Transsexuals lose battle to change their legal identity
31st July 1998 Transsexuals lose battle to change their legal identityby Alison Gray TWO British transsexuals lost their battle to be legally recognised as women yesterday when the European Court of Human Rights ruled they had not been treated unfairly. The Strasbourg court said the British Government’s refusal to provide the two with birth certificates acknowledging their new gender was not a breach of their human rights. Kristina Sheffield and Rachel Horsham, who were born men, had argued the authorities’ refusal to accept their new sexual status as women was a breach of their right to respect for privacy and family life, guaranteed by the Human Rights Convention. Last March, the Human Rights Commission agreed and passed the case to the court for a final verdict. A statement from the women’s solictor, Henri Brandman, said: “Ms Sheffield and Ms Horsham are disappointed that the court did not feel able to find that the discriminatory treatment suffered by them under English law amounted to a violation of their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. It went on: “They nevertheless take heart from the fact that there are at least another three cases raising the appalling treatment received by transsexuals under English law which have been declared admissable by the commission in Strasbourg and which, in due couurse, will come to be considered by the new Court of Human Rights, which takes over on 1 November this year.” Claire McNab, vice-president of Press For Change, a transsexual pressure group, said: “This means we are going to continue to have a legal identity that doesn’t affect the reality of our lives. “We are faced with having to declare our previous status as men at every turn. She added: “We all have private pasts and it is not right that we have to declare them for the sake of bureaucracy. “We encounter problems in every area of life, from hiring a car to taking out a pension. It’s horrendous.” Ms Sheffield, 52, a former pilot who was christened Ian, lives in Ealing, west London. She has been provided with a passport and driving licence in her new name since changing sex in 1988, nbut continues to be regarded as a man in the eyes of the law, which required her to be divorced before she could undergo sex-change surgery and forbids her to marry a man. In her former life, she married and fathered a daughter, served in the RAF and in the Rohodesian air force, and was awareded the Silver and Bronze Crosses for bravery. An application by her former wife, Julia, to terminate Ms Sheffield’s access to her daughter was approved because the court ruled that contact with a transsexual would not be in the child’s interests, She was separated from her child for about 12 years, but after her sex-change operation, adopted her name. Before the case she said: “No-one chooses to be like this. I didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and say ’I wonder what it feels like being a girl’. “I’m angry with the way I’ve been teated and the way transsexuals have been treated.” Rachel, also 52, has ben living in Amsterdam since 1983 and claims she is forced to live in exile because she wants to marry her male partner. They plan to marry in the Netherlands, where the law recognises transsexuals. She has already been issued with a birth certificate showing her new name and sex by the Register of Births in The Hague, but a request to the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys in the UK to amend her original birth certificate was rejected. A victory in court would have led to changes in the law to allow transsexuals to have their birth certificates altered - a move the government opposed by saying the certificate was a record of events at birth and was not affected by what happened subsequently. Since then, changes to birth certificates have been allowed only in cases of ambiguous sex, where a mistake becomes apparent within 12 months, or at the latest, at puberty. The Human Rights Convention states: “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” The court ruled yesterday that right was not breached when, for legal purposes such as court appearances and obtaining insurance and contractual documents, transsexuals were forced to show certificates revealing their previous names and gender. Copyright © Scotsman Publications Ltd, 1998 |
