Ceri-Lee wants the names of Clive Bundy and Claire Fox to be linked on official records. But the law requires us all to pretend that no such link exists — that, essentially, the convicted serial child sex offender no longer exists.
Since hearing about her rapist’s release, Ceri-Lee has experienced flashbacks to her own abuse. “Him doing this has caused me terrible anxiety,” she tells me. “I am worried about the girls in my family being targeted by him.”
She is also distressed that, yet again, Bundy has successfully manipulated the system. When she was told about his decision to assume a new identity as a woman, “it was a real shock”, she says. “I had no idea that he would be allowed to change his name and his identity in law when he was on the Sex Offender Register.”
Before this child rapist declared his intention to live as a woman, Ceri-Lee was “fairly liberal” about gender reassignment, taking a “live and let live” approach. More recently, however, she has discovered for herself the implications and unintended consequences of self-ID, the law that permits adults to change their gender without a medical diagnosis. In a world in which men can now legally enter single-sex spaces once earmarked for women and girls, Ceri-Lee’s opinions have shifted.
When she told her family members about Bundy’s transition, “at first, all we could do was laugh”, she says. “It’s so ridiculous… There’s just no way a man like him feels like he is a woman. He is so macho. He was always very proud of how manly he was.”
At the time of his arrest, Bundy denied every offence he was charged with. “The police said they’d never been faced with anyone as manipulative and coercive,” says Ceri-Lee. “Why can’t they see this is just him, again, trying to trick the system?”
Ceri-Lee was at home with her child when the Victim Support Officer called her out of the blue to let her know her father hadn’t been considered for parole because of an altercation in prison, before casually adding: “‘Oh, and by the way, he’s given us permission to tell you that he’s now female and calling himself Claire Fox…’ It was as if [the officer] was telling me what was for dinner.”
Had Bundy not given permission for Ceri-Lee to know his new identity — more power-play, and an example of his coercive and controlling tactics — neither she or the rest of her family would have had any idea that Bundy had “disappeared”, replaced by a woman called Claire.
Inevitably, Ceri-Lee has been accused of transphobia. “Somebody asked on Twitter how long it’s going to be before I’m convicted of a hate crime,” she says, “because I will never, ever refer to him as female. When he made me handle his male genitalia, he definitely wasn’t a female then — and he will never be a female in my eyes.”
Horrified that a sex offender such as Bundy could now freely visit a public swimming pool full of children, Ceri-Lee asks: “He didn’t abuse little boys, he abused girls — why should he ever be allowed to go into female-only spaces?”
She insists her motivation is not transphobic — “in fact, I feel an affinity with these people: I know what it’s like to be a child faced with a secret that feels wrong but [you] can’t tell anyone. I know the bravery it takes to come out and say something. I felt wrong in my body because of being sexually abused, so I understand what it feels like to want to escape it.”
Aware that to criticise anything to do with transgender ideology can have adverse consequences, Ceri-Lee admits she was worried about the effect that going public might have on her medical career. She was hoping to go to university to become a paramedic when she was told of her father’s release from jail.
The NHS has certainly been captured by trans ideology, with some Trusts having issued guidance which states that patients should be admitted based on the ‘gender they identify with’ and therefore can choose which ward, toilet and shower facilities they use.
Ceri-Lee is determined to continue her campaign, but waiving her right to anonymity, in order to go public about the identity of her abuser, has already cost her dearly. “It was the most difficult decision I have ever made. I think of myself as quite a confident person. I can walk the streets and people don’t know about the little girl that was abused and who wanted to kill herself.
“He told me I could never reveal what he was doing to me, or other family members would get hurt,” she says. “But I am done with being scared of him.”
Appalled that Bundy’s new persona has, with the stroke of a pronoun, all but erased from the public record what he did to her, Ceri-Lee is now determined to ensure that any medical transition will not give him access to vulnerable female victims. “He will do it to other girls,” she says, “I just know he will. I have to get the message out. But if I can stop one girl from having to go through this then it’ll be worth it.”
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