What The Detransitioner Clementine Breen’s Gender “Therapy” Looked Like

When therapists are also activists, patients can get left behind

Earlier this month, I reported on the story of Clementine Breen for The Economist. Breen is a 20-year-old UCLA student who is suing Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). Breen detransitioned after receiving puberty blockers, hormones, and a double mastectomy while under Olson-Kennedy’s care.

You can find the details in the piece itself (if you hit a paywall click here), but there was a fair amount that didn’t make the cut, and one thread I wanted to pull on a bit concerns the “therapy” Breen received during her transition. You’ll understand the scare quotes shortly.

As I noted in the article, Olson-Kennedy first saw Breen late in December of 2016, and during that first appointment, according to her visit notes, she referred Breen for puberty blockers. Olson-Kennedy noted that at that point, Breen hadn’t yet seen a therapist, but that her parents had. That therapist was Susan P. Landon. Breen’s parents saw her earlier that same month. Landon was not an independent, third-party voice in all this; rather, she co-chairs a trans youth support group called Transforming Family with Olson-Kennedy and Dr. Aydin Olson-Kennedy, a trans man and social worker who is married to Johanna.

Breen is also suing Landon. Through her lawyer, Landon told me that all of her patient notes from her sessions with Breen were lost due to water damage. All she has been able to hand over to Breen and her lawyers were an initial set of intake forms filled out by Breen’s father, and Landon’s own handwritten notes from that initial meeting with both parents. Breen and her attorneys, in turn, provided these materials to me.

This material is littered with, if not red flags, at least yellow ones — signs that Clementine’s questions about her gender identity had come about only recently, and that there was also some recent trauma in her family that might be worth exploring.