Young girl was “unfortunate victim of a collection of actors who prioritized politics and ideology over children’s safety,” lawsuit states
A woman who was pumped with testosterone and underwent hormone therapy when she was a young teenager is suing both her doctors and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which her lawyers say has knowingly lied about the impact of the radical sex-change treatments it recommends, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire.
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. It was during this hospital stay that she met with Dr. Jason Rafferty, who during his first brief meeting with Ayala determined that she “meets criteria to consider hormonal transition,” with the only stated obstacle being parental consent. The lawsuit states that Rafferty and other doctors sent Ayala down the “path of ‘gender-affirming’ medicalization” rather than addressing the true roots of her mental health problems — six months into her testosterone treatments, Ayala tried to commit suicide.
The treatments, however, continued, until Ayala moved away from Rhode Island and decided to quit them “cold-turkey.” Now comfortable with her gender, she regrets what the doctors did to her, the lawsuit says.
“Isabelle is now twenty years old and longs for what could have been and to have her healthy, female body back,” it says. “The changes the testosterone have had on her body are a constant reminder that she needed an unbiased medical expert willing to evaluate her mental health and provide her the care she needed, rather than a group of ideologues set on promoting their own agenda and furthering a broader conspiracy at her expense.”
The lawsuit not only goes after the doctors who treated Ayala, but also the American Academy of Pediatrics, where Rafferty and his colleagues worked to publish a now-infamous policy statement advocating for aggressive gender treatments for children. Lawyers for Ayala say the policy statement laid the groundwork for an “entirely new model of treatment” based on “outright fraudulent representations” of scientific proof.
“Defendants have doubled- and tripled-down on their commitment to the policy statement and its ‘affirmative model’ of treatment, while continuing to promote and profit off it,” the lawsuit states, alleging that Ayala and other children are “victims of a conspiracy entered into and perpetuated to the present day by certain ideologically captured individuals in positions of power at the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics has been a staunch supporter of radical gender ideology, with Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh saying it has been “ideologically captured” by leftist activists. Walsh wrote in August 2022 that the policy statement on how to care for “transgender and gender-diverse children and adolescents reads like a trans activism manifesto, not a medical guide.”
Rafferty was the lead author for the policy statement, and the lawsuit argues he’s used it to launch his medical career.
“[Rafferty] has gone from a little-known resident during his time drafting the Gender Policy Statement to having a highly successful practice in pediatric gender care and considered a leading authority on the subject, all while operating under the imprimatur of the authority he falsely created,” it says.
Among the other doctors involved in treating Ayala at the Hasbro Children’s Hospital Gender Clinic in Rhode Island was Dr. Michelle Forcier, a proponent of so-called “gender affirming care” for children whose perspective was featured in Walsh’s “What Is A Woman?” documentary. Ayala told Forcier that she was “increasingly depressed and anxious” with the testosterone treatments, but she did nothing to intervene.
The lawsuit argues that Forcier has also boosted her career through advocacy for radical treatments, pointing to her appearing in the “What Is A Woman?” documentary. The lawsuit notes that Forcier “was prominently featured in one of the most viewed documentaries of all time in 2022 as a leading expert in pediatric gender care and puberty blockers.”
In the interview, Forcier denies the existence of reality when it comes to gender. Asked whether it’s possible to know the gender of a chicken laying an egg, Forcier stated that it’s only possible to assign that chicken a gender.
Both doctors Rafferty and Forcier were named in a Friday lawsuit filed by the same law firm, Campbell Miller Payne PLLC. That suit is on behalf of a woman with multiple personality disorder who says she was pressured by the doctors into undergoing aggressive testosterone treatments and is now dealing with the painful and permanent side effects.
Ayala is “an unfortunate victim of a collection of actors who prioritized politics and ideology over children’s safety, health, and well-being,” the lawsuit filed on her behalf states. She had suffered with her mental health ever since being a victim of sexual abuse, long before she began entertaining the idea of gender transition as a solution to her depression. The lawsuit says that Rafferty, Forcier, and other doctors failed to even consider other options to address her mental health before putting her on an aggressive hormone and testosterone regimen.
Ayala told her doctors that she was concerned about losing the ability to give birth, but they put her on the treatments anyway, without disclosing the potential harm the drugs administered could have on the reproductive system.
The lawsuit says that Ayala is worse off now than before she was treated by the doctors, and asks that they be held “accountable for their wrongful acts.”
“Isabelle has suffered from vaginal atrophy from the extensive use of testosterone; she deals with excess facial and body hair; she struggles with compromised bone structure; she is unsure whether her fertility has been irreversibly compromised; she still has mental health issues and deals with episodes of anxiety and depression, further compounded by a sense of regret; and she has since contracted an autoimmune disease that only the males in her family have a history of,” the lawsuit explains.
The lawsuit comes as the number of detransitioners who regret undergoing sex-change treatments spike in the United States. Nonprofit group Do No Harm published a “Detransitioner Bill Of Rights” earlier this month, laying out a legislative blueprint for empowering victims to go after medical professionals who administered treatments and help with reversing the effects of gender transition surgeries.
