Trans teen took his own life ‘after gender reassignment treatment was delayed’

A transgender teenager took his own life after being told he would have to wait for gender reassignment treatment on the NHS, a court has been told.

Jayden Lowe had already been on the child and adolescent waiting list for 11 months, but when he turned 18 he was told he would need to be referred to an adult clinic.

This meant he would have been left waiting for an additional two years.

His mum, Claire Lowe, said he told her: ‘I can’t carry on living like this.’

The court was told he had known he wanted to be a boy from a young age, and changed his name by deed poll when he was 17.

Jayden, from Meldreth in Cambridgeshire, began buying hormone treatment online, and Claire said ‘things were looking up’ from there.

She said: ‘We backed him because he was desperate. He was just living for the day he would just be a proper boy.’

She also said her son had told her: ‘You don’t deserve a trans kid, it’s not fair,’ to which she reassured him: ‘We don’t want another kid.’

‘He thought it was unreasonable he had to live half girl, half boy,’ she added.

‘Since he started taking the testosterone we thought that things were looking up but that was maybe too little, too late.’

The court was also told Jayden had recently broken up with his girlfriend, which he did not tell his parents.

Jayden’s father Neil Lowe recalled how his son had good grades in all his A-Levels and wanted to go on to study History of Art.

He said they discussed his plans to apply to study foundation year art on the night of his death.

Neil said: ‘He had a happy life and I didn’t have any thought he would take his own life that night.

‘We talked at dinner, he said he was going to do a foundation year, and was going to pick up a push bike the following day.’

Jayden’s GP Dr Webbery said he promised the teenager he would be allowed to ‘transition medically as soon as possible’ after Jayden told him it would have a ‘massive positive effect’ on his mental health.

But on September 22 last year, the aspiring Oxford University student died after being hit by a train.

Sitting at Huntingdon Coroner’s Court, coroner Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp said the student died by suicide in a ‘spontaneous act’.

Determining the cause of death, Mrs Rhodes-Kemp said: ‘The fact is he has recently been broken up a relationship and no one had been able to speak to him, but actually he has recently realised a dream of getting the hormones he wanted.

‘It seems to me that Jayden did intend to take his own life. The precise thoughts that were going through his head we’ll never know.’