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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, pushed for a 2008 law that allows judges to require chemical or surgical castration of repeat child molesters.
Yet curbing the malevolent predilections of predators with criminal histories is not as simple as prescribing medication or picking up a scalpel, many say.
In California, Orange County Deputy District Attorney Mike Carroll told The News that lowering testosterone levels is not a cure for pedophelia.
“You can use other body parts,” he said. “Fingers, mouths, etc. Castration may lower someone’s sex drive, but it doesn’t lower their risk to offend.”
The Southern California proscecutor’s office has opposed releasing Kevin Reilly, a twice-convicted child molester who volunteered for surgical castration in 2003.
He obtained a court order for the surgery and paid for it himself. After serving sentences for molesting three girls and showing pornography to a boy, he was deemed a sexually violent predator by prosecutors and has been locked up in state mental hospitals since 2000.
Several requests for parole, based on his castration, have been denied.
There are no statistics on the number of men who have volunteered for surgical castration or been given chemical injections.
About 265,000 sex offenders are currently incarcerated in state prisons, according to U.S. Department of Justice figures. Some 750,000 are listed on sex offender registration lists.
ALEXANDRA MLEJNKOVA/AP
The Czech Republic is one of several countries, including Poland, Russia and Argentina, that use castration as a punishment or an option for parole when dealing with repeat child molesters. Antonin Novak, pictured, was sentenced in 2009 to life in prison for molesting and killing a 9-year-old boy.
But just like legal experts, medical professionals can’t agree on whether castrating child molesters within the criminal justice system is a good solution to a pernicious problem.
“There is a role for this in medical practices [with] consenting patients,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic, now known as the Sexual Behavior Consultation Unit, which specalizes in treating pedophiles and others with sexual disorders including voyeurism and exhibitionism.
A 1990s survey of 400 pedophiles who had received clinic treatment including chemical castration showed a recidivism rate of about 8 percent, he said.
“But to do this as punishment is absolutely inappropriate,” he told The News.
Lowering testosterone levels, which in turn lowers libidos, can benefit pedophiles, who by definition are driven by sexual urges toward children.
It wouldn't have much effect on psychopaths or “someone with no sense of moral responsibility — there’s no medicine in the world that is going to instill that in a person,” Berlin said.
Passing castration laws does not address the very real problem of how to treat child molesters in a humane way, he said.
“These seems to have become an issue among legislators who aren't medical experts,” Berlin said.
“What’s behind this is the ‘Let’s just castrate the bastards’ mentality,” he added. “And that doesn’t work very well.”