Helen Weathers – Daily Mail Oct 18, 2019
On first meeting Peter Benjamin, he appears every inch the former Army man with his tailored suit, pressed shirt and shaved head.
‘I’ve always liked to be smart,’ says widower Peter, 60, who — tanned from regular outdoor runs — looks much younger. ‘My late wife used to dress me as Marks & Spencer man.’
Married three times, with two children from his first marriage, aged 31 and 28, Mr Benjamin certainly gives the impression of someone who has never been troubled by confusion over his gender identity. ‘I was born male, I’m a man and always have been,’ he says firmly, adding: ‘A heterosexual man.’
The birth certificate he shows me, though, clearly states the opposite. Legally, he is a female called Victoria. In December 2015, Peter had irreversible gender reassignment surgery — at a cost of £10,000 to the NHS — convinced he wanted to be a woman.
Earlier this year, he realised he’d made a terrible mistake and went back to living as a man. ‘I was never a woman,’ says Peter now, as he speaks of his bitter regret.
Peter (pictured age 17) had irreversible gender reassignment surgery — at a cost of £10,000 to the NHS. Click to enlarge
‘The euphoria I felt after surgery lasted only a matter of hours. I still felt like Peter, looked like Peter, thought like Peter and did all the things Peter did: doing jobs around the house, running, swimming and going to the gym.
‘I had a wardrobe full of feminine clothes, shoes, handbags, jewellery and wigs in every colour and style, but the bright, fluffy world I had imagined as a lady who lunched with her girlfriends never happened.’
Peter has changed his name back by deed poll, but must now live as a male for two years before he can apply to have his birth certificate changed back to the one he got at birth.
He will have to apply testosterone gel for the rest of his life to reverse the feminisation caused by surgical castration and hormone therapy. He will never have a full sexual relationship with a woman again.
Unwilling to undergo further painful and complicated surgery, he is resigned to celibacy.
This week, Peter made the brave decision to share his disturbing story publicly, calling for medical and mental health services to show more caution before they recommend people like himself for gender reassignment surgery.
With NHS figures revealing a 2,500 per cent increase in referrals to gender identity clinics over the past decade — many of them children — he wants his predicament to act as a warning to parents, the Government and medical and educational services.
Peter says that, far from being a woman born into the wrong body, he was instead a lonely, depressed man in the grip of a mental breakdown and alcohol addiction following the death of his wife from cancer in 2011.
‘I was just looking for an escape from reality,’ he says. ‘It was all nonsense. All that pain was for nothing.’
Backed by the Christian Legal Centre, Peter is now considering his legal options, claiming that he was ‘let down’ by the NHS and that his ‘underlying mental health issues’ were never properly addressed.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said: ‘It is tragic that such a vulnerable man was given a life-changing, irreversible and damaging operation without his profound mental health issues being addressed properly.
Peter’s story needs to be told far and wide so that children and adults who are struggling with gender confusion, as he once was, can know there is another way.’
Peter finds it incomprehensible that he was given the green light for life-changing surgery after a handful of sessions with three psychiatrists — both private and on the NHS — without, he claims, more thorough evaluation.
Sitting in his small home near Southampton, Peter’s hands shake with uncontrollable tremors as he recounts the traumatic journey he took to womanhood and back again, which he says left him suicidal. Even he finds it hard to fathom how he ended up like this.