A German lawyer is accusing German authorities of bias in cases of children who want to have their sex medically changed against their parents’ wishes.
Examples of such include taking hormones as puberty blockers or having sexual organs surgically removed.
“You have the impression that you stand alone against everybody: the youth authorities, the judge, the court-appointed guardian”, Jonas Jacob, a lawyer from Wuppertal, western Germany, told Brussels Signal today.
“One should calmly consider what is best for the child. This is a complicated matter, and the medical procedures are both controversial and irreversible,” Jacob said.
Instead, he says, German authorities often seem to do everything to try to push children towards surgery and hormone therapy, he claimed.
“Youth authorities quickly adopt a black-and-white narrative, suggesting to the children in their care that it is their ‘evil parents’ who do not want them to get this ‘wonderful therapy’ that is supposed to cure all their problems,” he said.
Jacob recently made headlines in Germany when he successfully represented the parents of a teenage boy who had sued them for emancipation to start taking puberty blockers – aided and supported by the youth welfare office of Darmstadt, a city near Frankfurt.
The judge appeared to be clearly in favour of the boy’s “transitioning”.
“The young judge pressed for a quick trial because of the ‘special urgency’ of the procedure. This pressure really irritated me. He also referred to the gender conversion therapy as the ‘greatest birthday present’ for the boy,” Jacob said.
The judge also tried to pressure the boy’s parents, asking them why they did not consent to the therapy if they loved their child, he claimed.
The alienation between the boy and his parents started in the summer of 2022 when a group of trans activists visited the boy’s school for a project day. The boy later attended a summer camp organised by a trans woman.
According to the boy’s parents this was when he started telling them that he wanted to be a girl and start taking puberty blockers. The mother insisted her son was depressed at the time and had been targeted in school.
In 2023, the local youth welfare office allowed the 15-year-old boy to move out from his parents’ place into a residential group. “This group was actively supported by several transgender individuals,” Jacob said.
Finally, in late 2025, the boy sued his parents with the aid of the Child Welfare Office to be able to take puberty blockers.
These are drugs are intended to prevent the release of testosterone in boys and oestrogen in girls, limiting the changes a human body goes through during puberty. The drugs cause infertility and come with an increased risk of cancer.
The downsides of the sex change therapy had never been disclosed to the boy, Jacob claimed. “The medical situation is not as unambiguous as they made it seems to the child. The drug in question is not even approved for adolescents,” he said.
In the end, he managed to change the judge’s mind – by threatening to file a challenge relating to the judge’s impartiality.
After that, the judge signalled to the child and the youth welfare office that their plea would probably be turned down and they withdrew the application.
The boy in the Darmstadt case turns 18 soon, making him free to take puberty blockers of his own accord.
Jacob, though, said he thinks that the court proceedings – especially the more nuanced and detailed explanation of what the drugs actually do to the body – have given the boy some pause for thought and he may reconsider his wish.
The Darmstadt affair is not an isolated case.
“There are many similar cases. The youth welfare offices take children away from their families into residential groups. There they are subject to one-sided counselling in favour of transgender therapy,” Jacob said.
Many parents do not have the means to fight this system in the courts. “This was a long, exhausting, and also expensive case,” he. said.
Jacob added that he wishes for less state interference in such delicate medical matters, stating: “The welfare of children is a parental responsibility, not a state responsibility.”
