Rainbow List 2015: Doctor recognised for work on gender equality gagged from speaking about it
'They are caught red-handed erasing the achievements of one of their clinicians because they hate your newspaper'
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Your support makes all the difference.A consultant psychiatrist and specialist gender clinician at West London Mental Health NHS Trust (WLMHT) made The Independent on Sunday’s annual Rainbow List last week – and was promptly gagged from speaking about it.
Dr Stuart Lorimer was chosen by our panel for his tireless work on gender equality. After being alerted to the announcement on Twitter, the trust replied to the “great news” saying it “couldn’t be prouder of him”.
It then repeated the message in its own tweet with a link to the Rainbow List, but tweets relating to Dr Lorimer’s achievement were soon deleted. It subsequently emerged the clinician had been gagged from even discussing the issue.
Trust sources said Dr Lorimer told colleagues he was allowed to speak about the nomination only in “oblique” terms and had to refer inquiries to the trust’s communications department. One said the censorship was due to articles published by The IoS on WLMHT, including on a culture of bullying and harassment within the trust over the past 12 months. The trust said it has acted on past concerns by restructuring certain departments and introducing a “comprehensive staff engagement and management development programme to improve the culture and morale of the organisation”.
Rainbow List judge Christine Burns, a retired expert in equalities and inclusion within the NHS, said she was “horrified”. She told The IoS: “They are caught red-handed erasing the achievements of one of their senior clinicians because they hate your newspaper for reporting bullying culture. Of course, erasing an employee’s achievements is a form of bullying in itself. How can [the trust] be so petty?”
Dr Lorimer was chosen for the Rainbow List because of his leading work in transforming the reputation of the trust’s gender identity clinic, at Charing Cross Hospital, where he has been based for more than a decade.
A spokesperson for West London said: “The trust congratulated Dr Stuart Lorimer straightaway for the recognition the LGBT community has given him for his work.” She declined to answer questions on the deletions and gagging order.
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