I think this is unfair - the author isn't responsible for a suicidal (from past incidents before the journalist every was involved) and clearly mentally-ill person spinning a web of lies about their life (lies about where she worked, studied etc, that aren't related to her gender) and as a result provoking curiosity about their claims by a journalist who has got his teeth into a fascinating story.
That's all a separate issue from the person's decision to change gender (apologies if this is the wrong verb to describe what she did, I don't intend it to be).
People are vulnerable. And there is a lot of... cruft, attached to sex changes. And not only that, it appears that some family members essentially cut him/her off. So, that's basically a lot of pain all tied up in with the decision to sex-change.
I don't think any of us would have an easy time imagining ourselves in those shoes, but I'd bet that many of us would have an even harder time dealing with it, given how closely we cling to our specific gender trappings.
Some sensitivity to this may have helped.
It would be easier for a person to be honest with the world if the world (and her family, apparently) at least accepted, if not completely understood (because ultimately, it's so subjective that you barely can), gender-change decisions like that.
That's all a separate issue from the person's decision to change gender (apologies if this is the wrong verb to describe what she did, I don't intend it to be).