Woman Sues American Academy of Pediatricians and Doctors Who ‘Transitioned’ Her

by Jeff Johnston | October 27, 2023 | Culture

A young woman whose body was damaged by testosterone is suing the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP), the Lifespan Physician Group, and doctors and counselors who prescribed this treatment. The suit charges the defendants with civil conspiracy, fraud, medical malpractice, gross negligence and failure to give informed consent.

According to The Daily Wire, which broke the story, “Isabelle Ayala, now a twenty-year-old woman, had just turned fourteen when she was committed to the hospital for suicidal thoughts, according to the lawsuit.”

The AAP is named in the suit for publishing a policy statement in 2018, “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents,” which the suit says, “not only misrepresented or misleadingly presented its purported evidentiary support but was also rife with outright fraudulent representations.”

Dr. Jason Rafferty, who authored that position statement and prescribed testosterone for Ayala, is named in the case, along with Drs. Michelle Forcier, Brittany Allen and Ilana Sherer, part of the AAP “LGBT Health & Wellness” committee that started the process to create the new policy.

Forcier gained notoriety when she appeared in Matt Walsh’s documentary, What Is a Woman, where she put on full display the ridiculousness of the ideology used to harm so many children. She discussed the gender identity of egg-laying hens with Walsh, asking, “Does a chicken have a gender identity? Does a chicken cry? Does it commit suicide?”

If the lawsuit is successful, the chickens may be coming home to roost for Dr. Forcier.

Campbell Miller Payne (CMP) – a law firm specifically established to bring justice for those harmed by transgender medical interventions – filed the suit on Ayala’s behalf.

They explain the sequence of events that lead doctors to prescribe testosterone for her. At the age of seven, she was sexually assaulted, then, “The following year, at the age of eight, Isabelle experienced early-onset puberty, all too often a consequence for sexual assault victims.”

This deeply affected Ayala, as “she felt uncomfortable with the changes to her body,” and “the sexual trauma haunted her and contributed to a profound insecurity that pushed Isabelle to begin looking for help.”

The troubled young girl struggled with depression, anxiety and self-harm:

Around age 11, as her body continued conforming to that of a woman and her apparent body dysmorphia persisted, Isabelle began cutting herself, often doing so multiple times a day.

Around that same time, she began interacting on social media platforms like Instagram, Kik and Tumbler, where she learned about transgenderism:

These social media interactions introduced Isabelle to the concept of being “trans,” an idea that immediately gained traction in her mind since Isabelle’s life experiences to that point taught her that to be a woman is to be vulnerable. Within months, to distance herself from the trauma she endured as a young girl, Isabelle began to identify as a boy amongst her group of close friends.

All that young Isabelle Ayala experienced – trauma, other mental and psychological issues, immersion in social media, and support from peers for a transgender identity – are common contributing factors in young women, as Dr. Lisa Littman found when she surveyed 256 parents whose adolescent and young adult children identified as “transgender.”

Littman hypothesizes that transgenderism may be a “maladaptive coping mechanism,” a “response to a stressor that might relieve the symptoms temporarily but does not address the cause of the problem and may cause additional negative outcomes.”

In other words, you don’t treat issues like sexual assault, anxiety and depression with opposite-sex hormones – which is what Ayala’s doctors did.

Ayala’s father took her to the pediatric “Transgender and Gender Diverse Healthcare” team at to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, in Rhode Island, in February 2017, and clinicians labeled her “transgender.”

Because of the severity of her depression and “thoughts about wanting to die,” she was admitted to inpatient care. There, she met Dr. Rafferty, an intern at the hospital. After “a single visit for less than an hour with Isabelle,” he concluded:

  1. Isabelle would benefit from being put on cross-sex hormones that would radically alter her body, yet somehow cure her underlying depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other comorbidities.
  2. Based on the minutes he had spent with her, she met diagnostic criteria for such radical cross-sex hormone treatment.

Ayala spent more than a year on testosterone, with the dosage “quickly and repeatedly” increasing, “despite her consistently increasing anxiety and worsening depression, culminating in an attempted suicide.

The suit details some of the damaging effects of the testosterone:

Her body underwent irreversible physical changes and suffered permanent damage. She has experienced significant vaginal atrophy; her voice has been permanently altered; she has to deal with excess facial and body hair and the accompanying stress and mental anguish that brings; she struggles with compromised bone structure; she is unsure whether her fertility has been irreversibly compromised; she has mental health issues and deals with episodes of anxiety and depression, complicated by the regret of feeling like she had made a mistake in choosing to transition; … and she has since contracted Hashimotos’s disease, an autoimmune disease that only the males in her family have a history of, from taking testosterone.

Ayala moved from Rhode Island to Florida, where she eventually quit taking testosterone:

Off the cross-sex hormones, she gradually grew out of her gender dysphoria and began to become more comfortable with her female body, altered as it was from taking testosterone.

She realized she was not a boy and never could have been one. Instead, she realized that her mental health issues and discomfort in her body were likely the result of her traumatic childhood and other mental health comorbidities – a realization any competent physician would have also realized or at least explored – and detransitioned.

Isabelle Ayala joins other young women – deeply damaged by transgender drugs, hormones and surgeries – who have stepped forward to file lawsuits against hospitals, medical professionals, mental health workers, and now, the American Academy of Pediatrics.

These gender ideologues are culpable for foisting transgender treatments on multitudes of children. Hopefully, jurors will hold them accountable. Maybe then we will see hospitals and health professionals back away from these experimental, irreparable medical interventions.

The case is Ayala v. American Academy of Pediatrics.

Related articles and resources:

Focus on the Family exists to help families, and that includes help navigating the issues of homosexuality and transgenderism. Focus offers a free, one-time counseling consultation with a licensed or pastoral counselor. To request a consultation, call 1-855-771-HELP (4357) or fill out our Counseling Consultation Request Form.

Expert in ‘Transitioning’ Children Admits ‘We Were Wrong’ About Puberty Blockers

Four Brave Young Women File Lawsuits Alleging Harm from ‘Transgender’ Interventions

Important New Journal Article Calls Out Doctors for Harming Youth with Medicalized Gender Ideology

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria – Researcher’s Work Vindicated

Transgender Resources

Transgenderism and Minors: What Does the Research Really Show?

 

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