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Commentary

Prominent Trans Doctor Hit with Lawsuit by Detransitioner Subjected to Lifelong Pain

December 10, 2024

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the most prominent so-called “gender doctors” around, came under fire in October after she chose to withhold the findings of her nearly decade-long study on puberty blockers that appeared to contradict her personal beliefs. It turns out, however, that this sticky situation was only the beginning for Olson-Kennedy. Just last week, the doctor was hit with a weighty lawsuit from a college student at UCLA.

A young woman, Clementine Breen, sued Olson-Kennedy on the grounds that the doctor “did not follow gatekeeping safeguards and pushed her into irreversible [transgender] treatment at the age of 12.” Additionally, the lawsuit claims Olson-Kennedy “misrepresented” Breen’s “gender identity history” that preceded her referral to get trans-related surgeries. And now, after roughly seven years of trans procedures and therapies, “Breen has a deep voice, an Adam’s apple, no breasts, brittle bones, and plenty of scars both physical and mental.”

There have been claims that trans procedures don’t happen on minors, or at least that they happen very “rarely.” But Breen proves to be one of many examples of how common it’s becoming for children to be subjected to the harms of “gender-affirming care.” As Breen herself said, “People are just brushing exactly what happened to me off as something that doesn’t happen.”

Breen was 19 when she seemed to understand the reality of her fixed biological sex, but she was only 12 when she was thrust into a world of life-changing, irreversible decisions. As a pre-teen, the puberty blockers Breen was given stopped her body from going through its natural process of female puberty. Instead, a doctor who believes “trans identity can be known at the low age of 2-years-old” helped push Breen down the road of cross-sex hormones, which force the body into a puberty that corresponds with the opposite sex. In Breen’s case, she was given testosterone at age 13 to appear more masculine. After Olson-Kennedy referred Breen to a surgeon, this young woman had her healthy breasts chopped off at the age of 14.

While she has since stopped all trans-related procedures, Breen is stuck with the effects of the puberty blockers and surgeries she underwent — the so-called “gender-affirming care” that left her body destroyed and racked with pain. Looking back, Breen sees that Olson-Kennedy was “negligent.” According to reporting from The Post Millennial, many of the claims that Olson-Kennedy made have been contested.

For instance, the doctor wrote that Breen “endorsed a male gender identity since childhood.” Breen, however, said that was not true. Additionally, Olson-Kennedy informed Breen’s parents that their daughter was suicidal. But Breen claimed that was also not the case. Allegedly, Olson-Kennedy “shuttled her into the trans pipeline” without psychological analysis or warnings of the damage a gender-transitioning process would cause. Notably, similar accusations were also brought against a therapist named Susan P. Landon and her surgeon, Scott Mosser — both of whom Breen has sued.

According to The Post Millennial, Landon once said in a conversation about trans youth: “You’re assigned a particular name for a particular body. The problem with that is that you then are expected to become what that body represents, which to our binary society is a boy or a girl.” Landon has also claimed that “gender identity doesn’t have a test. It is a felt feeling inside.” This therapist, the outlet emphasized, believes that a child’s “felt feeling” and their biological sex “have nothing to do with each other.”

When recalling the beginning of her gender confusion, Breen explained in an interview that she was captured and confused by these feelings of believing she was lesbian, bisexual, or trans. “I wasn’t really sure about my identity at all,” she said. And tragically, amid this struggle, Breen was placed in the hands of doctors, therapists, and surgeons who saw no problem turning a healthy little girl into a walking experiment.

While Breen joins the list of detransitioners such as Chloe Cole, Prisha Mosely, Laura Becker, and others that have to live with gaping wounds, rotting flesh, sepsis, and more as a result of their trans procedures, people like Olson-Kennedy are telling children and parents that so-called “gender confirmation surgery in minors” is not so bad. In fact, Olson-Kennedy previously gave a talk where she said that “the idea that a 14 or 15-year-old would want a vagina if they identified as a girl is really not that out there, it’s really understandable.” She claimed that “chest surgery for trans guys as minors is critical and … available.” To this day, Olson-Kennedy believes the same “treatments” that destroyed Breen’s body “is absolutely lifesaving.”

But Breen, Cole, and other detransitioners are now standing up. Lawsuits are occurring more frequently, and these victims of transgenderism are using their voices to speak the truth that they themselves were not told. Nearly a decade ago, Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon joined the fight against this gender ideology. She told The Washington Stand, “When I first started working on this issue in 2015, the other parents and I were concerned that if this went on too long, we would have to rely on victims to speak for themselves.” Unfortunately, she added, “here we are.”

She addressed how, “In spite of the hard work of parents, groups like FRC, and state legislators, the child victims [now] as adults must explain to the world from bitter experience how dangerous and ridiculous it is to believe that doctors can change boys into girls or women into men.” Breen is merely the latest example of this. And so, Kilgannon concluded, “We need to pray for their fortitude, peace, and healing.” For everyone else, “we have to keep working to end this medical atrocity called ‘gender affirming care.’”

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.



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