From the UK and Parent Dish comes the story of Ria Cooper:
"Britain's youngest sex-swap patient has decided she want to go back to being a boy – because she experiences too many mood swings as a girl. Ria Cooper, 18, from Hull, has had thousands of pounds worth of NHS treatment involving hormonal injections to turn her from a boy into a girl. But the hormones affected her so badly that she attempted suicide twice. Ria, formerly known as Brad, lives her life as a female. She has developed breasts, wears her hair in a feminine bob and has dated several young men. But now she questions whether she was too young to be allowed to swap sexes in the first place."
She started hormone treatment when she was 17, making her the youngest ever patient in the UK to receive such treatment. But she says her decision has had disastrous consequences. She has fallen out with family, got into dangerous situations with men and even worked as a prostitute. She is booked in for the full transgender operation in January but now says she will no longer go ahead with it. She said: "I just can't be what I want to be. My mum Elaine loves and supports me as much as she can, yet she doesn't allow me to live at home any more. My dad barely speaks to me and says I'm an embarrassment. "I think as the only boy in the family he thought I'd follow him into the steel business and pictured us working out together at the gym. "Obviously it s not turned out like that. I don't know who I can trust as friends. I feel really, really alone." The Sunday Mirror said that critics warned two years ago that Ria's tender years meant she was too young to make the decision to become a woman."
All of this begs the question, where does she go now? No family or friends? Hopefully this publicity will enable her to reach out to people who can really help her.
