Judge Grants Judgment in Favor of CHLA, Doctors in Gender Surgery Suit

A judge has entered judgment in favor of Children’s Hospital Medical Group Los Angeles as well as a health provider and expert in adolescent “gender-affirming care” in a lawsuit filed by a UCLA student who said she was wrongly diagnosed with gender dysphoria and given “irreversibly damaging” care.

Kaya Clementine Breen, also known as Finn Paul Breen, had sued a team of doctors that she alleged had “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 Monday, Judge Joseph Lipner signed a judgment in favor of the defendants affirming his Oct. 29 ruling that the suit’s filing date was in violation of the three-year statute of limitations.

In their court papers, defense attorneys contended that in her own complaint the plaintiff acknowledged that she was aware of the harm she alleged she had suffered as early as January 2018 and no later than August 2019.

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 alleged.

“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 alleged.

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 stated.

Also obtaining judgments in their favor were 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 in October.