‘They Lied by Omission’: Female Detransitioner Sues Doctors Who Enabled Her Teen Gender Transition

Nearly a decade after pursuing a disastrous medical transition, Prisha Mosley has sued the doctors and therapists who encouraged her to make life-altering changes to her body, accusing them of medical malpractice, fraud, and other abuses.

North Carolina–based medical professionals — including general practitioners, a plastic surgeon, and a counselor — lied to Mosley, now 25, when they told her she was a boy and misrepresented the reality of what testosterone injections and breast-removal surgery would do to her developing female body, Mosley’s attorneys wrote in a complaint filed in North Carolina district court last month.

“They lied by omission, withholding critical information from her about the long-term adverse health consequences and permanent damage these ‘treatments’ would cause her, and failing to inform her of alternative courses of treatment for her psychological problems and ensure she had a clear understanding of those alternatives,” the complaint continues.

Mosley previously told National Review that she had lived with psychotic major depression, ADHD, bipolar one and two, mania, crippling anorexia, and borderline personality disorder since she was 14 years old. That year, she was raped and became pregnant, but miscarried because her body was extremely malnourished. She later experienced psychosis, causing her to forget basic facts such as her name and the year. Mosley self-harmed so frequently and deeply that she often had to get stiches and attempted suicide multiple times.

All of the medical practitioners involved in her transition were well aware of her various psychological disorders but nevertheless recommended medical transition, Mosley told National Review. Among the medical professionals and practices named in the complaint are Dr. Eric Emerson, Piedmont Plastic Surgery and Dermatology, therapist Brie Klein-Fowler, therapy center Family Solutions, gender therapist Shana Gordon, LGBT therapy center Tree of Life Counseling, pediatrician Dr. Martha Fairbanks Perry, and Moses Cone Medical Services.

Instead of treating Mosley’s underlying trauma and comorbidities, her doctors and therapists “convinced her that changing her body to appear as the opposite sex would solve her substantial mental disabilities that had plagued her for years,” the complaint alleges. None of the doctors or practices responded to requests for comment.

When Mosley was 16 years old, she was taken to emergency room of a North Carolina hospital by the dietician she had been seeing for her eating disorder. The day before, Mosley had cut herself.

A few days after she was discharged, Mosley visited a different health center for an 80-minute evaluation related to her eating disorder, conducted by a medical resident, and supervised by Dr. Perry, who is named in the lawsuit. Despite reviewing Mosley’s long history of psychological problems, the resident concluded from this single visit that her “gender identity crisis” was most likely driving her eating disorder and emotional distress, according to the suit.

Over the next few months, Dr. Perry “guided Prisha into medicalized gender transition through deception and negligence,” including by “going behind Prisha’s parents’ backs to push Prisha into a gender transition,” the complaint alleged.

Around February 22, 2015, Dr. Perry allegedly asked to see Mosley in the dietician’s office so the parents would not know about the visit. Dr. Perry also allegedly said that “it was illegal for Prisha’s parents to stop her from getting sexual medical help,” a euphemism she used to refer to medicalized gender transition, the complaint said.

Dr. Perry then prescribed Mosley testosterone, despite recording multiple red flags, the complaint noted.

Around July 14, 2015, Mosley saw a resident under Dr. Perry for a “pre-visit” before starting testosterone injections. At that appointment, the resident noted that Mosley “thinks about death often and has occasional passive suicidal ideation.” Mosley was combative in the patient’s room, the complaint said. She had also completed another round of psychological tests, as she had done twice in months prior, all of which indicated that her mental health was deteriorating rather than improving. Lab results showed Mosley had been consuming “possibly toxic medication.”

Despite these warning signs, Dr. Perry designed a “Transition Plan” for Mosley, according to the complaint.

The diagnoses Mosley received over the course of her youth transition journey were “fraudulent, reckless, and rife with incompetence” and led her to get prescriptions and procedures that were administered and performed for the purpose of profiting off of her and boosting the medical professionals’ credentials, according to the complaint.

“After finally receiving therapy for my borderline personality disorder and severe trauma, I have clarity of mind and do not believe that I deserved to be mutilated as a mentally ill child,” Mosley told National Review. “It took almost ten years for me to find the right therapy but almost no time for the ‘gender-affirming’ doctors and counselors to set me on a path of medicalized ‘gender transition.’ They injected my female body with huge amounts of testosterone and amputated my healthy breasts. As a rational adult, I would never subject a suffering child to the medical abuse I was subjected to when I sought help.”

Among the negative physical effects Mosley developed after the experience are a permanently deep voice, deformed breasts that don’t allow her to nurse a child, broad and heavy shoulders, a narrow and small waist and hips, unwanted hair growth, vaginal atrophy, and possible infertility.

“I hope my case will serve as a warning to doctors, therapists, and parents,” Mosley said. “I look forward to the day when no one will experiment on another child. Young people need to be loved and supported, not deceived into thinking that irreversibly changing their bodies will cure their mental-health issues.”