A North Carolina lesbian criticized doctors who labeled her a “broken and unstable” teenager on the transition path, even though she suffered from multiple personality disorder.
Layton Ulery, formerly Hannah, targeted high-profile doctors in a bombshell lawsuit obtained by , in which she claimed that after nearly two decades of abuse, her “mind and body” were inhabited by eight different identities in a cult.
After enduring 18 years of “sexual, physical and psychological torment,” which included conversion therapy to “cure” her of being a lesbian, she left the cult in 2015, while the trauma at the time led to her personality being transformed into different identities fragmented.
The lawsuit alleges that Layton’s doctors also provided medical treatment to other identities, including Liv, Jesse, Anna, Mason, Lee, AJ and several “fragmented identities” because Layton would suffer memory loss if he were to switch identities.
But despite being “practically and legally disabled under Rhode Island law,” she underwent drastic sex reassignment therapy, including hormone replacement, because the surgeons “prioritized their own agendas, ideologies, and professional interests.”
Ulery is suing Rhode Island treatment center Thundermist Health and a number of leading doctors, including Dr. Jason Rafferty, therapist Julie Lyons and Dr. Michelle Forcer. People involved in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by .
Attempts to contact Ms. Forcier were unsuccessful.
Dr. Jason Rafferty, a Harvard graduate, allegedly prescribed testosterone despite Layton allegedly displaying a number of “red flags” that should have signaled an “immediate end to Layton’s transgender medicalization.”
Dr. Michelle Forcier allegedly treated Layton “recklessly” given the patient’s multiple personality diagnosis and continued her testosterone therapy despite significant alleged “red flags.”
Ulery’s lawsuit is the latest in a growing number of allegations from former transgender people who are fighting back against the doctors who forced them to transition at a young age.
She claims surgeons chose to “ignore or downplay” her condition in favor of life-changing procedures rather than getting urgent help for her fractured mental state.
According to the lawsuit, doctors pressured her to embrace a transgender identity and quickly prescribed gender-affirming hormones. Ulery did not undergo gender reassignment surgery – although plans for a double mastectomy, known as top surgery, were discussed.
Ulery says that being forced to transition increased her mental health issues and caused “irreversible and mentally and physically painful damage to her body.”
After her initial ordeal within a cult, she was again subjected to a series of abuses by medical professionals since the summer of 2017, Ulery said.
When she was told by loved ones to seek help for her dissociative identity disorder (DID), which had not been diagnosed at the time, Layton Googled her symptoms and found services from therapist Julie Lyons, an expert in transgender and dissociative therapy .
Notably, Ulery said that when she first visited Lyons, she did not consider herself transgender, but was quickly pushed toward transgenderism, claiming that Lyons had become “fixated” on the fact that she had male alter identities.
Lyons allegedly “quickly concluded that Layton was suffering from gender dysphoria and began convincing Layton that she was a transgender man in need of further medication.”
In addition to accusing her of pushing her to transition, the lawsuit claims that she “crossed numerous boundaries” in her sessions, including by inviting her boyfriend to a therapy session in which she used “experimental hypnosis techniques.” you would have carried out.
It is also alleged that Lyons allowed her to continue her ongoing treatment when she was unable to pay for it as long as she was recruiting new patients to her practice.
Julie Lyons, a therapist specializing in transgender issues and dissociative diagnoses, is said to have “crossed numerous boundaries” while treating Layton. This allegedly included pushing her into transgender therapy and experimental hypnosis
The lawsuit alleges that Layton was pressured into pursuing transgender-affirming therapy at Thundermist Health Center in Rhode Island (pictured).
She said the bizarre treatment, which included taking her to “unconventional New Age” church services, went unchallenged for years because her only frame of reference for medical care came from within the cult.
Before sending her to other medical professionals who pressured her to change her gender identity, Lyons reportedly did not conduct any pre-screening, which she said would have determined that she suffered from body dysmorphia and mental health issues rather than her gender dysphoria.
The series of alleged failures continued when Lyons Layton reported to Dr. Jason Rafferty referred where she would “suffer even more ruthless transgender medicalization.”
She had felt that she was “more likely” to achieve the appearance of a man, although she had a desire to appear feminine, a dynamic that she revealed to therapists and surgeons.
During her first visit to Rafferty’s Thundermist Health Center clinic, she said she had expressed interest in having a double mastectomy but was “not sure if she should take testosterone out of concern about how it will affect her (other identities) or from.” would be accepted to her”.
It is alleged that during her treatment she frequently displayed “red flags” that should “put an immediate end to Layton’s transgender medicalization,” including saying that one of her “identities” would sabotage her transition by disrupting scheduled appointments canceled and deleted messages from her doctors.
Due to her memory loss caused by DID, Ulery claims that she did not know this at the time.
After treatment by Dr. According to Rafferty, a leading transgender youth doctor, the doctor was said to have understood the countless “warning signs” in her psyche, but concluded that she should be prescribed testosterone.
“This unexplained, egregious deviation in reasoning shows how far Dr. Rafferty was willing to leave to ignore such high risks caused by her mental illnesses,” the lawsuit says.
She claims that Raffety’s decision to inject Layton with testosterone also led to treatment of her other identities, some of whom were explicitly against the treatment.
After finally voicing her concerns about testosterone’s side effects, including facial hair, she claimed Rafferty responded with “cold, disinterested apathy.” After she said she wanted to quit, “the Thundermist team’s support dried up.”
This included the alleged disruption of the transportation that Thundermist had provided for them.
One of the defendants in the lawsuit, Dr. Michelle Forcier, made headlines with her appearance in Matt Walsh’s documentary “What is a Woman?”
Due to the alleged claim that she was transgender and simply not responding properly, she sought treatment from Dr. Michelle Forcer on.
Most notably, Forcier made headlines last year for her appearance in filmmaker Matt Walsh’s documentary “What is a Woman?”, in which she argued that young children can decide their gender identity.
She again claims that despite a series of “warnings,” including notes from Rafferty outlining her reluctance to continue taking testosterone, she continued “in the same, reckless manner,” the lawsuit says .
It is alleged that “Forcier was provided with Layton’s Thundermist documentation with all the warning signs disclosed and looked right past it to continue Layton’s testosterone prescription.”
After finally receiving help from a separate group that led to her merging her multiple identities into one, she was finally able to recognize that her symptoms were not gender dysphoria.
Instead, she concluded that it was “body dysmorphia caused by late puberty, childhood bullying, trauma from sexual assault, and the unhealthy perspective that she could never achieve the beauty of all the women she met in the world.” social media and on television.”
This realization led her to stop taking testosterone, but by that point, “the damage from years of testosterone had already been done.”
The lawsuit states that Layton was thankfully able to receive life-saving treatment from other providers, which now allows her to live a productive and healthy life.
She adds that her decision to sue her practitioners more than five years later came from seeing stories from other “detransitioners” who made it clear to her that they had allegedly been pressured and coerced into medical treatments that she neither needed nor wanted.