A North Carolina lesbian criticized doctors for leading her down a path of transition as a “broken and unstable” adolescent, despite suffering from multiple personality disorder.
Layton Ulery targeted high-profile doctors in a bombshell lawsuit filed by DailyMail.com, claiming her “mind and body” were inhabited by eight separate identities after nearly two decades of abuse by a cult.
After enduring 18 years of “sexual, physical and psychological torment,” including conversion therapy to “cure” her of being a lesbian, she left the sect in 2015, with the trauma at the time splintering her personality into separate identities.
The lawsuit claims that because Layton would suffer amnesia if she changed identities, her doctors also provided medical treatment to other identities, including Liv, Jesse, Anna, Mason, Lee, AJ, and several “fragmented identities.”
But despite being “practically and legally disabled under Rhode Island law,” she underwent drastic gender reassignment therapies, 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 several prominent practitioners, including Dr. Jason Rafferty, therapist Julie Lyons and Dr. Michelle Forcier. Those involved in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by DailyMail.com.
Attempts to contact Ms. Forcier were unsuccessful.
Dr. Harvard graduate Jason Rafferty allegedly prescribed testosterone despite Layton reportedly displaying a number of “red flags” that should have put an “immediate end to Layton’s transgender medicalization”
Dr. Michelle Forcier allegedly treated Layton in a “reckless manner” 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 former transgender people battling the doctors who pushed them to transition at a young age.
She claims that, rather than receiving urgent care for her fractured mental state, surgeons chose to “ignore or minimize” her condition in favor of life-changing procedures.
According to the lawsuit, the doctors pressured her to adopt a transgender identity and quickly prescribed her sex reassignment hormones. Ulery did not undergo any form of gender reassignment surgery – although plans for a double mastectomy, known as top surgery, were mooted.
Ulery says forcing her down the path of transition has exacerbated her mental health issues and caused “irreversible and mentally and physically painful damage to her body.”
After her first ordeal within a cult, Ulery said she was again subjected to a series of abuses by medical professionals starting in the summer of 2017.
When her loved ones told her to seek help for her undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder (DID), Layton Googled her symptoms and found help 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 was “fixated” with having male alter identities.
Lyons allegedly “quickly concluded that Layton had gender dysphoria and convinced Layton that she was a transgender man in need of further medicalization.”
In addition to forcing her to transition, the lawsuit claims she “crossed numerous boundaries” during their sessions, including inviting her boyfriend to a therapy session where they performed “experimental hypnosis techniques” on her.
It is also alleged that when Layton was unable to pay for her ongoing treatment, Lyons allowed her to continue as long as she recruited new patients to her practice.
Julie Lyons, a therapist specializing in transgender issues and dissociative diagnoses, is said to have “crossed countless boundaries” when she treated Layton. This included pressuring her into transgender therapy and experimental hypnosis
The lawsuit alleges that Layton was pressured into taking the path of 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 sect.
Before Lyons sent her to other medical professionals who pushed her to change her gender identity, it is alleged that Lyons failed to conduct any form of pre-screening, which she said would have revealed that she had body dysmorphia and mental health issues rather than gender issues. dysphoria.
The series of alleged failings continued when Lyons referred Layton to Dr. Jason Rafferty, where she would undergo “even more reckless transgender medicalization.”
She had felt that she would be “more likely” to achieve the appearance of a man, despite the desire to appear feminine, a dynamic she revealed to therapists and surgeons.
On her first visit to Rafferty’s clinic Thundermist Health Center, she says she expressed interest in undergoing a double mastectomy, but ‘was unsure about taking testosterone out of concern about how it would affect her (other identities) or be received.”
It is alleged that during her treatment she frequently displayed “red flags” that “should have immediately stopped Layton’s transgender medicalization,” including that one of her “identities” would sabotage her transition by canceling scheduled appointments and deleting messages from her . doctors.
Due to her memory loss caused by DID, Ulery claims she did not know this at the time.
After treatment by Dr. Rafferty, a leading transgender youth doctor, it is claimed that the doctor understood the numerous “red flags” in her psyche, but concluded that she should be prescribed testosterone.
“This inexplicable, blatant deviation from rationale shows just how far Dr. Rafferty was willing to go to ignore the high risks caused by her psychological conditions,” the lawsuit alleges.
She claims that Raffety’s decision to inject Layton with testosterone also led to her other identities being treated, some of whom were expressly against the treatment.
After raising concerns about testosterone side effects, including facial hair, she ultimately claimed Rafferty responded with “cold, disinterested apathy.” After she said she wanted to quit, “support from the Thundermist team dried up.”
This included the alleged termination of the transportation Thundermist had arranged 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?”
Due to the perceived insistence that she was trans and simply not reacting appropriately, she then sought treatment from Dr. Michelle Forcier, following Lyons’ advice.
Forcier in particular made headlines last year her performance in filmmaker Matt Walsh’s documentary ‘What is a Woman?’, in which she argued that babies can determine 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 manner,” the lawsuit alleges.
It is alleged that ‘Forcier obtained Layton’s Thundermist documentation with all the released warning signs, and looked past it to continue Layton’s testosterone prescription.
Eventually, after receiving help from a separate group that led her to merge her multiple identities into one, she was able to see that her symptoms were not gender dysphoria.
Instead, she concluded it was “body dysmorphia caused by late puberty, childhood bullying, trauma from sexual assault, 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 then “the damage of the years of testosterone had already been done.”
The lawsuit notes that fortunately, Layton was able to receive life-saving treatment from other providers, allowing her to now live a productive and healthy life.
She adds that her decision to sue her treatment providers more than five years later was due to seeing stories from other “detransitioners,” who helped her realize that she had allegedly been pressured and coerced into medical treatments that she didn’t need or want.
