A detransitioner who, as a 14-year-old girl, was coerced into taking testosterone that left her with vaginal atrophy, weak bones, and possible infertility is suing the experts who harmed her for malpractice, civil conspiracy, and fraud.
Among the defendants are the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and Jason Rafferty, MD. Rafferty allegedly ignored her history of PTSD from a sexual assault and her hope to have children later in life and pushed hormones as the only treatment for her gender distress.
Rafferty is the primary author of the AAP’s gender care policy. This policy asserts that the only treatment for gender distress is to immediately affirm gender identities through social transition, puberty blockers, and hormones.
The suit states that the AAP’s policy is fraudulent because its authors made false and unsubstantiated claims, such as puberty blockers are safe and reversible and that the authors ignored overwhelming evidence that if unaffirmed, most children will outgrow their distress.
Rafferty and his colleagues also allegedly invented information to support their position that it’s dangerous to first treat underlying mental health disorders while waiting to see if children learn to be comfortable with their bodies.
The suit filed by Campbell, Miller, Payne, a law firm that specializes in helping detransitioners find justice, states:
Defendants ignored and continue to ignore the scientific and evidence-based criticisms of the gender policy statement, have attained a windfall of prestige and profits because of the gender policy statement, and continue to perpetuate the conspiracy.
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff, Isabelle Ayala, who had been sexually assaulted when she was seven, met Dr. Rafferty while she was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. She told Dr. Rafferty that she thought being a boy was the only way she could treat her mental health struggles. She also told him that she might like to have a baby when she grew up. Based on that one meeting, Rafferty concluded that she was a candidate for hormone therapy.
Two months after starting testosterone, Isabelle presented with “profound depression with intermittent suicidal ideation.” Rafferty’s colleague, Gillian Morris, MD, tripled her testosterone dose.
Six months later, she met with Dr. Michelle Forcier, the physician who asked Matt Walsh, “Do chickens cry?” in his documentary, “What is a Woman?” Isabelle told Forcier that she had been increasingly suicidal and depressed, but Forcier did nothing to decrease the testosterone dosage. Rafferty continued the high dosage even after Isabelle was hospitalized for attempted suicide.
After Isabelle moved from Rhode Island to her home state of Florida, she quit taking testosterone and became more comfortable with her female body. She realized she could never be a boy. She came to understand that her confusion was a result of her PTSD and other mental health problems that had never been treated.
Now, in addition to the irreversible physical changes and permanent damage to her health, she lives with the regret and anger of having been taken advantage of, according to the complaint.
The complaint notes that Rafferty went from being an obscure physician completing his residency to being considered a leading authority on gender because he drafted the AAP’s ideologically based policy.
Dartmouth Health physicians have repeated the AAP’s claims that puberty blockers are safe and reversible and that social and medical transitions are the only accepted treatments for gender dysphoria in their public testimonies, op-eds, and professional articles.
Related: Trans or Die: The Ideological Blindness of a Dartmouth Health Endocrinologist
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