A woman in Tarrant County is suing several medical professionals and counselors she claims pressured her into sex alteration medications and surgeries as a teenager.
Soren Aldaco, now 21 years old, alleges that her doctors and psychologist recklessly pressured her into taking cross-sex hormones as a minor and eventually undergoing a sex alteration surgery at the age of 19. In addition to these individuals, her suit also names as defendants the various clinics and organizations that facilitated the procedures.
“This lawsuit details a chronology of wrongful acts committed by a collective of medical providers who, in their pursuit of experimental ‘gender-affirming’ medical therapies, administered a series of ruinous procedures and treatments to Plaintiff Soren Aldaco, who was then a vulnerable teenager struggling with a slew of mental health issues,” reads the complaint.
“The repercussions of these interventions have led to Soren’s permanent disfigurement and profound psychological scarring,” the lawsuit adds. “Despite these telltale signs demanding caution and therapeutic resolution, however, the Defendants deliberately and recklessly propelled Soren down a path of permanent physical disfigurement and worsening psychological distress.”
Aldaco “now seeks justice and compensation for the Defendants’ negligent and grossly negligent actions, which have had, and will continue to have, a profound and lasting impact on her physical and mental health and quality of life.”
She is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Defendants include nurse practitioner Del Scott Perry, Dr. Sreenath Nekkalapu, Dr. Richard Santucci, Dr. Ashley DeLeon, and Barbara Rose Wood, a counselor. She is also suing Crane Clinic, Three Oaks Counseling Group, Texas Health Physicians Group, and Mesa Springs.
“Soren struggled with her identity from an early age,” the lawsuit claims.
A series of stressful events eventually caused her to be placed under the psychiatric care of Nekkalapu for three days when she was 15 years old.
During that time, “and against Soren’s expressed wishes not to discuss her gender identity, Dr. Nekkalapu relentlessly pressed her on the topic by prompting her with trans-related questions and affirmations,” according to the lawsuit.
“In fact, Dr. Nekkalapu pressed so hard on the issue that Soren felt as though the only way to cease the discussion was to agree with him and tell him that she did identify as transgender,” the filing alleges.
Calling it a “coerced ‘confession,’” the lawsuit claims that Dr. Nekkalapu decided that Aldaco must be transgender without “meaningful or comprehensive psychobehavioral examination” and “appeared to simply jump to—and indeed encourage—the conclusion that the sole explanation for Soren’s psychotic break was her needing to embrace a transgender identity, after only knowing her for mere minutes.”
Aldaco claims that Nekkalapu disclosed this “confession” to her parents, although she asked him not to do so.
From there, Aldaco was introduced to nurse practitioner Perry. After a 30-minute meeting, she was prescribed several drugs allegedly “at an outrageously large, off-label dosage.”
“Perry failed to discuss with Soren the full extent of the risks posed by the cross-sex hormones and the irreversible consequences that use of the cross-sex hormones would cause,” the suit alleges. She was 17 at the time.
Claiming to be “gaslit” by Perry and the “gender-affirming” assurances, Aldaco reportedly rejected the advice of doctors who explained that some of the health complications she was having were related to the prescribed hormones.
Shortly after her 19th birthday, counselors recommended “Soren for a ‘gender-affirming’ double mastectomy without first investigating and comprehensively assessing Soren’s suitability for such a procedure represents an egregious departure from the standard of care and a reckless disregard for Soren’s health and safety,” according to the suit.
Aldaco was sent to Austin-based Crane Clinic, which specializes in “gender-affirming surgery procedures.”
The suit claims the double mastectomy was botched, leading to severe problems afterward, which were “downplayed” or ignored.
“Following her problematic recovery from the Crane Clinic surgery, Soren began to realize that neither the testosterone nor the double mastectomy had helped her feel entirely comfortable in her body,” the filing claims.
She then “began to wonder why each of the Defendants had so strongly and quickly ushered her down this path of irreversible medicalization by way of cross-sex hormones and physical mutilation to her body without ever considering, let alone attempting and ruling out, a psychological resolution to her distress.”
Such considerations led to the current lawsuit, in which Aldaco is being represented by Campbell Miller Payne, which claims it is dedicated to “justice for the detransitioner community.”
Adam Loewy, an Austin lawyer and political observer, remarked, “The firm that filed this is marketing itself as a firm to sue doctors who perform these surgeries.”
“I’m not sure how big of a market there is for such cases but they will have an enormous chilling effect on these procedures if they have some success,” he continued.
“I’ll also add that is one of the most detailed state court petitions I’ve ever seen for an injury case. These guys did their homework in bringing it,” Loewy concluded.
Supporters of sex alteration surgeries and cross-sex hormonal prescriptions claim that such procedures are “life-saving care.”
When Texas passed a law to ban the administration of those medications and surgeries to children, the ACLU sued the state, alleging that “by prohibiting, penalizing, and denying coverage for the provision of the very medical treatment parents seek for their children with gender dysphoria — treatment that their transgender children want and that their children’s doctors and medical provides have prescribed as medically necessary.”
Texas Scorecard reported that Crane Clinic, Three Oaks Counseling, and Mesa Springs did not respond to a request for comment.
