WPBN: Accusing several California hospitals and healthcare providers of medical malpractice, a UCLA student claims she was misdiagnosed with gender dysphoria and then “fast-tracked onto the conveyor belt of irreversibly damaging” surgery, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers.
In a lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Kaya Clementine Breen, 20, claimed that she was sexually abused as a young child and that by the time she was eleven, she “began struggling with the thought of developing into a woman and began to believe that life would be easier if she were a boy.”
She contacted her then-school counselor about this, and the counselor informed her that “she called her parents to tell them the same that she was transgender.”
According to the lawsuit, Breen was also experiencing anxiety, depression, and undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder.
Her parents then brought her to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Center for Transyouth Health and Development, where she claimed to have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which is the distress that arises when a person’s gender identity and birth sex are at odds, and to have started receiving transition-related care at the age of 12.
“This case is about a team of purported health care providers who collectively decided that a vulnerable girl struggling with complex mental health struggles and suffering from multiple instances of sexual abuse should be prescribed a series of life-altering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, ultimately, receive a double mastectomy at the age of 14,” according to Breen’s lawsuit.
In court filings, it was alleged that Breen’s “mental health progressively declined” after taking puberty-suppressing medication at the age of 12, cross-sex hormone prescriptions from the ages of 13 to 19, and a double mastectomy at the age of 14.
In a Thursday interview, Breen stated, “In retrospect, I wish that somebody had suggested real, genuine therapy first, instead of gender-specific therapy, because really the only therapy that I received until much later was specifically focused on gender dysphoria, and didn’t connect my gender dysphoria to anything else.”
Breen claimed that after beginning dialectical behavior treatment earlier this year—a talk therapy approach designed to assist people who are experiencing strong emotions—she started to doubt her choice to transition.
“I sort of started questioning my own gender identity and if I was doing this for the right reasons,” she stated.
Adolescent medicine specialist Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, gender-affirming plastic surgeon Dr. Scott Mosser, the Gender Confirmation Center of San Francisco, UCSF Health Community Hospitals, and psychotherapist Susan P. Landon are among the defendants in Breen’s lawsuit.
The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where Olson-Kennedy works, has “provided high quality, age-appropriate, medically necessary care for more than 30 years,” according to a representative when questioned about the complaint.
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The Gender Confirmation Center was praised for being “at the forefront of gender-affirming surgery, with the wellbeing of our patients as our highest priority” in Mosser’s statement, which seems to have been uploaded to the center’s website last week.
“Our robust processes and protocols are designed to ensure that patients navigating our services fully understand the implications of the gender-affirming procedures they may choose to undergo as part of their transition,” Mosser stated. “We regularly hear from former patients sharing updates about the overwhelmingly positive impact these surgeries have had on their lives — messages that continue to arrive many years after their procedures.”
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Although she doesn’t think any of the medical professionals included in her lawsuit “intentionally acted in poor faith,” Breen claimed they disregarded her pre-existing mental health conditions.
Breen stated that she wants “some semblance of justice or change” in response to the question of what she hopes to obtain from this case. Her top priority, she stated, is to “help dismantle the rumor that no one is ever fast-tracked into gender treatments,” even if she is requesting “financial reimbursement for the amount that this has cost me and my family.”
