A judge is mulling arguments by Children’s Hospital Medical Group Los Angeles as well as a health provider and expert in adolescent “gender-affirming care” that a UCLA student who alleges she was wrongly diagnosed with gender dysphoria and given “irreversibly damaging” care filed suit too late and that her case should be dismissed.
Kaya Clementine Breen, also known as Finn Paul Breen, is suing a team of doctors whom she alleges “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.”
Breen was 20 years old when she filed the suit in Los Angeles Superior Court last Dec. 5 and one of the physicians sued was Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at CHLA. On Tuesday, attorneys for Olson-Kennedy and CHLA argued that the suit’s filing date was in violation of the three-year statute of limitations.
The defense attorneys contended that the plaintiff’s own complaint states she knew of the harm she alleges she suffered as early as January 2018 and no later than August 2019. Judge Joseph Lipner did not immediately rule on the dismissal motion and took the case under submission.
According to the suit, Breen is a female who suffered from a complex and multi-faceted array of mental health symptoms as a child, including childhood abuse, and believed life might be easier for her as a boy. That part of her history was not properly explored in the course of her treatment, the suit alleges.
“Instead, she was fast-tracked onto the conveyor belt of irreversibly damaging puberty blockers (age 12), cross-sex hormones (age 13) and gender-affirming surgery (age 14),” according to the suit.
Olson-Kennedy and the CHLA team “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 suit alleges.
During treatment, Breen’s mental health progressively declined as she descended into depression, anxiety, psychosis, hallucinations, self-harm and attempted suicide, according to her suit.
“In short, her body has been profoundly damaged in ways that can never be repaired,” the suit further states.
Breen also sued Dr. Scott Mosser, a plastic surgeon specializing in gender-affirming surgery, psychotherapist Susan Landon, and the Gender Confirmation Center of San Francisco. UC San Francisco Health Community Hospitals was dropped as a defendant by the plaintiff’s attorneys on Tuesday.