Mel Jeffries has suffered serious harm because of experimental treatments

Ex trans identified woman, Mel Jeffries is suing two doctors and Monash Health for negligence. The 33-year-old has suffered enormously under the guise of gender affirmation pathways.  She has had both breasts removed and suffered dreadful side effects of cross sex hormones, without underlying issues being adequately addressed. 

Jeffries has lodged her claim in the Victorian County Court against Dr Jeff Wilcox, psychiatrist Jaco Erasmus as well as Monash Health for failing to provide adequate care resulting in serious harm.

Jefferies’ statement of claim, recently lodged with the court, accuses all three of falling short of delivering professional standards of care, including those outlined by the widely recognised World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The claim says those standards require doctors to ensure that “anyone experiencing mental health conditions must have these well-managed and thoroughly controlled prior to the commencement of the testosterone treatment”.

Her statement of claim says she has a permanently “deepened voice, hirsutism, clitoromegaly [a clitoris significantly larger than normal], vaginal pain/discomfort, abnormal body odour and acne, and pelvic floor dysfunction (as indicated by urinary incontinence). 

“For years I just kept getting affirmed by the medical fraternity and the trans community for something I wasn’t,”

They kept telling me, ‘You’re non-binary, trans, maybe you’re non-binary’. I tried to pull away but they just kept pulling me back in … I never developed the discernment to say ‘this isn’t true’.”

Mel’s story is harrowing to read. She has suffered mental health issues and has been failed by a medical system that was meant to help her. Some clinicians had explicitly stated she should not be put on cross sex hormones until her mental health issues were addressed or resolved. Others went ahead leaving Mel with devastating consequences. 

Jefferies claims the treatment exacerbated her self-harm, increased her suicidal thoughts, helped prompt drug overdoses and “the need for repeated psychiatric hospitalisations”. She now has complex and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, is in partial remission from “alcohol misuse disorder”, and has suffered “irreversible and serious injury to her physical body”, the court documents allege.

“I didn’t have the capacity to give consent – most of the time I was in transition I was going through crisis after crisis.”

She claimed that she had been influenced by a common belief in the trans community that their families and society would reject them, and if they could not transition, they would suicide.

“I didn’t have the ability to think long term. I was warped by the thinking that if I didn’t do this I was going to die,” Jefferies said. “They [the trans community] are in the grips of fear, and an us-versus-them culture. They tell you ‘They hate you, you’re only safe with us’. It’s an intense pressure.”

I have met Mel several times. She is an incredibly open and courageous woman who deserved much better care. Her case will no doubt be one of many over the coming years. 

Most of the harm cannot be reversed, but she deserves an apology and compensation, along with pathways to help her navigate her future that has been so deeply impacted by experimental and off-label interventions. 

We will keep you updated as the case unfolds and hope for the best for Mel and others so seriously harmed in the name of gender ideology.