Debbie Karema, 61, Begins Detransition After 17 Years on Testosterone and Surgery

A 61-year-old woman from Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire who lived as a man for years says she now regrets the change and is preparing to return to life as a female.

Debbie Karema, who transitioned at the age of 44, told the BBC that she is close to reversing the process. She explained that she had made the change in order to “become accepted in the world” and to escape the “traumatised” memories she carried from her childhood as a girl.

Karema claimed that she was sexually abused as a teenager by her estranged father, who is now dead.

Mental Health Crisis: How to Prevent Depression and Anxiety

To achieve the transformation she underwent full female-to-male surgery, including phalloplasty, in which a penis was constructed from skin taken from her forearm. She adopted the name Lee and used testosterone for 17 years to alter her physical appearance.

“I thought I was going to be on a journey to becoming a different person… I’d morph into someone else and leave that traumatised woman completely behind,” she said.

Instead, Debbie Karema said she now feels like a woman “trapped in an approximation of a male body”, describing the transition as her “greatest mistake”.

“This was a mistake that should never have happened… how do I go back to being the Debbie that I was?” she asked.

She said she had chosen to speak publicly about her experience in the hope of discouraging other people from transitioning.

“It became apparent that transitioning was a big mistake. The session where I realised this was so bad that I had a complete break down and panic attack, because I realised it was a huge mistake,” the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

Now 61, Karema is detransitioning with the support of counselling in order to return to her original gender.

Her case is believed to be one of many in which people seek a change of gender identity through the National Health Service, which is publicly funded in England.

James Caspian, a psychotherapist who has come into contact with several detransitioners, said such a decision is always informed by the fear of being exposed to risks as a female.

“This whole area of transgender medicine is very under researched,” he said.

“Quite a lot of them seem to have had a very negative experience of being female in a female body – sexual harassment, even abuse.”