Women’s rights campaigner ‘threatened by arrest’ over trans GP tweet

A leading women’s rights campaigner who tweeted that a transgender GP ‘enjoys intimately examining female patients’ has revealed how police threatened to arrest her before launching a 10-month investigation.

Maya Forstater, 51, the head of the charity Sex Matters, has revealed Scotland Yard has been investigating her for the crime of malicious communications since August 2023.

The alleged crime, which carries a punishment of up to two years in prison, relates to a post Ms Forstater wrote on X/Twitter about trans former GP, Dr Kamilla Kamaruddin.

Dr Kamaruddin said that after transitioning, patients allowed her to perform ‘more intimate examinations that they did not let me to do when I was a male GP’.

Ms Forstater tweeted in June last year that Dr Kamaruddin ‘enjoys intimately examining female patients without their consent’.

But she claims that while on holiday, she was sent an e-mail from the Met Police which said she would be arrested unless she voluntarily attend a police interview. 

Ms Forstater, who noted that Dr Kamaruddin was listed as female on the GP’s website, told MailOnline: ‘I spent quite a lot of time wondering what it was, what the crime could have been, because they wouldn’t tell me – so that was very stressful and also I was threatened with arrest. 

‘They said, “Either come in for voluntary interview or we’ll mark you as wanted, and you will be arrested”.

‘And obviously I didn’t want to be arrested so I went. So I had to get a solicitor and went into the police station to be questioned, and it was only then that they told me what the tweet that was supposed to be a crime was.

‘I sort of thought that this must be mistake. It was like half a tweet. It didn’t tag anybody. It was attached to a blog post that explained why I’d said it.

‘It was not a threat to anybody, it was not obscene, it was based on facts and quite disturbing fact that a doctor who is male was boasting about examining women who wanted a female doctor, and who were told they were getting a female doctor.

‘Most people want a woman, and if you ask for a woman you should get a woman.’

The post linked to an older blog post in which the women’s rights campaigner had questioned whether the GP’s female patients were able to properly consent to being examined by a trans doctor.

Ms Forstater, who accused the force of ‘harassment and bullying’ in an interview with The Times, has revealed that she was first contacted by police last August who informed her that she was ‘currently being investigated for an allegation of malicious communications’.

She was then interviewed under caution at Charing Cross police station last September. But she has still not heard the outcome of the investigation ten months after first being contacted by the force.

Ms Forstater, who has not ruled out legal action against the force, said that she was told she was being questioned for ‘targeting a member of the trans community’. 

But she told MailOnline: ‘I don’t think I targeted a member of the trans community. I think I talked about a male doctor who was doing something inappropriate. 

‘If you can’t call that out, then what you’re doing is you’re making a section of society unable to be criticised and unable to be scrutinised… even when they’re in a position of asking a woman to take her underpants off and be examined.

‘It’s a situation where the utmost respect should have been given to the patients, not to the identity of the of the trans identifying doctor. 

‘And if you can’t call that out without the police saying you’re targeting a vulnerable community and then calling you in and basically acting like a private police force then bad things will happen.

‘People will not respect the privacy and dignity, and the consent of women.’

Speaking about the investigation, she said: ‘I think it’s been terrible. I think it’s been discriminatory. The police are trained by Stonewall and the CPS are trained by Stonewall and they’re trained to think that women who say that trans women are men are bigots and are doing something illegitimate.

‘When I went in for questioning, I said I had no confidence that the police would treat me fairly, because they’ve… all had training to say that it’s transphobic to say that a man who identifies as a woman is still a man.

‘But unless you can say that you can’t protect women’s rights.’

Ms Forstater continued: ‘If they have any sense, I hope that they will draw it to a close and apologise.

‘I’m thinking carefully about what I do next. But the first thing that needs to happen is this investigation needs to end because this has been hanging over my head for far too long.

She said she was ‘carefully considering’ whether to take legal action against the force.

Ms Forstater told how her solicitor told the police it was ‘ridiculous’, adding how he said: ‘This doesn’t come anywhere near what malicious communication requires for a prosecution. 

‘You should stop the interview right now, or not go ahead with the interview at all. This is discrimination. This is an abuse of my human rights, my freedom of speech to drag someone into police station to question them about a tweet.

‘But the police said ‘no, we’re going to carry on with it’, which they did. And since then, my solicitor has emailed them every couple of months to say what’s happening and they keep saying, we’re still investigating.’

Dr Kamaruddin transitioned from male to female as a GP in 2015 while working in east London. She now works at a gender services clinic.

She wrote about her transition n the British Journal of General Practice in an article headlined ‘What it’s like to be a transgender patient and a GP’. She said: ‘A lot of my patients were quite conservative — many female patients wore long clothes, or the hijab — but they allowed me to examine them despite my change.

‘Every single one of them refused my offer of a chaperone even when they knew that I am transgender.’

She was given a prize at the Royal College of General Practitioners ‘inspire’ awards in 2019 and she was given the Frontline Hero Pink News Award in 2020.

The GP wrote elsewhere: ‘I had a fear that my patients would treat me differently as they might not agree with my new identity due to prejudice and ignorance.’

Patients can choose to see a male or female GP under NHS policy – and the General Medical Council advises chaperones should also be offered frequently to patients of any sex. 

Dr Kamaruddin declined to comment.

A Met Police spokesman told The Times: ‘Since this allegation was reported in June 2023, a number of enquiries have been carried out by officers. These enquiries are ongoing. While it is right that we carry out a full investigation, we do recognise the length of time this has taken so far and the impact it will undoubtedly have had on all parties.’