By ,
Published October 28, 2015
A court has allowed a 10-year-old boy to become the youngest Australian to have sex-change therapy, the Herald Sun reported.
The boy, known as Jamie, has lived as a girl for two years, dressing in feminine clothes, using the girls' toilet at school and "presenting as a very attractive young girl with long, blonde hair," the court heard.
Jamie's parents, medical experts and psychiatrists feared early-onset puberty could lead to self-harm or suicide and supported an urgent application for the child to receive sex-change therapy.
Family Court Justice Linda Dessau ordered that Jamie be allowed to start drug therapy to stop male puberty and that the court reconvene when she turned 16 to consider approving the second stage of taking female hormones to feminize the body.
The court heard that Jamie saw herself as a "freak" and a "girl in a boy's body," and had first identified as a girl when she was a toddler.
Her mother said although doctors had told her Jamie would be the youngest patient to start such treatment, she was confident it was in her best interests.
The mother said the family had started treating Jamie as a female in 2008 after her non-identical twin brother accepted her condition and announced: "I have a sister."
The mother was concerned that without treatment, Jamie's voice would break and an Adam's apple and facial hair would grow.
"At the moment Jamie can live comfortably as a girl, is socially confident and suffers no teasing or social isolation."
A medical expert said when he first saw Jamie in February 2009, she "looked convincingly female in every way" except her genitalia.
Click here to read more on this story from news.com.au.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/court-allows-sex-change-surgery-for-10-year-old-boy