Identity-theft scams are unpleasant at the best of times. But when the government embraces the tenets of gender ideology, identity theft can be used as a cover for abuse—as I recently learned when a convicted pedophile ripped off my name. Last week, British newspapers reported that a convicted incestuous pedophile, about to be released from prison on parole, has changed his identity to her. The abuser, Clive Bundy, will be known as Claire Fox. That’s my name, and it’s well-known in part because I have used my seat in the House of Lords to oppose gender ideology.
“Identity theft can be used as a cover for abuse.”
Of course, I’m outraged. But I am not the real victim here. That would be Bundy’s daughter Ceri-Lee Galvin, now 24, who was sexually molested by her father for nine years, beginning when she was 8 years old. Bundy was found guilty in 2016 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The first jolt to anyone’s sense of justice is that he is about to be sprung after only seven years behind bars.
Then again, Clive Bundy won’t be released—“Claire Fox” will be, because Bundy claims he is now a female. For the last two years, he has been offered makeup and female clothing by prison authorities, at taxpayer expense, to perpetuate this charade. He has even been segregated for “her” protection from male prisoners.
When Bundy is a free man, he will be able to divorce himself from his crimes by disguising his identity thanks to a legal loophole. Changing his gender gives him cover, and criminal-record checks could be compromised.
In Britain, the Home Office’s Disclosure and Barring Service, or DBS, allows employers to check the criminal records of job applicants and ascertain whether a candidate has previous convictions, and if they might pose a safeguarding risk. Normally, if the candidate has legally changed his name, the organization that requested the background check will be able to see all the names associated with him listed on the DBS certificate.
However, something called a sensitive-applications clause gives transgender job candidates the choice not to have any gender or name information that could reveal their previous identity disclosed on their DBS certificate. What’s more, a prospective employer isn’t entitled to know whether a candidate has used this clause.
Many transgender people self-consciously erase their past identities, and demand that the rest of us collude with their new chosen gender persona on pain of being accused of transphobic “dead-naming” or misgendering. That’s the logic behind the sensitive-applications clause, but it’s obvious how it could be exploited.
Kate Coleman, who runs the activist group Keep Prisons Single Sex, last year published a report on the risk of such exploitation. The report discusses how enhanced privacy rights allow trans people to conceal previous identities. As a result, organizations trying to check if an individual is banned from working with children now can’t have any confidence in the information disclosed: “If this was done through the sensitive-applications route, all that will come up on the certificates will be the new name.”
So Clive Bundy can change his name and gender on official papers, such as his passport and driver’s license (both documents that can be used as proof of identity to the DBS), and none of us will be any the wiser. Indeed, Ceri-Lee only found out about her father’s name and gender change because he volunteered to disclose it. A victim-liaison officer told her that the authorities were only allowed to tell her about his identity change after having received permission from Bundy.
Since the story went public, people keep asking me why on earth Bundy chose my name. I can only speculate. One commentator suggests that sex offenders, specifically pedophiles, select the names of well-known people so that an internet search will only turn up the famous person, and not them. Ceri-Lee suspects that it is no coincidence that he opted for a parliamentarian like me, who has argued that transgender activism endangers free speech and women’s rights. In other words, this is some sort of trolling. The only consolation is that should Clive Bundy ever start using social media under the name Claire Fox, he might find himself subjected to anti-“TERF” trolls, who routinely target gender-critical women like me, barraging us with misogynistic abuse.
Ceri-Lee Galvin has bravely broken her own anonymity and spoken out, so that other abuse victims aren’t hurt by the loopholes created by gender ideology. So let’s make sure everyone knows who Clive Bundy really is. Say his name. His name is Clive Bundy—not Claire Fox. And we should keep saying it until the powers that be stop allowing convicted sexual abusers to change their names and gender to avoid detection. And until our elites recognize—and act to counter—the dangers posed by mainstreaming gender ideology.