3 female detransitioners suing doctors over experimental sex-change procedures that left them disfigured

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, July 27, 2023

Soren Aldaco

At 17, Soren Aldaco struggled with self-perception and various mental health issues when doctors encouraged her to identify as the opposite sex, she claims in a lawsuit. 

Aldaco, who is now 21, filed a complaint Friday in the Tarrant County District Court of Texas, seeking more than $1 million in damages. The defendants listed in the lawsuit include Del Scott Perry, Sreenath Nekkalapu, Barbara Rose Wood, Richard Santucci, Ashley DeLeon, Crane Clinic LLC, Texas Health Physicians Group, Three Oaks Counseling Group LLC and Mesa Springs LLC. 

Get Our Latest News for FREE

Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.

Subscribe

The complaint outlined the issues Aldaco faced in her teens, including insecurity about her body. Because she hit puberty earlier than some of her peers and felt uncomfortable, she started thinking that she might be trans after speaking with other trans-identified individuals online.

A mental health episode in December 2017 resulted in her parents admitting her to Mesa Springs Psychiatric Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, around January 2018. One of the medical professionals there, Dr. Nekkalapu, allegedly pushed Aldaco to talk about trans issues, even though the teenager initially requested not to discuss the topic. 

According to the complaint, Aldaco, then 15, felt pressured to discuss her discomfort with her gender identity to Nekkalapu. According to the suit, the doctor reportedly did not review the teenager’s existing mental health records before advising that Aldaco should identify as trans. 

Listen to The Christian Post's award-winning podcast Generation Indoctrination

In 2019, Aldaco met Dr. Perry while attending a trans support group, Trans-Cendence International. Perry reportedly had a reputation for prescribing testosterone "upon request,” and the suit alleges that he prescribed Aldaco testosterone after a 30-minute consultation on Jan. 28, 2020. 

Perry allegedly did not address Aldaco’s other mental health conditions before providing her with a prescription for male hormones, nor did he inform her about the risks of taking hormones. According to The American College of Pediatricians, the side effects of puberty blockers include "osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility."

According to the suit, even as Aldaco began to experience side effects related to taking male hormones, Perry continued to prescribe them to her.

Despite warnings from a different doctor that she should stop taking male hormones, Aldaco dismissed the medical advice because it was not “gender-affirming.” 

Another defendant named in the suit, the teenager’s therapist, Dr. Wood, is accused of issuing false statements in a letter recommending the teenager for a double mastectomy at the Crane Clinic in Austin. The lawsuit also accused Dr. DeLeon and the other Crane Clinic practitioners of failing to determine the girl’s “suitability” for a double mastectomy and failing to review her medical records.

Following the operation, the suit accused Dr. Santucci, the doctor responsible for overseeing Aldaco’s recovery, of negligence. Aldaco alleges that she was in pain after the surgery, and she sent Santucci photos of her “nipples literally peeling off of her chest.” 

“When her emergency post-surgical complications arose, Soren immediately reached out to Dr. Santucci, who downplayed her horrible complications and insisted to her that the complications were 'normal,’” the lawsuit stated. 

Aldaco was forced to undergo emergency surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Hospital in Dallas, for which she had to pay out of pocket. The Crane Clinic CEO agreed to reimburse Aldaco in the amount of $421.31 if she agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which she refused. 

In November 2021, Aldaco stopped taking testosterone after conducting research on her own. The suit says she felt as if the doctors who urged her to transition had subjected her to experimental treatments. The suit stressed that Aldaco needed an “unbiased doctor” in her time of need, not an “ideologue.” 

As a result of her experience, Aldaco came to realize that “neither the testosterone nor the double mastectomy had helped her feel entirely comfortable in her body.”