempting to justify her decision to transition her child by promoting the use of puberty blockers in confused children or trying to stop margarine companies advertising on Mumsnet.

Susie Green vs Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (Posie Parker) was targeted more than once by the CEO of Mermaids, Susie Green, in 2018. Keen-Minshull initially received a text message from a police officer at West Yorkshire Police asking her to call. She called and was told the police had spent months trying to track down her number. The police (eventually) revealed to her that she had been reported by Green and must attend an interview or be considered ‘wanted’. Keen-Minshull, who lives in southern England, was told to attend the interview in Leeds (northern England). She refused and West Yorkshire Police, at taxpayers’ expense, sent two employees to interview her at her home, both spending at least one night in a local hotel.

She was interrogated under caution because her reference to the genital surgery Green’s now adult trans-identified child underwent on their 16th birthday as ‘castration’ had caused her ‘hurt and upset’. One of the many ironies of the situation is that Green took her child to Thailand to circumvent UK law, which does not allow for genital surgery for ‘gender affirmation’ purposes until at least the age 18, and the procedure is now illegal in Thailand. Later that same year, Keen-Minshull was asked to attend another interview, this time by her local force in Wiltshire. This time Green had complained that Keen-Minshull had referred to Green’s (adult) child on a YouTube video. Both times the police allegedly considered charging Keen-Minshull with public order offences, while the second investigation appeared to be nothing more than a vindictive misuse of police resources aimed to keep Keen-Minshull from travelling to the USA to discuss women’s rights there. She discovered there was no case to answer from a journalist on Twitter.

Green has also tried to take action against 4thWaveNow for similar reasons.

Kellie-Jay discusses the events with Magdalen Berns here:

Susie Green

Susie Green became CEO of child-transitioning charity Mermaids after initially turning to them when her son exhibited signs of effeminacy which made the boy’s father uncomfortable. Wealthy Green eventually found a US-based doctor who would prescribe puberty blockers to her 12-year-old, which were not prescribed off-label in the UK at the time. The child was taken to Thailand for genital surgery on his 16th birthday and had breast implants in the same country at 18. Green talks candidly (perhaps too candidly for her own good) about the experience in a TED Talk, which is brilliantly analysed by Kellie-Jay here. 

Stephanie Hayden vs Kate Scottow

Marion Millar’s interview under caution also strongly echoes Kate Scottow’s experience when she was arrested in 2018 and locked in a cell for seven hours following Stephanie Hayden’s report that she had harassed Hayden on Twitter by, amongst other things, referring to them as a man. Upon learning about Scottow’s treatment at the hands of the police, who arrested her in front of her children and failed to provide her with necessary sanitary products in custody, Boris Johnson called the situation an ‘abuse of manpower and police facilities’.

Scottow was initially found guilty in a magistrate’s court of communications offences but the conviction was overturned in the Court of Appeal.

Harry Miller vs Humberside Police

Miller took action against Humberside Police and the College of Policing when they visited his work to question him about his social media activity under the College of Policing’s Hate Crimes Operational Guidance. Miller was eventually interviewed over the phone and told that the intention was to ‘check your thinking’, all because of one complaint from a person who has remained anonymous. Miller was told his activity, which included liking a gender critical limerick, was not criminal but amounted to a ‘non-crime hate incident’ which would stay on his record for six years and would show up in DBS checks.  Miller’s case against Humberside Police was successful and he is appealing the outcome of the claim against the College of Policing, which was dismissed at the Court of Appeal. (The Court of Appeal action is in respect to the legality of the guidance which Humberside followed, and if Miller loses, two other actions are waiting - on article 8 and data protection grounds).

In April 2021, Home Secretary Priti Patel asked the College of Policing to rethink the recording of non-crime hate incidents.