Oriel Frankie Ashcroft
A young woman who has since “detransitioned” from living as a male has filed a landmark lawsuit against a notorious “trans” industry doctor. The suit alleges medical negligence on the part of the doctor for encouraging the girl, starting when she was 12, to undergo “gender-affirming treatment,” including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and an elective double mastectomy.
Attorneys for University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) student Kaya Clementine Breen, 20, filed the lawsuit Thursday against lead defendant Johanna Olson-Kennedy, M.D., as well as other healthcare 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” and, “ultimately, receive a double mastectomy at the age of 14.”
Olson-Kennedy has long been making headlines, most recently when the House Oversight Committee announced in November the launch of an investigation into the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) nearly-$10-million taxpayer-funded study led by the “trans” industry researcher.
Olson-Kennedy refused to reveal her results because they apparently contradicted the claimed effectiveness of puberty blockers – an outcome she said she wanted to ensure would not be “weaponized” and used in lawsuits against so-called “gender-affirming care” practitioners.
Olson-Kennedy also made headlines in March 2018 when she flippantly dismissed concerns about young girls consenting to have their healthy breasts removed as part of “gender-affirming” treatment.
“Adolescents actually have the capacity to make a reasoned, logical decision,” she said in the video above during her talk at a Gender Spectrum Professional Symposium. “And here’s the other thing about chest surgery. If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them.”
Breen, who refers to herself as Clementine, has suffered throughout her young life with serious mental health issues, as the complaint describes:
Clementine is a female who suffered from a complex, multi-faceted array of mental health symptoms as a child and adolescent. She is also a survivor of multiple instances of sexual abuse as a child and adolescent, something that was never explored, addressed, or discussed by Defendants in the course of their purported treatment. Her presentation of symptoms and concerns included, among other things, anxiety, depression, autism, undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), potential bipolarism, as has been suggested by one of her psychiatrists, ongoing confusion regarding her gender, and eventually psychosis (including audio and visual hallucinations), panic attacks, and paranoia. Her family also has a lengthy history of mental health issues. She needed psychotherapy to evaluate, assess, and treat her complex co-morbid mental health symptoms.
The lawsuit continues that when Breen began to question her gender identity, she brought this concern to her then-school counselor, who allegedly “told Clementine that she was transgender and called her parents to tell them the same.”
Breen’s parents decided to take her to see an “expert” in gender issues – Olson-Kennedy, the director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles – who “immediately and unquestioningly ‘affirmed’ Clementine as transgender, and at her very first visit, after mere minutes, Dr. Olson-Kennedy diagnosed Clementine with gender dysphoria and recommended surgical implantation of puberty blockers,” the complaint alleges.
Olson-Kennedy, the court filing continues, failed to conduct any mental health assessment of Breen.
“[I]t took Dr. Olson-Kennedy and the team at LA Children’s a single visit to send Clementine down a life-altering, traumatic, body-disfiguring, and irreversibly damaging path of transgender medicalization,” the lawsuit asserts.
Health and science journalist Benjamin Ryan posted to his Substack column Friday an extensive story of Breen’s history and lawsuit.
A video posted to X also shows Canadian anti-gender-affirming-care activist @BillboardChris’ interview with Breen about her “trans” treatment and subsequent detransition. During the interview, Breen said that within this past year she has attempted to begin breast reconstruction and found that, while her health insurer was willing to cover charges for her elective double mastectomy at age 14, coverage for detransition reconstruction surgery has not been approved.
According to the complaint, Breen was also urged to get a “gender-affirming” hysterectomy as a 17-year-old.
Despite all of her so-called “gender-affirming” treatments, the mental health symptoms she experienced failed to resolve and even grew worse.
“[H]er mental health progressively declined, as she proceeded into depression, anxiety, psychosis, hallucinations, self-harm, and suicidal ideation and even attempted suicide, none of which she had experienced prior to her gender medicalization,” the court filing alleges.
Breen talked with Billboard Chris about the lack of informed consent in the “gender-affirming” model.
“I don’t know how a child can consent to the loss of their fertility,” she said. “Children can’t conceptualize that, and I think people don’t understand that.”
