A Tarrant County woman is suing nine doctors and medical practices over allegations of malpractice for performing gender mutilation procedures and hormone treatments on her, beginning at age 15.
Soren Aldaco filed the lawsuit last week, citing multiple instances of malpractice, including doctors coercing her into believing she was transgender and writing her recommendation letters to receive a double mastectomy at the age of 19.
The lawsuit takes aim at five doctors: Del Scott Perry, Sreenath Nekkalapu, Barbara Rose Wood, Richard Santucci, and Ashely Deleon. The suit is also directed at four medical providers: Crane Clinic, PLLC, Texas Health Physicians Group, Three Oaks Counseling Group, LLC, and Mesa Springs, LLC.
The lawsuit reads:
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. Soren’s experiences with these providers shock the conscious. The repercussions of these interventions have led to Soren’s permanent disfigurement and profound psychological scarring.
According to the lawsuit, Aldaco struggled with her identity at a very young age due to a troubled family life and an early onset of puberty that caused her to dislike her physical appearance. Due to experiencing manic episodes, Aldaco was admitted into Mesa Springs at the age of 15. She claims her doctor there, Sreenath Nekkalapu, pressured her to pursue a transgender male identity.
Neither Dr. Nekkalapu, the other doctors named, nor the practices responded to requests for comment on the case.
Aldaco’s lawsuit alleges other doctors preyed on her mental illness throughout her adolescence, prescribing cross-sex hormones. In 2021, her therapist, Dr. Barbara Rose Wood, would write a letter of recommendation for Aldaco to receive a double mastectomy shortly after her 19th birthday, despite Wood never having assessed Aldaco for gender dysphoria.
Ron Miller, the lead lawyer for the case, told Texas Scorecard, “What Soren experienced at the hands of the defendants in this case was a horrific example of what happens when ideology, and not science, drives a growing trend in the medical field.”
As a young, impressionable teenager, Soren was pushed and fast-tracked down a course of medicalization that included potentially sterilizing cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and a botched double mastectomy that left this teenager permanently mutilated and disfigured. She deserves justice, and practitioners thinking about providing the same kind of “treatment” to other children need to know that they will have to answer for their egregious breaches of care.
The lawsuit calls for the court to grant Aldaco full compensation for all physical pain and suffering, emotional distress, medical expenses, loss of income, physical disfigurement, and mental torment suffered. In addition to compensation, the lawsuit demands the court to “punish the defendants for their gross negligence and to deter others in the medical profession from engaging in similar conduct in the future.”
Crane Clinic, Three Oaks Counseling, and Mesa Springs have yet to respond to a request for comment.