Row over drug treatment for rapist

Press, 4 November 1983, Page 13

Row over drug treatment for rapist

A 29-year-old Texan, convicted of multiple rape and other sexual offences, has embarked on a course of controversial drug treatments which several medical and legal authorities in the United States denounce as “chemical castration.”

The drug is Depo-Provera, brand-name of a synthetic female sex hormone, which its proponents regard as a revolutionary new means of controlling thousands of sex offenders who until now have been “warehoused” in America’s jails, only to be put back on the streets after a few years to commit new crimes.

The man is Joseph Smith who, by his own confession, terrorised a quiet suburb of the south Texas town of San Antonio for over a year with a series of brutal late night assaults on women.

Residents were jubilant when,

From

after months of ineffective police patrols, a neighbourhood vigilante team grabbed the culprit. Jubilation then turned to outrage. Instead of the 99-year maximum sentence demanded by state prosecutors, a jury released Smith on probation “into the care” of social workers, on condition that he accepted weekly injections of Depo-Provera, which drastically reduces the sex drive. Protest marches and bitter attacks on the court system followed. No-one was angrier than State prosecutor Sam Millsap. “Public money was wasted and justice was defeated,” he said. “The victim', who was raped twice, feels she’s been assaulted a third, time — by the judicial process. Judges and

WILLIAM SCOBIE

in San Antonio

juries have no licence to practise medicine.”

Mr Millsap says he personally persuaded the victim, an attractive young woman, to take the stand against her wishes on grounds that a severe sentence for Smith would encourage other embarrassed rape victims to go to the police. “But we were handed this business of ‘rehabilitation’ without punishment. I think that’s nonsense.”

Under Texas law, the case cannot go to appeal. A fortnight ago, after several hospitals had refused to touch the politically-sensitive case, Smith was secretly admitted to an unnamed private clinic to begin treatment. Although widely recognised in

Europe as a treatment for some lesser sexual disorders, Depo-Pro-vera has come into use only recently in the United States as a way of treating gross sex offenders. Pioneered by Dr John Money at Baltimore’s John Hopkins University, it reduces the level of testosterone, a substance which regulates the male sex drive. It has attracted the interest of several State legislatures and prison systems troubled by recidivist offenders and overcrowded jails. Pilot projects are under way in California, Oregon, Connecticut, and other adventurous states. But the Smith case, with its rejection of incarceration in favour of medication, has deepened the medico-legal dispute. On one hand, an uneasy mixture of feminist groups, state prosecutors, and conservative physicians oppose the treatment. Justice is being subverted, medical techno-

logy is being misused, and convicts — according to the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups — are being used as guinea-pigs in tests of an unproven drug which produces bizarre side effects, including heavy weight gain and feminisation of the body. “Depo-Provera has also induced cancer in laboratory animals,” says an A.C.L.U. spokesman. “It’s a scheme that smacks of Nazi Germany, where chemical castration of sex offenders was first tried out.”

On the other hand, liberal lawyers and venturesome therapists see the drug as a major advance in the treatment of repeated offenders. “Properly used,” says Smith’s attorney, Raymond Taylor, “it could be a great benefit to society.” In San Diego, California, a psychiatrist, Larry Corrigan, runs one of the largest Depo-Provera programmes. It includes several sex

criminals undergoing treatment as a condition of their probation. “Many people still suppose that if the offender tried hard enough, he could control his urges,” Dr Corrigan says. “Experience teaches it is not so. The obsessions of these men take up nearly all their waking thoughts. Depo-Provera frees them from the fixation. Then you can get through with counselling and therapy.” He points to studies over some years at John Hopkins University with 20 male offenders. Three dropped out of the programme and were arrested for fresh offences. None of those who completed the course was returned to jail or an institution.

“We’re not saying that DepoProvera is a complete answer,” Dr Corrigan says. “But it does cool down even the violent rapist. Since nothing else seems to be working, let’s give it a try.” Copyright — London Observer Service.