Doula UK apologise to me for distress caused by online bullying

And they are one of a growing number of organisations who are seeing sense.

Yesterday I was preoccupied with my eldest daughter’s sixteenth birthday which felt like a momentous occasion for me as well as for her, and was a mixed bag of hugs, tears, frantic wrapping of extremely grown up gifts and the first day of her GCSE mocks. Amidst that rollercoaster, an email pinged into my inbox: a response from Doula UK to a complaint I had made about one of their practitioners in October and about which they had reached a decision.

Before I tell you more - a bit of background: since 2020 the world of maternity and birth has been a fairly hostile place for me, particularly on social media. There are the well documented stories: the bullying of November 2020 that I went public with in the summer of 2021 and which became that month’s big ‘cancelled woman’ story in the press. Some of you also know how, later that same year, I was deplatformed from a conference in New Zealand. Alongside these bigger stories, there have been countless examples I know about, and presumably many many more that I don’t, of people defaming me, refusing. to platform me, telling people not to buy or recommend my books, and lord knows what else. It’s tiring.

During 2021 and 2022, I largely operated a policy of ignoring these everyday defamations. In part, this was out of a sense of despair that there was absolutely nothing I could do about them. Through working with a fantastic lawyer, Peter Daly, in late 2021, I had discovered just how difficult it is to challenge even big organisations who are damaging your reputation. In spite of Peter’s efforts, the charity Birthrights point blank refused to apologise to me or take down their statement about me from their website, where it remains to this day. In the case of the New Zealand conference, a hideously defamatory petition - which also remains available online, could apparently not be challenged because it was hosted outside of the UK. It seemed like people could say what they like about me really, and with each swipe on social media, slowly destroy my reputation and career with a thousand cuts.

In 2023, something changed. In hindsight, I’m not sure what prompted it; perhaps I simply woke up one morning and decided enough was enough. Whatever the reason, when someone contacted me that April to tell me that they’d received a message on instagram - Why are you following Milli Hill and what is your stance on transphobia? - I did some detective work, and discovered the same message had been sent to at least five more of my followers. I then found out who the person who had sent the message was, and complained to their professional body - Hypnobirthing Australia. I fully expected not to hear back or even to find that I had made the situation worse by complaining. Maybe Hypnobirthing Australia would use me, as others had done, to score woke points by making a public statement about my awfulness. I was - almost - past caring.

In fact, the opposite happened. I received the warmest, kindest, most genuine email straight back from the founder. I can still remember opening it on a train to London and reading it with tears in my eyes. I’m not going to share the contents, but suffice to say the hypnobirthing teacher who was trying to chip chip chip away at my livelihood got rapped over the knuckles, and I received an invite to have a ‘very strong margarita’ on the Gold Coast of Australia, should I ever be passing that way. I did share that this had happened at the time, but did not name Hypnobirthing Australia, for fear of repercussions for them. I’m naming them now because a) I think the tide has turned since then and people will appreciate and support them, and b) because they are not the only public body who has been supportive of me, and, for the sake of safety in numbers, I’m going to name a few more in this post.

In September 2023 I posted about my son’s 10th birthday and a hypnobirthing and yoga teacher showed up in the comments to say that I was, 'openly transphobic' and said that, “…it breaks my heart that this wee boy is growing up with conditions on his love and hatred towards a group of vulnerable people." She went on to say, "Mothers are grieving their murdered or suicidal children because of the hatred you and other terfs spread in their homes and on social media." My memory of my son’s 10th birthday will forever include the sickening feeling of reading her words which questioned my very love for my own child. I don’t know if you’ve seen Mitchells vs. The Machines (if you haven’t and you have kids - you must!), but if you remember the scene where the robots take her little boy off her and something inside of her flips and she rips all their hearts out by hand, you’ll get the picture of how I felt that day.

I looked up the person who left the comment and contacted two of the professional bodies she listed an association with - KGHypnobirthing and Birthlight. Birthlight explained that although this woman had trained with them she was not listed with them so they could not be held responsible for her online behaviour. Nevertheless they were kind and sympathetic. KGHypnobirthing founder Katharine Graves sent me another tear jerkingly supportive email, telling me that she wished to distance her self from the behaviour in the strongest possible way. She went on to contact the practitioner directly, and tell her the error of her ways. The woman was apparently tearful and had regrets, and although the word ‘sorry’ didn’t seem to feature and she even blamed ‘pregancy hormones’ for her behaviour, overall I felt extremely pleased that I’d taken action.

That summer I’d also heard a story on the grapevine of another organisation who supported me without my even having to ask - IMUK. They are the body the who represent independent midwives (who it has to be said I’ve supported wholeheartedly over the years - not that this necessarily counts for anything - I’d done the same for Birthrights and they had no qualms chucking me under the bus). IMUK had been organising a conference, and a speaker (who I won’t name but who was and still is a Birthrights trustee), had noticed that there is an endorsement of IMUK from me on the home page of their website. This is it:

The speaker told them that she would not speak at their conference unless they took this quote off their website. And amazingly, IMUK said no. And the speaker had no choice but to forgo her invite to speak.

It’s quite possible that I would never have found out about this story. IMUK could have taken down the quote and I might not have even noticed. But yet again a little bit of me and my work and my online presence would have been chipped away, erased. I’m so grateful to IMUK that they quietly stood up for me.

So now to Doula UK. In October 2023, someone was discussing the erasure of women from language on their own instagram page, and when she was told, as we all so often are, “That’s not happening”, she referred them to my substack section The Word is Woman. Two of them then proceeded to defame me, and as usual I watched it happen. One of them, Beth Godbolt, has been a ringleader of the core group who have been defaming and bullying me and others since 2020, and she made this comment. I offer it up to the disinfectant of sunlight because of course it is completely untrue.

Unfortunately Godbolt doesn’t seem to have a professional body, but the other commenter was a member of Doula UK. Since they have disciplined her, I am willing to protect her identity.

Working on my new 2023 principles to report every defamatory comment or incident of bullying I could to a professional body, I submitted a complaint to Doula UK that this person had broken their code of conduct (which you can read here). Yesterday then sent this response.

Dear Milli

We thank you for taking the time to bring to our attention the lack of adherence to our code of conduct by one of our members. 

We have reviewed all the information and on this occasion it has been decided by our Resolution Panel to uphold the complaint. This means that we have found the doula did break our code of conduct on several points. 

We have fed this back to the doula in question with suggestions about how she might go forward and reflect on her actions, and also how she might ensure her future use of social media stays within our valued Code of Conduct and Social Media Guidelines. 

We are saddened that, on this occasion, one of our members did not achieve the standards that we hold so high at Doula UK. We apologise for any distress caused to you or your business. This process has highlighted how important our Code of Conduct is in upholding our professional standards.

We would now consider the matter taken care of, and our role as Resolution Panel has been fulfilled. 

I am really pleased with this response, and actually wish I had taken this approach sooner and put a stop to the bullying I was experiencing in 2020 before it got so out of control. I will continue to report people who seek to spread lies about me and undermine my reputation or career. And I’m grateful that so many professional bodies are recognising that their members must not use social media to bully or defame anyone - even those people they dislike or disagree with. Women who ‘complain to the Manager’ are currently labelled as ‘Karens’, but I am happy to be a ‘Karen’ if it means someone who isn’t afraid to speak up when something is wrong.

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When first published this article erroneously named one organisation as Breastfeeding Australia. This was a mistype, and has now been corrected to Hypnobirthing Australia.