A North Carolina lesbian slammed doctors who led her down a path of transitioning as a ‘fractured and unstable’ adolescent, despite suffering from multiple personality disorder.
Layton Ulery, formerly Hannah, took aim at high-profile medical doctors in a bombshell lawsuit obtained by AlertContent, where she claimed that her ‘mind and body’ were inhabited by eight separate identities after almost two decades of abuse at the hands of a cult.
After enduring 18 years of ‘sexual, physical and psychological torment’, which also included conversion therapy to ‘cure’ her from being a lesbian, she left the cult in 2015, while the trauma at the time saw her personality splinter into separate identities.
The lawsuit claims that because Layton would suffer memory loss when she switched identities, her doctors were also providing medical treatment to other identities including Liv, Jesse, Anna, Mason, Lee, AJ, and several ‘fragmented identities.’
Yet despite being ‘practically and legally disabled under Rhode Island law’, she underwent drastic gender 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, along with a number of leading practitioners including Dr Jason Rafferty, therapist Julie Lyons, and Dr Michelle Forcier. Those included in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by AlertContent.
Efforts made to contact Ms Forcier were not successful.
Dr Jason Rafferty, a Harvard graduate, is alleged to have prescribed testosterone despite Layton allegedly displaying a number of ‘red flags’ that should have brought an ‘immediate end to Layton’s transgender medicalization’
Dr Michelle Forcier allegedly treated Layton in a ‘reckless fashion’ amid 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 formerly transgender individuals combatting the doctors that pushed them into transitioning at a young age.
She claims that instead of receiving urgent care for her fractured mental state, surgeons chose to either ‘ignore or minimize’ her condition in favor of life-altering procedures.
Per the lawsuit, the doctors pressured her to adopt a transgender identity and quickly prescribed her with gender reassigning hormones. Ulery did not undergo any type of gender reassignment surgery – although plans for a double-mastectomy, known as top surgery, were mooted.
Ulery says that forcing her down the road of transitioning amplified her mental health struggles and caused ‘irreversible and mentally and physically painful damages to her body.’
After her initial ordeal within a cult, Ulery said she was again subjected to a string of abuse perpetrated by medical professionals, beginning in the summer of 2017.
When she was told by loved ones to seek help for her dissociative identity disorder (DID), which she had not been diagnosed with 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 went to see Lyons she did not consider herself to be transgender, but was quickly pushed towards transgenderism and alleges that Lyons ‘fixated’ on the fact that she had male alter identities.
Lyons allegedly ‘quickly jumped to the conclusion that Layton had gender dysphoria and began convincing Layton she was a transgender man in need of further medicalization.’
Further than pushing her to transition, the lawsuit alleges that she ‘crossed numerous lines’ in their sessions, including inviting her boyfriend into a therapy session where they performed ‘experimental hypnosis techniques’ on her.
It is also alleged that when Layton couldn’t pay for her ongoing treatment, Lyons allowed her to continue so long as she recruited new patients into her practice.
Julie Lyons, a therapist specializing in transgender issues and dissociative diagnoses, allegedly ‘crossed numerous lines’ when she treated Layton. This included allegedly pressuring her into transgender therapy, and experimental hypnosis
The lawsuit alleges that Layton was pressured into going down the road of transgender-affirming therapy at Thundermist Health Center in Rhode Island (pictured)
She said the bizarre treatment, which also included taking her to ‘unconventional, new age’ church services, went unchallenged for years as her only frame of reference for medical care came from inside the cult.
Before sending her off to other medical professionals that pushed her towards changing her gender identity, it is claimed that Lyons did not conduct any kind of pre-screening, which she says would have determined that she had body dysmorphia and mental health issues rather than gender dysphoria.
The string of alleged failings continued as Lyons referred Layton to Dr Jason Rafferty, where she would ‘suffer even more reckless transgender medicalization.’
She had felt that she would be ‘more likely’ to obtain the look of a man, despite desiring to appear female, a dynamic that she revealed to therapists and surgeons.
Upon her first visit to Rafferty’s clinic Thundermist Health Center, she says she expressed an interest in undergoing a double mastectomy, but ‘was not certain about taking testosterone out of concern for how that would affect or be received by her (other identities).’
Throughout her treatment, it is alleged that she frequently displayed ‘red flags’ that should have ‘put an immediate end to Layton’s transgender medicalization’, including that one of her ‘identities’ would sabotage her transition by cancelling scheduled appointments and deleting messages from her doctors.
Due to her memory loss brought on by DID, Ulery alleges that she did not know this at the time.
Upon receiving treatment from Dr Rafferty, a leading transgender youth physician, it is claimed that the doctor understood the myriad ‘red flags’ in her psyche, but concluded that she should be prescribed testosterone.
‘This unexplained, egregious departure in rationale demonstrates just how far Dr. Rafferty was willing to go to ignore such high risks caused by her psychological conditions,’ the lawsuit claims.
She claims that Raffety’s decision to inject Layton with testosterone also surmounted to treating her other identities, some of whom were expressly against the treatment.
Eventually, after expressing concerns over the side effects of the testosterone including facial hair, she claims that Rafferty reacted with ‘cold, disinterested apathy’. After saying she wanted to stop, ‘support from the Thundermist team dried up.’
This included the alleged halting of transportation that Thundermist had provided for her.
One of the defendants in the lawsuit, Dr Michelle Forcier, made headlines with her appearance in Matt Walsh’s documentary ‘What is a woman?’
Because of the alleged insistence that she was trans, and was merely not reacting in the right way, she then sought treatment from Dr Michelle Forcier, upon the advice of Lyons.
Notably, Forcier made headlines last year in her appearance in filmmaker Matt Walsh’s documentary ‘What is a Woman?’, where she argued that infants can decide their gender identity.
She again claims that despite a slew of ‘red flags’, including notes from Rafferty detailing her reluctance to continue testosterone, she continued in ‘the same, reckless fashion’, the lawsuit claims.
It is claimed that ‘Forcier was provided Layton’s Thundermist documentation with all red-flags disclosed, and looked right past them to continue Layton’s testosterone prescription.
Eventually, after receiving help from a separate group that led to her merging her multiple identities into one, she was able to see that her symptoms were not gender dysphoria.
Instead, she concluded that it was ‘body dysmorphia brought about by a late puberty, childhood bullying, trauma from sexual assaults, and an unhealthy perspective that she could never achieve the beauty of all the women she encountered on social media and TV.’
This realization led her to stop taking testosterone, but by that time the ‘damage from the years of testosterone was already done.’
The lawsuit notes that Layton was thankfully able to obtain life-saving treatment from other providers that now allows her to live a productive and healthy life.
She adds that her decision to sue her practitioners over five years later was due to seeing stories of other ‘detransitioners’, who helped her realize that she had allegedly been pressured and coerced into medical treatments she didn’t need or want.