Sex-swap case remains alive

 

12.10.2000

 

Chief Ombudsman Sir Brian Elwood is taking the unusual step of persisting with a complaint laid by a transsexual, even though she has asked him to drop it.

Joanne Proctor, a former Lyttelton crane driver now living as a woman in the King Country, first complained to Sir Brian in 1998 about being denied a sex-change operation by the former Midland Health.

She was scheduled to have an operation at Waikato Hospital in 1997, when Midland Health, the now-defunct regional health authority, decided against paying for such surgery.

In the two years since her complaint, there has been a deluge of letters and phone calls between Ms Proctor, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Health Funding Authority, Midland Health's successor.

Progress on the complex case has been painstakingly slow.

Ms Proctor has now written to Sir Brian expressing her extreme frustration over the process, particularly with the authority, and asking him to close the file.

"Bearing in mind the HFA's resistance, I have now finally accepted that surgery is not an available option," she wrote.

Ms Proctor told Sir Brian she had stopped taking her prescribed anti-hypertension and anti-angina medications and would "let nature run its course."

She said it was the only other way out of the self-destructive, transgendered state she lived in.

But Sir Brian said this week that he felt his work on the case was incomplete, so he would continue despite Ms Proctor's request.

"I would like to see it brought to a satisfactory conclusion, therefore I will persist in all the circumstances.

"I have to exercise judgment in this case and I have decided it is proper for me to proceed, but I will do so quietly, in the hope that there will be a solution for her, and I'll take the criticism from her."

Following negotiations, the authority agreed to help Ms Proctor apply for a sex change under its high-cost treatment pool.

But two Auckland psychiatrists who were to assess her suitability for surgery refused to do so because neither knew her.

An authority spokesman said it was still working with Ms Proctor and the Ombudsmen's Office over the issue of psychiatric assessment, required for her application for treatment.

- NZPA