Tuesday 1st December 1998

Joella wins fight to become a girl

A 10-year-old girl who was born a boy with her internal organs on the outside has won an eight-year battle to have her birth certificate altered.

Joella Holliday has grown up a girl while her mother Julia Farmer, 30, has fought Government red tape which refused to recognise her new sex.

Now the Office of National Statistics has taken the unusual step of agreeing to allow her birth certificate to be changed.  It means the bureaucrats recognised a medical mistake was made when Joella was identified as a boy at birth.

Her mother Julia said: “When I came round they wouldn’t tell me whether I had a boy or girl.  All I knew was that she had a hole in her stomach.  Then the chaplain came in to christen her and I knew then it must be bad and that they didn’t think she was going to live.  He asked me whether I had thought of any names and I said Joel if it’s a boy, but we couldn’t think of a girl’s name.  That’s how Joel went on to the birth certificate.”

After 17 months doctors decided an operation would give the young child a better chance of life - as a girl.  Now, Joella will have a second christening just before Christmas.  She said: “It’s really good.  I can look forward to getting married.  It means a lot to me.”

As part of Julia’s campaign to prove Joella was a girl, the mother tracked down the chaplain, who made a statement as evidence to the Office of National Statistics.

Julia, of Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire, said: “When I found him he knew straight away who I was.  He told me that he could never forget me and Joella.  I also went back to the hospital to try and find the nurses, but when I returned it was a car park.”

’There were so many obstacles in the way right down to us being refused legal aid that they must have thought we wouldn’t carry on.

“When the letter came from our solicitors I couldn’t open it.  I just thought it was another delay.  But when I read the first few paragraphs I couldn’t believe it.  I don’t think I will believe it until the birth certificate is in my hand.  We are still waiting for a copy to arrive.

“It would only have taken a ’no’ and we were ready to go to the High Court.”

Julia and Joella are looking forward to the christening on December 20 as the official start of her new life.

“After that she can just get back to being a normal girl,” said Julia, who has a son Jarred, 6, by husband Jason, 28.  Joella has already under-gone dozens of operations for her condition, called exomphallus ectopia vesicae and hemi-bladder.  It meant that her bladder and intestines were outside of her body, there was no abdominal wall and she had an unformed phallus in two parts.

Great Ormond Street endocrinologist Professor Charles Brook sent a 47-page report backing the family.

Copyright © Associated Newspapers Ltd., 01 December 1998