Robert Cook
Silhouette image via Wikimedia Commons
Robert Cook, a male who identified as a trans woman and then detransitioned, was convicted of harassment charges against his former brother in law (a senior policeman) after making wholly untrue allegations against him in a two year obsessive hate campaign. Cook blamed him for his marriage break-up in 2008 after his wife sought refuge with the victim, her brother.
Cook, 60, was sentenced at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court in 2011 to four months in prison suspended for 12 months, and a 12-month supervision order. He was also subject to a restraining order and a 10-week curfew with tag and had to pay court costs of £150 to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Cook, a former teacher and town councillor, went to see discredited gender specialist Dr Russell Reid who was subsequently found guilty of professional misconduct by the General Medical Council.
He said “I went to see a psychiatrist who said that I wasn’t depressed, I was just very unhappy, so there was nothing they could do for me. When I was writing a book I came across this business of transgender. I started to think maybe I’d be nicer if I was a woman. You can call it bonkers, which it was looking back on it, but I went to see Dr Russell Reid because I’d seen him on the TV. He told me on the strength of about talking for half an hour that I really should change sex, that I was really a woman in a man’s body. I was prescribed these hormones and had to live and dress as a woman. I thought it might make me a bit more calm and I wouldn’t be quite so worried.”
Media reports
Birmingham Mail http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/sex-change-secret-of-man-who-223921 archive
The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/vile-hate-campaign-waged-against-130872 archive
Buckingham Today http://www.buckinghamtoday.co.uk/news/crime/former-town-councillor-guilty-of-harassment-1-27234122011