madscientist (imported) wrote: Sat Apr 06, 2002 1:11 pm
This is a contraversial subject. Those who say it is too drastic point out that mistakes can be made. However, this does not stop the death penalty, the most drastic punishment of them all, & like castration, irreversible. There are those who say that a determined sex offender will take testosterone, thus negating the effects of the surgery. Maybe. But unless we wish to incarcerate these people for life it is really impossible to keep the truly determined from re-offending.
Having used this at the "stupid-est ever" ruse to get a surgical castraton 11 yrs. ago in Canada, I became a quasi- member of the offender community for a while. I am so _extremely_ happy that legitimate and legal methods are now available from several sources. As it was, at the time I was desperate enough to have arranged a nullification by .12 gauge, as a friend of mine had done shortly before this, as the backup plan.
In my case, once the assertion was made and after I was paraded anonymously around on talk shows, CNN and ABC (by _contract_ with a US doctor and advocate of surgical castration of sex offenders), I then had to disprove
it through rigorous testing, which I did.
The advocate had made no effort to determine actual truth of the matter, as might have been indicated by a polygraph, for instance, which I would have flunked. A messy situation. which sadly, reduces the credibility of a sincere individual's attempts to get surgical castration on the books nationwide as an option for convicted sex offenders...which I notably am not. I have no criminal record whatsoever, and am considered by therapists to have been in a dissassociative state related to a PTSD during some of this. I could write a book just on the weird twists my life took.
I'm confirmed to be gay, I take RX testosterone, and have mostly gotten past this damaging episode. Telling you all about it is part of my coming out process.
Taking Brian DeVries for example, an individual who was convicted of molesting 10 or more children: in California, serious offenders are committed to a mental institution and have very little actual prospect of ever getting out. Because of Constitutional issues, authorities have to at least try, and Devries' release is because of that.
You can be sure that someone in his position has undergone extremely thorough treatment and testing. Treatment plans can include aversion therapy using stimulating visual and/or auditory imagry and the penile plethysmograph, which detects arousal patterns, and polygraph. Intense psychotherapy intended to produce victim empathy and "breaking the chain of addiction" is common. Some of the techniques are not unlike mind control methods, in that they are intended to produce meek and compliant non-offenders (that's from second hand information).
Many offenders in the California program are opting for (or perhaps are requried to get) chemical castration during the lengthy treatment process, and a handful have graduated to surgical castration. I understand the drug they're using has unpleasant side effects. Surgical castration is not supposed to be considered in any legal decision regarding release, however.
From my perspective, surgical castration is probably going to be of great benefit to these guys...but only as part of theraputic management, which is ongoing after release.
Having experienced a tiny bit of this in a very unusual way, I
worry about the high profile guys like DeVries who will be released. The public is in a frenzy, in spite of the fact that he is likely to be pretty harmless at this point. He is probably not safe wherever he lives, and that knowledge will certainly intrude on his "eunuch calm".
(Note: post edited to remove the phrase "de facto" ("in fact") in re: my status as a member of the "offender community". Since we're talking about legal matters here, it's important to clarify that I never was one, but that I agreed to make media appearances in support of surgical castration of offenders. This was a condition of the advocate's referral to the surgeon who performed my surgical castration). There's a moral to this story: even the very desperate need to use their noggins.
