Dr Jessica Taylor

[Jessterday]

Came across this thread from elsewhere and decided to join the site.

I used to work at VF. Jess is totally a grandiose narcissist, who purposely employs women on benefits in order to extract unpaid labour out of them. I left the org and moved into a different field of work entirely in order to get away from her. Blocked her everywhere. She still has flying monkeys keep an eye on my social media. She's a bad human being.

 

[Gingerfattie]

Wow. New to this thread having only recently become aware of this person. I’ve just read her fact sheet on debunking the chemical imbalance myth, as she calls it. She hasn’t debunked anything. I’m a psychiatric nurse and I’ve found it so misleading and dangerous. She’s essentially picked and chosen what she wants for her fact sheet in order to paint an unfavourable picture of mental health professionals and to overlook the often essential role medication plays in stabilising a person’s mental health. I see she’s neglected to mention the dopamine hypothesis in the development of psychosis and the stress vulnerability model. Trauma informed care is vital and all NHS Trusts should be training their staff in this approach, but this cannot mean to the exclusion of all else surely. I also saw that she thinks trauma includes capitalism, debt and unemployment. I mean I thought those things were shit but not trauma. Child CSA is trauma, domestic violence etc but can we label all of life’s shit/challenges as trauma if you know what I mean? I feel, as others point out, that she is entirely self-serving. She is a narcissistic limelight seeking non-clinician POSING as a clinician constantly offering to ‘send you my links’ WHAT AN IRRESPONSIBLE TWAT.

By the way I just want to add I work with a lot of people with EUPD or BPD and they do not present in this way in the slightest. They have a hard time of it living with such a label and are generally very sensitive. I think they really fear these judgements and Dr Jess definitely isn’t presenting like this in my view, I think Dr Jess is just very problematic.

 

[AccidentalAcademic]

People often search for reviews before they sign up for things, so I hope anyone considering one of those VictimFocus 'courses' will stumble on this thread.

If you are someone who wants to work therapeutically with people who have been abused or traumatised, put your money into a course that leads to professional registration with a legitimate body that provides proper regulatory oversight. Consider mental health nursing, consider occupational therapy, social work, etc. There are bursaries available for these courses to try and remedy the shortage of professionals, and you can access student finance even if you have a prior degree. (There are intensive two-year courses available for people with prior degrees.) Once you have a 'core' profession like OT or MH nursing there are often salaried opportunities to train in different psychological therapies and develop your specialisation. If you're prepared for a long slog, look at clinical psychology. A profession that's regulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) or the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) is well regarded internationally and you're unlikely ever to be out of work. Invest your money in something like this. Don't hand over nearly £3k to spend a grand total of 11 days gaining a "certificate" that will qualify you to do precisely nothing!

 

[Flumps]

Oooo, I am so glad this thread is here. I've had a pinging on my bullshit radar with her tweets for while now.

Her cervical cancer story doesn't quite add up. You aren't diagnosed with it at a regular smear test. You will get a letter, like lots of women do, saying there are abnormal cells. Then you'll go for a colposcopy. Now, you may get an indication there that there is a likelihood of a cancer diagnosis, but they will biopsy and send off for the results, then you'll get an appointment or a call with the initial diagnosis. Then there will be further assessment and staging.

You can have a operation to remove the problematic part of your cervix (if your cancer is at a *very* early stage and confined to the cervix, with possible margins). This is a radical trachelectomy and is a genius invention of a treat of a man, Dr John Shepherd, who did my surgery (and laughed at me a lot when I got a bit over-effusive about him saving my life when I was a bit high post-op). Anyway, that cringe memory aside, it takes two weeks to check if the surgery has been successful - they have to look at what they took out and check the margins etc. You do not have to wait six months to find out if it has been successful - though there are a lot of checkups during that time to keep an eye on things. You do have to have follow ups for a number of years, but that's mostly in the form of fancy smear tests and colposcopies, and is due to the super-caution of rather sensible cancer doctors.

So our Jess's claim that she was diagnosed with CC at a smear is balls. And this 6 months on tenterhooks is also balls. She may well have had a radical trachelectomy, but the details are bogus, it just doesn't work that way. TBH, I never get this shit, it's dramatic enough to have cancer IME, it doesn't require a whole heap of bollocks on top.

 

[gisellejoly]

I don’t think the age gap is that bad, she’s only 30 or 31. (born in 1990, iirc).

I find it weird that she calls herself a lesbian, she seems to have a long history of being with men. But if it was compulsory heterosexuality then fair enough.

lol, it definitely was not 'compulsory heterosexuality'. She's not a lesbian. Dr Jess Taylor is a massive narcissist and pathological liar, both in her professional and personal life. She posted hundreds of tweets about how loving and wonderful her husband was. Then dumped him and ran off with Jaimi (who Jess met when Jaimi was ONLY SIXTEEN YEARS OLD!) and started claiming her husband was abusive. Let's not forget she started a Men's Mental Health charity in memory of her husband's father which was awarded over 700k in grants. She never used the money to open a day centre for mentally ill men like she claimed she would, and then left her husband and almost immediately got with Jaimi bought a 500k house with Jaimi. She's an absolute charlatan and nothing she says should be believed.

 

[judgejohndeed]

She has said something about an academic slating her. I can't remember if it was bullying or something else.

It's definitely not just one. I'm a former academic and I think her 'work' is completely lacking rigour. Someone else has highlighted this but her presentation of stats is misleading and unethical, when she said X% of women rather than X% of those who answered etc. She will definitely have done stats on her PhD so there's no excuse.
The alarm bells started to ring for me when I read her poor explanation of why she doesn't publish her work in academic journals etc. Her reason sounds convincing to the average person - I'm not denying that accessibility with academic work is a problem, but there are ways around it, such as publishing only in open access journals or paying for open access to those where it isn't free. The fact that her 'work' has no institutional oversight, isn't peer reviewed and looked at by any ethics committee or colleagues etc basically makes it useless. Anyone can make up any old results in those circumstances, there is a reason that academia has these 'bureaucratic' processes and it's to ensure people don't get away with e.g. stealing people's stories and presenting it as academic work without consent. They're not perfect but it's better than nothing.

The way she tells half a story is intentional I think - it's meant to make your mind fill in the gaps.

I was going to say this, she definitely hints at things to lead your mind a certain way with the safety of being able to say 'well you made that assumption, I never said it.'

 

[AccidentalAcademic]

Can’t wait to ask her about her shady credentials

On the Substack she talks about "working in a prison" and challenging a psychiatrist about their diagnosis of a prisoner. Once again she's giving the impression that she's clinically qualified. No, she's not lying outright and saying "I was a clinical psychologist/therapist/mental health practitioner in a prison", but she's being deliberately vague in the full knowledge that this is what her audience will assume.

Then she goes on to announce that the psychiatrist was prescribing medication for a "personality disorder" when really the patient was traumatised. There are no drugs licensed specifically for the treatment of personality disorders (which by the way I agree are a problematic diagnostic construct) and medication isn't recommended as a core part of treatment, to the point where people who have the PD diagnosis actually struggle to access medication when they need it. There is no way a doctor would prescribe meds "for a personality disorder". They're prescribed to alleviate other difficulties that can coexist alongside the core PD difficulties, which ironically include symptoms of PTSD. The idea that meds have no role in the treatment of trauma is bizarre. It's like saying, "Oh, your leg got broken when you were violently shoved downstairs? Well, we're not going to give you any painkillers, because that won't get to the root of the issue, which was the abuse." If the prison incident even happened the way Jess describes it, which I suspect is unlikely given her love of embroidery and her desire to position herself as David vs Goliath, the psychiatrist will have declined her 'advice' on the basis that...it makes zero sense. Her lack of knowledge prevents her from being aware of how nonsensical it sounds to people who do have knowledge.

But she doesn't care, because her audience isn't clinicians of any kind. She's not trying to change the system for the better. She's trying to cultivate an adoring social media fanbase of people who believe that she really is changing the system, that she's amazingly knowledgeable and radical, that she treats people with complex trauma all the time and is bravely telling all these patriarchal mental health professionals where to get off. "I've created a MLM scheme and branded myself an expert online," doesn't have the same ring to it.

 

[AccidentalAcademic]

I'm trying to educate someone I vaguely know on Facebook about the dangers of this woman, would anyone be able to help me with some links to the allegations against her about publishing without permission?

The women concerned are on Twitter here (Rosie) and here (Sally Ann) and they have tweeted extensively about what happened to them. I will provide a summary.

Sally Ann's case is particularly concerning because she is a young woman in exactly the situation that Jess claims to be championing: she is a victim of child sexual exploitation that lasted for years, she still receives support from a specialist charity, and she experiences severe trauma-related psychological difficulties. Some years ago the charity supporting her traumatised her further by making her watch videos about CSE that were supposedly designed to 'educate' victims about how to avoid abuse, but in practice are incredibly graphic and make it sound as if it is the exploited child's responsibility to keep themselves safe. At the time Jess was campaigning to stop the use of these videos. Sally Ann discovered her campaign on Facebook, and in her distress, she poured out her personal story. She ended the message with the words, "Do what you want with it, maybe some of them will listen."

Jess took this story and included it in Why Women Are Blamed for Everything without obtaining formal consent from Sally Ann. Some people might assume that the Facebook message was consent, but not by the standards of academics working in any discipline, and especially not among those of us working with vulnerable people. Every research proposal has to be passed by either a university ethics committee or an NHS ethics board. Every participant in a research study has to be given a clear, detailed explanation of what the study involves, what its aims are, exactly how participants' data will be stored and used, and - crucially - how to withdraw their data if they no longer want to be involved. Then they sign it. All of this was absent from Sally Ann's exchange with Jess. Furthermore, it's deeply unethical to take 'consent' from a participant who is clearly in a very distressed state - as an academic who has researched with vulnerable children and who teaches research methods and ethics, I really can't stress enough just how awful and unprofessional that is. If Jess were employed by any university or NHS trust Sally Ann would be able to make a formal complaint to her ethics committee, but she can't, because there is no ethics committee - Jessica Taylor works for herself and is accountable to absolutely no one.

When Sally Ann began to voice her distress on Twitter, Jess reacted by trying to paint as Sally Ann as either lying or too traumatised and fragile to understand that she wasn't in the book - it was someone else who just so happened to have the exact same experience as hers. (Sally Ann's story concerned CSE films and the charity who supported her, not a common experience, so the likelihood that there could have been two such women with such specific stories is vanishingly small!) In other words, Jess reacted by doing the exact same things that in other contexts she calls out as victim-blaming: trying to get people to dismiss Sally Ann as a liar or someone who is too damaged to understand what's going on. She even resorted to DMing people on Twitter with details about Sally Ann, including the name of the regional charity that supports her, claiming that the charity "hates" her and was encouraging Sally Ann to tell lies about her. Those people gave the screenshots to Sally Ann, so she does have concrete proof of Jess spreading identifiable details to strangers. Jess also attempted to salvage the situation by claiming that WWBE only contains material from her PhD, so Sally Ann couldn't be in the book. However, her PhD thesis is available online and there is no section on child sexual exploitation films anywhere in it - the CSE section in the book very clearly didn't originate with the PhD.

Rosie's story was recognised by a friend who read the book before Rosie did, and who complained to the publisher that she had been able to identify someone she knew. The publisher recently wrote back to say that Jess didn't need Rosie's consent to describe her experiences because there was nothing in there to make her identifiable to a wider audience, which contradicts what Jess claimed about having a consent form for "every woman" (her words) who had appeared in the book. It's actually true that commercial publishers aren't as strict on consent as academic publishers, and if there are no direct quotations or names used they won't care. However, the minimum standard in commercial publishing is not the standard that anyone with claiming to be trauma-informed should abide by, due to the extreme vulnerability of the people involved. Rosie considered Jess to be a friend, but Jess didn't seem to give any thought to how Rosie might feel to have what she thought was a private dinner conversation turned into fodder for a book. Again, that conversation dealt with highly specific views and experiences, and it took place in a small restaurant in Chinatown, which Jess mentions in the book. How many women with exactly those ideas and experiences have eaten with her in small restaurants in Chinatown? Jess didn't apologise but doubled down on her insistence that it hadn't happened and she had consent forms for all participants, so it's significant that her publisher has switched tack and essentially admitted that Rosie didn't give consent.

Jess has behaved shamefully throughout the whole thing. If one of my participants ever contacted me with concerns about what I'd done with their data I wouldn't be ranting on Twitter about how they were liars out to torpedo my reputation, I'd be talking to my ethics committee and encouraging the participant to do the same. I'd be reflecting on my practice to see if there is anything I should have done differently. If the participant was in distress, I'd be checking they had access to support. I certainly wouldn't be spilling the details of whatever support they were accessing to my critics on social media, in an effort to paint them as naive puppets in a sinister plot to get me. What she's done goes so completely against the most basic research ethics. If I didn't know the details of Sally Ann and Rosie's complaints, I'd be saying the same - how she reacted is a massive red flag parade on its own, without even considering the specifics of the allegations.

 

[ChilliBean]

I haven’t got much to add to the discussion that hasn’t already been said but I would just like to mention that her fringe is fucking awful

 

[DisgruntledGoat]

Now she seems to have abandoned that angle in favour of arguing that women diagnosed with personality disorders, autism and ADHD are misdiagnosed and it’s all due to trauma. I mean, I’d even agree that women get diagnosed with BPD when they are in fact autistic, but there’s seemingly very little nuance to what she’s saying. She’s hardcore anti-psychiatry and anti-medication.

This angered me so so so much when she was saying “all these women are now being diagnosed with ADHD but it’s just TRAUMA”. A total misinterpretation of cause and effect: the traumatic experiences in my life have been significantly magnified by long-term undiagnosed ADHD. Dopamine-seeking meant I sought out risky situations and short term satisfaction, I ended up with awful men and failed at things I should have easily succeeded at, and felt all these failures and hurts much more deeply without knowing WHY. Honestly so invalidating to hear a supposed expert tell you your experiences aren’t real. I can only imagine how much this is amplified when she’s gaslighting survivors whose stories she has stolen for her own gain.

 

[SagaNoren]

I can’t believe there’s finally a thread on her! I always thought I was the only one who saw through her!

I followed her ages ago back when I followed loads of GC accounts. I thought it was great that she was advocating for victims and thought that her story of success against the odds as a teenage mother was really inspiring.

I can’t remember when alarm bells started to ring but it was way back when she was starting to gain a lot of traction and it seemed like I was the only person who was sceptical.

Stuff that bothered me included :

_The boasting about her success and chat about her “haters” - it all seemed so juvenile.
_ The stuff about how much money she’s making, her house in the country, the numerous fancy holidays (including at least one which broke lockdown rules IIRC) - while all the time claiming to champion working-class women. It seemed pretty tone-deaf.
_As mentioned before, the fact that her partner with zero qualifications in this field was co-authoring these supposedly important studies and resources.
_The performative lesbianism - even if they are genuinely doing it for “lesbian visibility” surely they can’t be so naive as not to realise that these photos are more likely to attract the male gaze?
_ The fact that all her selfies and photos of her and JS in bed together etc are all on the same social media account as her Victim Focus stuff; it came across as so unprofessional
_ All the tall tales - taken separately I would take most of them at face value but taken all together it’s like the boy who cried wolf.

For a long time I’ve felt that she’s a complete charlatan and couldn’t understand why nobody else could see through her. I’m relieved they finally are, as with her anti-psychiatry message I think she’s crossed a line to the extent where she could cause genuine harm. I’m sorry that it took what seems like the exploitation of of at least 2 vulnerable women to open more people’s eyes.

I’m glad I got that off my chest!

 

[Whatevesmate]

I find her lesbianism so performative. You would think that she invented it. It feels so teenage. All the women that I know who are married to or live with women don't feel the need to proclaim it at any opportunity. It's not that big a deal, ffs. I also find their constant proclamations of love really juvenile. I predict that at some point this relationship will sour and Jaimi will reveal all sorts of bad and troubling behaviour. Wouldn't be surprised if Jess ended up with a bloke again at some point

 

[AccidentalAcademic]

Hi everyone. Have joined tattle bcos I love this thread. I'm a long term twitter terf and my alarm bells started ringing about Dr Jess shortly before she published her first book, I ended up muting her due to her ego, size of a bloody planet, and way of dealing with any dissent, or even queries, in a bullying manner that often involves threats of police/solicitors.

This was the point when I started to become concerned. I'm an academic in an adjacent area, and when Jess shared a link to her PhD thesis, I read a couple of chapters. It was interesting and I looked forward to reading the book based on the research, which I expected to be a livelier, more accessible presentation of the data, rewritten for a wider audience than her examiners. I was unimpressed to find that it was literally her unedited thesis with a few of her blog posts added, which meant that stylistically it was a really awkward read and hardly worth the price given it was all available free online! There's a reason why academic publishers explicitly state they won't accept unrevised dissertations. I made one very polite comment online to this effect, and lo and behold, within literal minutes I had someone accusing me of orchestrating a smear campaign against Jess and being the author of every negative review the book had received. Meanwhile she was declaring that other academics just hated her for writing in a radically accessible new style, and her Twitter audience was lapping this up. It was incredibly disingenuous.

 

[judgejohndeed]

The thing is she's not even an expert on ADHD, autism, etc. Her PhD was in forensic psychology and she's not a psychiatrist. Jess uses her PhD title to give faux authority to opinions outside her expertise, again it's like Charlotte Proudman who is a family lawyer not a criminal one and is always Tweeting inaccurate and damaging messages about criminal process and the criminal courts.

 

[fionapple]

I wasn’t going to comment here, however I just remembered that on her podcast with Jaimi she claimed that Ford stole her design for a Ford Focus

 

[DisgruntledGoat]

I was really alarmed by the study she put out via Victim Focus where the sample of participants was self-selecting and she then made generalised claims that something like 96% of women have experienced sexual assault. You can’t make that generalisation from a sample where you recruited using a tweet that says “please fill in this survey if you’re a women who’s experienced sexual violence” .

I do think the figure of women who in reality have experience sexual violence is horrifically high but her shouting about this figure gleaned from a dodgy methodology leaves statements about MVAW open to being discredited. I thought it was terribly short-sighted for the sector and mainly used to get her name out there and publicise her books.

Then when criticism was made she didn’t respond professionally at all, she went off on one about bullying and haters. The whole point of being an academic and researcher is defending your theories, methods and findings. If you can’t defend your work (and your misrepresentation of your findings) without crying bully then you’re not a very good academic. I think she’s utterly self-serving and the name Victim Focus is laughable when you consider that it’s basically The Jess Show*

*now with added Jaimi!

 

[AccidentalAcademic]

At my university we had an upgrade and then yearly 'annual reviews' and that was whether you were funded or not. She also must've passed a viva and as she's a chartered psychologist there must've been some oversight of her work beyond just PhD supervision (can anyone in psychology shed some light on how she can say she's chartered but isn't on any register?) I honestly can't see how she doesn't understand her own lack of research integrity - I think she must know, and just doesn't care, she's relying on the public not to know or understand either.

There are two ways to gain chartership with the British Psychological Society. One route is to complete a recognised clinical training that leads to a practitioner qualification, such as the doctorate in clinical psychology (DClinPsy), educational psychology (DEdPsy), or counselling psychology (DCounsPsy). These programmes include in-depth therapeutic training, plus training in how to administer neuropsychological assessments.

The other route to chartership is to complete a PhD in any area of psychology. Unlike the practitioner doctorates, which have a heavy taught component and will involve lengthy placements with different client groups, psychology PhDs are entirely research-based. A person who applies for chartership on this basis will have in-depth expertise in their particular niche, but they don't have the broader practical skillset that practitioner psychologists will have.

Jess knows full well that the vast majority of people don't know this, and when she talks about "working with women and girls" they're going to assume she's doing therapy and assessments. She banks on this lack of understanding when she makes her pronouncements about psychiatric medication, autism, or whatever she's decided she's an expert in this week. If it were just braggadoccio, I wouldn't care, but there is a risk that one of these days someone with bipolar disorder is going to read all her rants and come off their meds in the belief she's a doctor and she must be right. It's not a game. It's not the Jessica Taylor Show. She needs to realise that before (more) people get hurt.

 

[gisellejoly]

Just a small selection of some of the fantasist stories from Dr Jess the pathological liar include:

- Her son is apparently only able to see the colour blue
- She can write 15-20k words a day, to publishable standard (while sleeping 10-12 hours a day)
and perhaps the best one
- Jess has suffered many physical and mental ailments she suffered from throughout life, including allergies, anxiety, abnormal heart rhythm, a stroke, blindness, cervical cancer which led to the removal of her cervix, and having no period for many years. Luckily, leaving her husband and discovering her 'lebsianism' cured her of every single one of these problems! What a miracle!!

 

[Jessterday]

My work is quite public, actually. It's difficult to weigh in about this topic, because my name is openly attached to VF, but I don't reference it in my day-to-day anymore; luckily I've managed to move into a role that is professional and skilled, and in a really supportive organisation.

I was vulnerable when I joined VF, with a low level of self confidence. We moved in the same radical feminist circles, and back then at least, working for VF felt like being paid to be an activist. It almost felt like the small wage was a bonus to being out there, changing the world, and being able to be openly gender critical without any pushback from my employer. It came at a cost, of course.

 

[Jessterday]

Meanwhile, I saw a woman (a survivor of abuse) on Twitter saying she’d paid £900 towards a VF course which she then couldn’t do as her abusive ex took her to court so she couldn’t pay for the rest of it. They didn’t refund her money - she even asked if she could use the money towards a future course, but she said she’s had tumbleweed. The entire course course £2500

I know people have to earn a living and obviously you can’t expect people to work for free. But there just seems something not right about the way she’s going about it - do you know what I mean?

Those "courses" are a pyramid scheme/MLM - take a look at the website. She was selling them before she'd even written the outline, content, resources, etc. In our work meetings, she was openly saying that these courses were a way to inject funds into the business as quickly as possible, as well as building a solid customer base outside the UK by delivering them online and in different time zones. I created the outlines based on a bullet point list! I built the slick-looking course brochures so she could get larger contracts with 3rd sector orgs. This isn't necessarily terrible business practice, but it's not exactly ethical, either. (and no, there was no oversight, peer-review, nothing)

I was working my notice at the time and I was so pissed off about it - warned a few friends off who were interested in doing it, too.

I feel quite regretful over how my work has bolstered her veneer of respectability over the years.