Victoria Culf was cancelled and reported to the police for saying that it is harmful for children to try and change their sex.
Victoria Culf, a Christian artist, was banned from her own exhibition and reported to the police for saying in a casual conversation, while making a cup of tea, that it is harmful for children to try and change their sex.
What’s at stake?
- People should be free to speak clearly and respectfully about their beliefs without the threat of being banned, dismissed, or reported to the police.
- Christians in particular are often targeted due to their biblical and scientific beliefs that we are made either male or female.
- Children shouldn’t be told that they might be born in the wrong body. Affirming a child’s false identity leads to harmful beliefs and dangerous medicine. Other children are also influenced to believe in or go along with trans ideology.
Support Victoria
Victoria is receiving help from the Christian Legal Centre to take her case forwards.
We provide this support completely free of charge to Victoria and others like her.
Make a donation today to help this work continue.
Timeline
For 15 years, Victoria had had an unblemished and positive working relationship with the council including contributing to the council’s cultural strategy. She had also been involved in ‘Kickstarter’ grants which provide arts projects in local primary schools and worked at the museum offering family arts activities between 2008- 2009.
2023:
- 2 March: Victoria entered a contract with BEEE Creative CIO to participate in its ‘Perform Transform’ program of art workshops and other activities over two years in 2023-2024. That project, funded by the council, envisaged that Victoria, in collaboration with BEEE Creative, would plan and deliver a series of events at Watford Museum unrelated to her privately executed Legacy exhibition.
- 6 June: Victoria had a casual conversation with a council worker, during a tea break whilst setting up her own, unrelated art exhibition. The council worker began speaking about how her child was ‘transitioning’ to another ‘gender’ and proactively wanted to engage Victoria in a conversation on transgenderism. Victoria politely and sensitively expressed her Christian gender-critical beliefs. The council worker then said ‘we’ve had a lot of support, even from people of faith’, and spoke about getting puberty blockers from the Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic. Victoria then explained that she has been really vocal that the Tavistock Clinic needed to be shut down and revealed that she was against children ‘transitioning’ and that human brains don’t stop developing until they are 24. Speaking about how many stories she had heard about ‘de-transitioners’ online who deeply regret trying to change their gender during childhood, she said that she believed that ‘any kind of medical transitioning of children under 18 is tantamount to child abuse.’ She added that ‘children are too young to know what they want.’
- 8 June: Victoria received a call from Semeta Bloomfield, the Community Commissioning Lead at the council who told her that she had to give 24-hours’ notice before coming to the exhibition. She was, however, told that she could continue to exhibit her work. Following this call, it is understood that either the council or the council worker, or both, contacted the police about Mrs Culf’s Christian gender-critical beliefs saying that a ‘hate crime’ had been committed. Over the course of the following week, Mrs Culf was informed that her artwork had been damaged and the council failed to advertise her work as part of the exhibition.
- 4 August: BEEE Creative were then pressurised to terminate Mrs Culf’s separate contract and caving into pressure they duly obliged.
2024:
- March: Victoria launches legal action with the Christian Legal Centre’s help against Watford Borough Council and the council worker, making claims for breach of contract, discrimination, harassment, misfeasance in public office, negligence, intimidation, defamation, conspiracy, and malicious falsehood.
2025:
Media coverage
Victoria Culf on Talk TV: “I expressed my view that transitioning children was harmful – the council claimed they had REPORTED me to the police”
Victoria Culf on GB News: “The museum called me up and said I’d been accused of harassment”
The Times: Council staff ‘lied about police investigating artist for gender views’
The Telegraph: Christian artist reported to police over gender-critical views
Daily Mail: Artist investigated by police for ‘hate crime’ after sharing her gender views with a council member
Commentary
Tim Dieppe in the Critic: The dangers of conversation at work
Christian Concern (Round the Table): Victoria Culf under fire for questioning trans ideology
Support Victoria
Victoria is receiving help from the Christian Legal Centre to take her case forwards.
We provide this support completely free of charge to Victoria and others like her.
Make a donation today to help this work continue.
You can visit Victoria’s professional website to see how the Lord has gifted her as an artist.