Texas woman seeks $1M from doctors who put her on hormones at age 17

2023-07-22

EXCLUSIVE: Texas woman seeks $1M from doctors who put her on testosterone at age 17 and left her ‘nipples peeling off’ from botched trans op, saying they should have treated her depression instead

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT
Soren Aldaco says doctors acted more like ‘ideologues’ than healers
They rushed her onto hormones and sped her into a slapdash surgery
Read about another young de-transitioner who wants payback for bad care

A young Texas woman is suing the doctors who put her on testosterone at age 17 and botched her double breast removal the next year, saying they should have treated her for depression and anxiety instead.

Soren Aldaco, 21, says she was confused, autistic, depressed and anxious when doctors in Fort Worth and Austin encouraged her to become a boy, take cross-sex hormones and later have both breasts removed.

In her 29-page complaint, she says doctors acted more like ‘ideologues’, pushing her to transition, not discussing alternatives, and ‘irreversibly disfiguring and disabling’ her with a shoddy mastectomy.

That operation left her ‘nipples literally peeling off of her chest,’ and she will not be able to breastfeed and may be infertile, it is claimed. The hormone shots left her with a damaged vagina and other problems.

Soren Aldaco, 21, says her doctors pushed her into transgender medecine

She says surgeons at the Crane Clinic botched her double breast removal with a ‘risky’ version of the procedure

Aldaco filed her suit in Tarrant County, Texas, on Friday. She seeks a jury trial and more than $1million in damages.

‘This lawsuit details a chronology of wrongful acts committed by a collective of medical providers who… administered a series of ruinous procedures and treatments,’ the papers say.

Aldaco was a ‘vulnerable teenager struggling with a slew of mental health issues’ while also ‘grappling with the universal challenges of adolescence and body image,’ the papers say.

Poll

Should ‘gender-affirming care’ be banned for children in your state?

Now share your opinion

‘Despite these telltale signs demanding caution and therapeutic resolution, however, the defendants deliberately and recklessly propelled Soren down a path of permanent physical disfigurement,’ they add.

The suit names her nurse practitioner Del Scott Perry, psychiatrist Dr Sreenath Nekkalapu, counselor Barbara Rose Wood, and the surgeons Dr Richard Santucci and Dr Ashley Deleon.

It also names their clinics — the Crane Clinic, Texas Health Physicians Group, Three Oaks Counseling Group, also known as Thriveworks, and Mesa Springs mental health facility in Fort Worth — which are all in Austin or the Fort Worth area.

None of the defendants immediately answered DailyMail.com’s requests for comment.

Aldaco, a self-described tomboy, experienced hardship and bereavement in her childhood, and struggled in her early teens with classmates poking fun at her large breasts, court papers claim.

Aldaco says she had a tough childhood and was sensitive to classmates making fun of her physique

Aldaco says she never felt wholly comfortable in the male body and identity that doctors pushed her into

Nurse practitioner Del Scott Perry (left) and surgeon Dr Richard Santucci have been accused of failing Aldaco

She started identifying as a boy or as non-binary, but that didn’t stop the ‘crippling depression and anxiety’ that saw the straight-A student start to fall behind at school.

After a manic episode, she was treated by Dr Nekkalapu at Mesa Springs Psychiatric Hospital, where the psychiatrist allegedly ‘coerced’ and pressured the 15-year-old into coming out as trans.

Soon after, she attended a support group for trans youth in Fort Worth called Trans-Cendence International in 2019, where she met Perry.

Perry had a reputation as ‘the guy who prescribes testosterone upon request,’ it is claimed.

After a 30-minute appointment at Perry’s office in January 2020, the nurse practitioner prescribed her an ‘outrageously large, off-label dosage’ of testosterone and another drug to ‘block’ her estrogen.

She started seeing therapist Wood in July that year. Wood allegedly used ‘false or otherwise misleading’ statements in a letter recommending Aldaco, then 17, for a double breast removal at Crane Clinic.

The Austin-based clinic was a ‘notorious surgical center recently relocated from California.’

They ‘conducted no independent medical assessment of their own, ignored the red flags, and put Soren under the knife,’ it is claimed.

Surgeons opted for a ‘risky’ procedure that did not allow for Aldaco’s blood to drain, it is claimed.

She was in pain after the procedure and took photos of ‘pools of blood forming subcutaneously within her torso, her nipples literally peeling off of her chest.’

She had her surgical wounds repaired elsewhere.

Crane Clinic offered to reimburse her $421.31 for her out-of-pocket costs, but asked her to sign legal papers against making any further claims or complaints, which she declined.

After these horrors, Aldaco slowly came to realize that ‘neither the testosterone nor the double mastectomy had helped her feel entirely comfortable in her body.’

Dr Ashley Deleon (left) and counselor Barbara Rose Wood are also been sued by the detransitioner

She ‘found answers in meditation and mindfulness,’ which she says is helping her come to terms with her gender identity and the irreversible effects of hormones and top surgery.

Her lawyer, Ron Miller, a founding partner of Campbell Miller Payne, told DailyMail.com that the case highlights a bigger problem — the rush to transition minors who need care, not cutting.

‘With this lawsuit, Soren hopes to not only seek redress for the wrongs done to her, but also to send a loud message to reckless practitioners who are rushing vulnerable kids into life altering gender medicalization and surgery,’ he said.

Speaking with the Independent Women’s Forum, Aldaco said many doctors and therapists were too fast to affirm every teenager’s gender confusion.

‘Sometimes the compassionate response is one which sets firm boundaries,’ she said.

‘You need to be able to discern between enabling and helping — that you are giving me access to certain drugs that you just give me referrals to whomever I asked for, didn’t actually help me heal. It affirmed me in my delusion.’

She joins a growing list of young people who undergo irreversible trans medical procedures, but who regret them and sue the doctors and therapists who they say fast-tracked them onto drugs and surgery.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FD_brjpAk2c%3Frel%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26hl%3Den-US

They include such prominent detransitioners, as they are known, as Chloe Cole and Layla Jane in California, Prisha Mosley in North Carolina, and Camille Kiefel in Oregon.

Several major US medical groups and advocates of gender-affirming care, as it is known, say puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and, and surgery can save lives among a suicide-prone group.

But opponents say sex is determined at birth and cannot be changed, that medical advisory groups have been hijacked by ideologues and that politicians must intervene to stop parents, doctors, or therapists from permanently harming children.

Many are alarmed by the sharp uptick in teenage girls with autism and other mental health woes asking for sex-reassignment in recent years, and of new studies linking puberty blockers to weaker bones and osteoporosis.

Whether to allow drugs and surgery for trans-identifying children has become a frontline in America’s culture wars, with Republicans pushing to outlaw gender-affirming care in some 20 states this year, including Texas.

A recent YouGov survey of 1,000 adults across red and blue states found that Americans were largely against gender-affirming procedures for children.

Some 61 percent rejected giving puberty blockers to 12-year-olds, while 21 percent said it was acceptable. They also deemed cross-sex hormones and breast surgeries unacceptable by similar margins.

Source: Read Full Article