Woman who underwent double mastectomy at 15 tells surgeon, 'You stole my girlhood'
A detransitioner who underwent a double mastectomy as a teenager is publicly confronting the surgeon who performed the procedure, accusing him in an open letter of removing her healthy breasts without adequately addressing the underlying causes of her distress.
Claire Abernathy's Thursday letter to plastic surgeon Dr. Alan Dulin details her regret over the surgery and describes the physical and emotional toll she continues to experience years later.
"You took advantage of a little girl’s confusion and a family’s trust to perform an unnecessary, disfiguring surgery on a child who was barely through puberty," Abernathy wrote. "You committed an act of violence that I have to wear on my skin for the rest of my life."
I WAS A CHILD AND BELIEVED GENDER TRANSITION WOULD HEAL MY PAIN. IT BECAME A NEW TRAUMA
In a recent op-ed for Fox News, Abernathy wrote that she was put on testosterone at 14 years old and that eight months later, surgeons performed a double mastectomy on her.
"I am no longer that silent, vulnerable fourteen-year-old. I am a woman living in the wreckage of your carelessness, and I will spend the rest of my life ensuring that people know exactly what kind of ‘medicine’ you practiced,’" Abernathy said.
Dulin is described on the website for the American Institute for Plastic Surgery as a board-certified plastic surgeon "serving patients throughout the Dallas–Fort Worth area, including Plano, Frisco, and Dallas."
The site says that Dulin focuses on cosmetic plastic surgery and "approaches aesthetic surgery as a collaborative process rooted in education, transparency, and individualized planning. His goal is to help patients make informed decisions that support both confidence and long-term satisfaction."
PLASTIC SURGEON CITES 'EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL,' POOR EVIDENCE IN WARNING AGAINST YOUTH GENDER SURGERIES
An October report from The Texas Insider said that Abernathy’s double mastectomy at the American Institute for Plastic Surgery in Plano was done on her "between eighth and ninth grade. The surgery happened after only a 15-minute consultation."
"I want you to know the reality of the ‘success’ you had on that operating table," Abernathy wrote. "I had to watch as the skin of my nipples, which you had sliced off, defatted, and then grafted back onto my skin, turned black and fell off my body. I was a child, and parts of me were literally rotting because of your ego."
"Now, I live every single day with a numb, hollow chest covered in the disfiguring scars you chose to carve into me," Abernathy continued. "I’m left to cope with the constant, agonizing reminders of the damage you inflicted. There is an electrical current that constantly hums and zaps beneath my skin, a manifestation of the trauma you inflicted and sewed into my nerves."
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"I have made quite a name for myself, ensuring that you are never forgotten," Abernathy wrote. "I have already publicly named you in front of the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Senate. I have spoken your name into the record so that it is preserved in the halls of power as a warning."
"Your name will go down in history right next to mine as the man who forced me to find my voice by trying to destroy my body," she added. "The whole world will know what you did. I will make sure of it."
Fox News Digital reached out to Dulin, the American Institute for Plastic Surgery and the Federal Trade Commission for comment but did not immediately receive responses.