You get the "common sense of the Day" award.
Posted on 05/10/2005 1:04:42 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Texas lawmakers made voluntary castration available for sex offenders in 1997, and since then, three have been surgically castrated.
While orchiectomy, surgical removal of the testes, may lower male testosterone levels and decrease sex drive, the procedure won't change the object of a pedophile's desire — children, said a psychologist who evaluated Texas' three castrated inmates.
"It doesn't normalize sexual interest," said Dr. Walter Meyer, an expert in sex offender therapy at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. "It just takes the edge off. I had one patient describe it as a vacation because it wasn't on his mind all the time."
Victims rights activists mirror Meyer's observations in their argument for returning child molester Larry Don McQuay to prison, saying that the procedure will not rehabilitate him. The notorious pedophile, who was released from prison last week, garnered national attention when he begged state prison officials to castrate him to prevent future sexual assaults.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least eight states allow some form of castration. Most states offering chemical castration use it as a punishment for some repeat sex offenders.
Chemical castration requires men to take drugs such as Depo-Provera or Lupron to reduce testosterone levels.
Castration is voluntary in Texas, and the procedure is surgical. Offenders must take chemical castration drugs before surgery to understand how their bodies might change with less testosterone.
"Texas law, in contrast to other states' laws, was a treatment bill, not a punishment bill," said Bill Winslade, a medical ethics professor at UTMB who serves as a liaison between the prison system and hospital, which provides health care for inmates.
Inspired by McQuay's requests, the Legislature made voluntary castration available in 1997. Prison officials will not release the names of the three who have had the procedure.
The first castration was conducted in December 2001. That inmate is serving a life sentence. The other castrations took place in March 2004. Inmate David Wayne Jones, a former East Dallas YMCA worker, has publicly said he had the procedure. McQuay, presumably, is the third inmate.
McQuay has not publicly said he had the procedure. McQuay's former lawyer, Paul C. Looney, would not make medical records available to reporters, but he has said McQuay told him in a letter that he was castrated last year.
Before the state could hire a surgeon to perform an orchiectomy, prison and health officials spent years establishing procedures, Winslade said.
Inmates who are at least 21 and have at least two sex-offender convictions must undergo at least 18 months of sex-offender treatment.
"I think it's correct to say the three people who underwent the procedure, to my knowledge, have expressed no regrets and felt it contributed to their ability to exercise self-control," Winslade said.
According to Winslade, up to a dozen more offenders who sought castration failed to go through with it or were denied the procedure. Meyer and Winslade said others were denied because they did not meet technical or psychological requirements.
According to a number of European studies, the procedure has shown reductions in male libido while also decreasing recidivism rates.
Recidivism rates of sex offenders castrated in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway ranged from 1.1 percent to 7.3 percent.
One German study found that 3 percent of men had been involved in sex offenses after castration while 46 percent of noncastrated men had been involved in sex offenses.
Many psychologists agree that if a pedophile has the surgery, he must also enroll in intensive treatment while being monitored closely.
"Sex-offending behavior is not solely driven by hormones. If you get rid of or reduce hormones, the problems aren't solved," said Dr. Karen Lawson, director of the sexual abuse treatment program in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine.
Meyer said McQuay, 41, had undergone months of treatment and evaluation. He is housed in Bexar County Jail's work-release facility, where he must wear an ankle monitoring device.
He will be monitored for 11 years. McQuay was released last week after serving eight years of a 20-year sentence because his time-served and good-behavior credit met state requirements for release under mandatory supervision.
Victims rights advocates, such as Polly Franks of the National Coalition for Victims in Action, say pedophiles should not be released because they cannot be rehabilitated.
"Even if Larry Don McQuay has been surgically castrated, he's still got his brain and his hands — the equipment and mindset to rape children," said Franks, who said Virginia serial rapist Joseph Frank Smith attacked her daughters.
Smith, known as the "Ski Mask Rapist," had been convicted of rape in Bexar County in 1983. He admitted to 200 sexual assaults of women and children in San Antonio.
His case became famous when he agreed to undergo chemical castration as a term of probation in 1983. A judge in San Antonio had ordered him chemically castrated by taking Depo-Provera, and he was featured on the program 60 Minutes as a possible cured rapist.
But he moved to the East Coast in the early 1980s and stopped taking the drugs in the early 1990s.
By 1987, Virginia police had received dozens of reports of a man wearing a bandanna breaking into homes. By 1998, Virginia authorities linked DNA evidence to Smith in a 1993 sexual assault on a 5-year-old girl.
Franks' two daughters were assaulted in 1995 by a man who matches Smith's description.
Before McQuay's pleas for surgical castration inspired the Legislature to permit the practice voluntarily, state District Judge Mike McSpadden's court thrust the topic into the national debate.
Since the early 1990s, McSpadden advocated castrating pedophiles, especially in the wake of the case of Steve Allen Butler in 1992. Butler was a retarded shoeshine worker convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 1991 while he was still on probation for fondling a 7-year-old girl in 1989.
McSpadden could not be reached for comment.
Facing a 35-year prison sentence, Butler volunteered to be castrated in exchange for probation. McSpadden found a doctor to perform the surgery, but castration plans failed when Butler's lawyers said racism was a motivating factor.
Three years later, Houston was again at the center of the castration debate when local group Justice For All met with McQuay, after he pleaded with the state to castrate him. He admitted to molesting 240 children.
robert.crowe@chron.com
Part of the issue though is that it isn't a sex crime - even though sex is part of the crime. It's a power trip for the abuser. So long as they have a way of exerting power over the victim, they'll be able to commit the crime. As long as they have hands to touch with, and a mouth to speak with, they'll be able to commit the crime.
The resolution is easy. Death has a zero percent recidivism rate.
I won't argue with that.
You get the "common sense of the Day" award.
Look at the faces of the children in that photo.
What really makes me angry are pseudo-academics and faux-scholars who make up their own statistics supported by junk science that claims that children raised in a "gay-household" are just as emotionally healthy as from heterosexual (read: normal) families.
It is totally bogus and a lie.
Yes. The politically correct slippery slope drags children along the careening path to the bottom.
He will be monitored for 11 years. McQuay was released last week after serving eight years of a 20-year sentence because his time-served and good-behavior credit met state requirements for release under mandatory supervision.
EIGHT years on a measley 20-year sentence? Time served and "good behavior" credits? For a pedophile rapist?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over??
We had nearly this exact same thing happen locally about 10 years ago. Medical castration is NOT available in NH. The parole board was chock full of bleeding heart libs. The guy told the parole board that if let out, he would definitely molest again. The board was convinced that prison was not the correct place for this guy. Rather, he could get help on the outside through some sort of outpatient counseling services at a halfway house. The guy BEGGED to be kept in prison. The parole board would have none of it.
So, the guy gets out, comes straight to my town and proceeds to lurk in front of a daycare center. The police arrest him for failure to report to his halfway house and failure to register as a sex offender. Instead of going back to prison on the spot, he is given a summons to appear in court in 3 months. The police then deliver him to his halfway house.
Within a day or two later, the police are summoned to the same daycare. The guy is inside the building talking to several little kids. He was again arrested but this time brought back to prison. That is the last I heard about him. But in both of these examples the pervs are saying, "I can't help myself and I will do it again," yet the statements are falling on deaf ears. IMHO, if a perv is let out like this, the presiding parole board should be held as accomplices to any subsequent crimes the pervs commit. If I was on a parole board with that threat hanging over me, no one would ever get out!
I think you'd be within your rights to shoot them, as well as the perv.
I just don't get it.
Do those in justice careers think these aren't violent crimes?
Works for me!
I tend to equate them to their insane patients. Having known a few psychologists and psychiatrists who were themselves complete neurotics, I think the "profession" attracts that type, and I would tend to extend the same logic to those who specialize in deviant sexual behavior.
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