Young woman files $1M suit against doctors who left her maimed after trans surgery
A young woman who suffered temporary confusion about her gender in her youth is suing the doctors and surgeons who she says botched her body, leaving her maimed and in pain after an elective double mastectomy when she was a teenager. She's accusing the medical professionals of sending her down a path of “permanent physical disfigurement and worsening psychological distress.”
Soren Aldaco, a 21-year-old detransitioner, alleges that when she was 17 and struggling with a variety of mental health issues, doctors prescribed her cross-sex hormones after only one appointment and subsequently encouraged her to mutilate her body by severing her breasts to have a flat chest in an attempt to look more masculine.
A copy of the complaint first obtained by The Texan and filed Friday in the Tarrant County District Court of Texas names Del Scott Perry, Sreenath Nekkalapu, Barbara Rose Wood, Richard Santucci, Ashley DeLeon, Crane Clinic LLC, Texas Health Physicians Group, Three Oaks Counseling Group LLC, and Mesa Springs LLC as the defendants.
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Aldaco is seeking more than $1 million in damages.
According to the complaint, Aldaco had struggled with gender dysphoria from an early age. Other issues that she says also impacted her mental health were familial problems, the death of a grandmother and ridicule from her peers.
Because she hit puberty earlier than her peers, Aldaco said she felt insecure about her body and began believing that she might be trans after talking to other trans-identified individuals online.
In December 2017, Aldaco experienced a mental health episode that resulted in her parents checking her into Mesa Springs Psychiatric Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, around January 2018.
There, she was treated by Dr. Nekkalapu, who allegedly “pressed” Aldaco to discuss her gender identity by asking questions about transgenderism, despite the teenager’s requests not to discuss the topic. The complaint further alleges that Aldaco felt pressured at age 15 to confess her gender identity to the doctor for the first time.
Nekkalapu reportedly did not conduct a comprehensive psychobehavioral examination or review the teenager’s existing mental health issues before concluding that Aldaco should “embrace” a trans identity, according to the suit.
In 2019, Aldaco attended a trans support group, Trans-Cendence International, where she met Dr. Perry who reportedly had a reputation for prescribing testosterone "upon request." After meeting Aldaco for the first time during a 30-minute appointment, Perry allegedly prescribed the synthetic opposite-sex hormones on Jan. 28, 2020.
The complaint further notes that the long-term consequences of using cross-sex hormones in minors remain unknown. According to The American College of Pediatricians, the side effects of puberty blockers include "osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility."
Last month, England’s National Health Service announced it would restrict puberty-blocking drugs as a "treatment" for gender dysphoria, advising medical professionals to consider other forms of medical intervention that are not invasive and experimental body-mutilating procedures.
The lawsuit also accuses Perry of failing to address Aldaco’s mental health issues or discuss potential alternatives to cross-sex hormones. In addition, the lawsuit claims that Perry did not inform the teenager about the risks associated with taking opposite-sex hormones.
As a result of taking the hormones, Aldaco reportedly started to experience “severe complications,” but Perry continued prescribing the hormones. After another medical professional advised Aldaco to stop taking the hormones instead of affirming her as Perry did, the girl dismissed the doctor as a “bigot.”
“To Soren, the advice coming from the doctors seemed less certain, less emphatic, and thus less persuasive than the ‘gender-affirming’ medicalization course Perry had laid out for her,” the complaint explains.
The young woman would continue taking cross-sex hormones until November 2021. Perry was not the only medical professional who encouraged Aldaco’s transition, as the teen had begun talking with her therapist, Wood, around July 2020. According to the suit, Wood used false statements in a letter recommending the teenager for a double mastectomy at the Crane Clinic in Austin.
Another defendant named in the suit, Dr. DeLeon, and the other Crane Clinic practitioners are accused of failing to conduct a review to assess the girl’s “suitability” for an elective double mastectomy. The providers also allegedly did not ask for medical records from Aldaco’s previous medical providers or therapists.
Aldaco recalled that she was in extreme pain after the operation and she took pictures of her “nipples literally peeling off of her chest,” which she sent to Dr. Santucci who was monitoring her recovery. The suit claims that "Santucci negligently supervised Soren’s problematic
recovery, leaving Soren with horrible post-surgical complications and resulting disfigurement that continue to affect Soren to this day. When her emergency post-surgical complications arose, Soren immediately reached out to Dr. Santucci, who downplayed her horrible complications and insisted to her that the complications were 'normal.' "
As a result of the botched surgery, Aldaco was forced to undergo emergency surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Hospital in Dallas, for which she had to pay out of pocket. The Crane Clinic CEO agreed to reimburse Aldaco in the amount of $421.31 if she agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Aldaco refused to sign the agreement or accept the money, according to the complaint. After her experience, Aldaco realized that “neither the testosterone nor the double mastectomy had helped her feel entirely comfortable in her body.”
After conducting some research in November 2021, Aldaco concluded that the defendants had subjected her to an “experimental” form of treatment and that there were other people like her who were also persuaded that transitioning would help them.
“Ultimately, what Soren realized is that over the rocky course of her adolescence, what she needed was an unbiased doctor, not an idealogue,” the complaint concludes. “And upon these realizations, she immediately felt and understood the wrongs she had suffered at the hands of the Defendants. With this lawsuit, Soren now seeks redress for those wrongs.”
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
