Sex offender voluntarily castrated today

[SplitDik (imported)]

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanlui ... 504031.htm

Posted on Mon, Aug. 29, 2005

Sex offender at ASH is set for castration

Greg Grant is convinced surgery will bring a cure for the fantasies that have ailed him; the procedure puts him at the center of decades-old controversy

By Guy Ashley

The Tribune

Greg Grant is scheduled for castration this morning, convinced that a cure for the deviant sexual fantasies that have ailed him for decades will arrive when a doctor makes a small incision and delicately plucks away his manhood.

Grant, 60, is one of 572 men confined at Atascadero State Hospital as sexually violent predators. The former resident of Santa Cruz is slated to become one of at least 14 men in the decade-old program for California's worst repeat sex offenders to have his testicles voluntarily removed -- a controversial procedure that studies say can extinguish the sexual impulses that lead many of these men to attack.

"I don't want anything to do with sex anymore," Grant said by telephone last week. "I've had so much of that I don't want any part of it -- good or bad. I want it gone."

The surgical castration puts the former car salesman at the center of a decades-old controversy over the surgery and its effectiveness in treating sex offenders.

If the operation goes as planned, Grant will return by nightfall to Atascadero and the 1950s-era hospital where he has been held for six years. He is adamant that his 1981 molestation of a 9-year-old boy in a Santa Cruz motel room and two other attacks in the 1970s are the only times he crossed the line and hurt others in acting out a perverse sexual fantasy.

Grant hopes the surgery will end not only his deviant sexual impulses but also his imprisonment.

But Grant's decision flies in the face of the state's emphasis on cognitive-behavioral therapy for sex offenders -- therapy he rejects as ineffective -- and its official opposition to surgical castration as a treatment.

The majority of the medical staff at Atascadero is likely to recommend his continued confinement in a program that indefinitely holds high-risk sex offenders after their prison terms to protect public safety. Doctors chide Grant's decision as the folly of a man who refuses to confront his demons.

"I think it's human nature to look for the quick cure, the instant pixie dust that will ensure I will never offend again," said Gabrielle Paladino, a clinical psychiatrist who runs three treatment groups in Atascadero's predator program. But, she added, "If you don't change your thinking, there's still going to be a problem."

An argument for release

Anecdotal evidence suggests Grant's surgery may add significant weight to his legal fight to be released from custody for the first time in 21 years. At least eight men have been released from the Atascadero program after undergoing surgical castration, known in medical parlance as bi-lateral orchiectomy, which prevents the body from producing the male hormone testosterone.

That far outnumbers the three who have gained their release by completing the four-phase relapse prevention therapy regimen that is the hospital program's cornerstone. Moreover, two of those three men also were surgically castrated prior to their release, a fact that seems to have swayed doctors and judges on their behalf.

"As much as any one other factor, it opened the door," said Brian Matthews, the deputy Santa Clara public defender whose client, Brian DeVries, was the first man to win release from Atascadero by completing treatment.

But Grant, who on three occasions sexually molested boys in ways that mimicked his own sexual abuse as a child, is adamant his decision is more about personal relief than a calculated bid to win his freedom.

"If I were to get out today, the first thing I would do is go have the surgery," he said.

An effective treatment?

Beyond Grant's drastic gesture lies a broader controversy about surgical castration in California. Critics say taxpayers are being soaked for millions of dollars due to the state's emphasis on therapy-based programs that ignore what could be a quicker, more permanent fix delivered in one visit to the doctor.

The state pays about $130,000 a year for each man housed in the Atascadero program, or about four times what it spends on each inmate in the prison system. That brings the cost of the Atascadero program to at least $74 million this year.

Grant's surgery will cost about $9,000, which he has collected through donations from friends and family because the state refuses to pay for the procedure.

There will be other costs down the road, including the drugs he will take to ward off osteoporosis and other side effects.

A flurry of studies in the mid- 20th century, most in Europe, including Nazi Germany, showed post-castration recidivism rates for repeat sex offenders between 2 and 10 percent, according to an exhaustive survey that was published this year in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

More recent studies put the recidivism rate at 14 percent for those who receive therapy.

The highest rate of post-surgical recidivism was recorded in a 1971 follow-up of 21 castrated sex offenders in Denmark, two of whom attacked again after obtaining testosterone injections from their doctors.

Six studies performed between 1952 and 1989 recorded a 3.3 percent recidivism rate on average, which the survey found was well below the 14 percent level most often linked to high-risk offenders treated through relapse-prevention therapy favored in California and other states.

"The studies all show that bi-lateral orchiectomy is more effective treatment -- by far," said Michael Aye, a Sacramento attorney who has represented about 30 sexually violent predators in California, including several men who have opted for surgical castration.

"They also suggest that the cost of confining people in this state who do not need to be confined is through the roof," he said.

On the cusp of a cure

Grant is absolute in believing he's on the cusp of a cure, bringing an end to his obsession with boys and sex that dominated his life for decades, after being triggered one night in 1972 while viewing "Midnight Cowboy" at a drive-in theater.

He is so confident because he has conquered his demons before.

For nearly five years at Atascadero, Grant received daily injections of so-called chemical castration drugs, whose testosterone-lowering effects mimic those of the surgery he's about to undergo.

"All the fantasies stopped," he said. "For the first time in 25 years, I could concentrate on other things."

But in 2003, doctors at Atascadero ordered a halt to his daily treatments with depo-provera because of concerns about severe osteoporosis, the weakening of his bones related to the loss of male hormone.

Lately, Grant says, the old obsessions that dominated him day and night for more than two decades have begun to resurface.

"I want this to stop," he said.

The thought of those feelings returning with such all-consuming force is a lot scarier than offering up a precious part of his anatomy, Grant says.

"If they want to put big chain link fence around me with razor wire on top of it, OK, I'll accept that," he said. "But I want to feel like a normal person again. I want my life back."

[bryan (imported)]

Speaking as one who has suffered from addictive thoughts, glad he's able to get the surgery regardless of impact on jail time. I, too, am confident it will work.

But what's with the price tag of $9,000? Must be a hospital setting, not urologist office.

[polecat (imported)]

Yeah, who's performing the operation? Who's the anethesiologist? And why $9000? Is that the "felony bargain" price?

[transgirl23ny (imported)]

Craziness...

what if the guy did male HRT ??? He'd still have a sex drive no? Then the creep would be back out on the street...

if he was nullified... fine... but I worry about just testicle removal...

maybe I am beuing stupid...

[bryan (imported)]

Jessica,

No, you're not being stupid. True, he could resort to male HRT. And it's up to the courts to decide whether he is a risk to society in his new state.

But I believe he genuinely wants to retire from sex and having a libido, in which case he will put testosterone in the same category as poison and want nothing to do with it.

A raging libido can overcome one's willpower and moral sense. But a dead libido isn't able to overpower a person into taking HRT; the person is still in control of his faculties. So it's a pretty safe situation.

Just MHO.

[limpdick (imported)]

i just hope it works, that it takes sex out of his mind and body parts ... it would be a lot cheaper for taxpayersn and make him happier notm to be in the bad position.

[crash69_10940 (imported)]

i dont care if they take his nuts he should never be let out of jail he did the crime now do the time

[SplitDik (imported)]

i dont care if they take his nuts he should never be let out of jail he did the crime now do the time

He's already done his time -- already 21 years in jail.

I'm pretty sure this is a pure case of a guy voluntarily being castrated to rid himself of the urges that plague his life. I'm glad he could find a doctor to do it -- too bad you have to be a sex offender to get voluntary castration. I'm sure a lot of guys who are tormented by urges to commit sex crimes would be willing to get preventive castration.

[Taylor (imported)]

Sigh......

Study after study after study confirms there is no cure for a sex offender. The problem is in the psyche.

The Chinese are the only ones that have a 100% cure for this kind of scum, a bullet in the back of the head.

There are lines that once crossed the person forever surrenders their right to be allowed in a civilized society.

[polecat (imported)]

Well, that's not very nice. What right do you have to say someone is incurable, much less to shoot them in the back of the head? I have heard (probably biased) studies that recidivism in sex offenders is pretty high, but the vast majority of said offenders are still full of male hormones, completely intact. The mind isn't as much of a temple as you think; once desecrated, it can be purged, and it can be cleaned up. Just, don't close your own mind, because there are no absolute truths here. There is no 100% cure, and there is no 100% uncured. It's in the psyche, the playdough of our mind that is remade anew every time we wake up from sleep.

I'd like to see some of these studies on attempted cures for sex offenders that failed. Even if they're incurable, it still doesn't give you the authority to kill them. Kill things in self defense, or for food, not in outraged revenge, disgust or hate. And remember, those who do not cross lines, who do not allow others to cross lines, are often the most destructive in society. Be careful before you call it the unforgiveable crime, because many times the story is more complicated than they being monsters, and more often than you'd think it's an ethically innocent man, convicted under some heavily interpreted legal triviality. There are monsters but, there are also confused criminals in need of help.