Official: Joel, 10, becomes Joella after lifelong fight for new birth certificateBY STUART MILLAR A child who was registered as a boy but who has grown up as a girl has won a nine-year battle to change her birth certificate. Joella Holliday, aged 10, was born with a rare medical condition which caused horrific disfigurements to the lower body, making it difficult for doctors to determine the gender. With the child not expected to survive, he was christened Joel David within hours of birth and registered as a boy because he had male chromosomes. But on his first birthday, Joel became Joella after doctors advised that as he lacked male sex organs, he would have a better life if raised as a girl. Five months later, Joella underwent the first of a series of operations to become female. Her mother, Julia Farmer, applied to the Registrar General for a new birth certificate as soon as the child left hospital, but the application was refused. It was not until the Office of National Statistics was presented with 47 pages of evidence from a Great Ormond Street specialist explaining Joella’s condition that it accepted a medical mistake had been made when the child was registered as a boy. The ONS has now taken the unusual step of agreeing to issue a new birth certificate, and the family plans to have Joella rechristened next month in her village church in Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire. Mrs Farmer, aged 30, said yesterday: “It’s just so strange that it’s all over, I can’t believe it’s been nine years and now we can get on with being normal. We have never thought of Joella being any different. It was our persistence that won out. The question always was, if the operation was legal, why was it not legal for her to be who she was? “She shouldn’t have been put in the same category as a transsexual. She was only a child born in a real mess.” Joella, who is receiving hormone treatment, has undergone dozens of operations for her condition, called exomphallus ectopia vesicae and hemi-bladder. It meant that the child’s bladder and intestines were outside the body, there was no abdominal wall and there was an unformed phallus in two parts. She does not have a uterus and will require further surgery to overcome her internal problems. Otherwise, she is a normal little girl, says her mother. “She likes loud music, boys and shopping. There’s nothing different about her at all.” Charles Brook, the professor of endocrinology at Great Ormond Street who supported Joella’s case, said: “It seems no one understood the nature of Joella’s complaint. It had not been explained properly to the relevant authorities and so they got it muddled up with transsexuals and all that rubbish. Joella had an embryological abnormality and was inappropriately assigned to the male sex when she was born and now she’s been correctly assigned. It’s taken the Registrar General a bit of time to catch up.” In the course of her campaign, Mrs Farmer tracked down the Rev John Read, the hospital chaplain who performed the first christening. “It’s nice to know that she is being christened again. It’s a new start,” he said. As for Joella, she said: “It’s really good. I can look forward to getting married.” Copyright © Copyright Guardian Media Group plc.1998 |
