(I hope this is news to all)
Police shocked by a castration that went awry
Birmingham man sought out surgery
June 12, 2002
BY JOHN MASSON AND AMY KLEIN
[font=helvetica,arial]FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS[/font]
It wasin his low-slung Oak Park home, he told police, that he quietly performed a castration on a man who contacted him through the Internet.
The 29-year-old Taiwanese national told police he had performed about 50 castrations before his kitchen-table operation on a 48-year-old Birmingham man went wrong.
Now, police are trying to figure out whether a crime was committed.
The man, who said he performed castrations both here and in his previous home in Australia, told police Saturday he had finished the procedure and the two men were enjoying a postoperative piece of pie when the Birmingham man started laughing.
Then he started bleeding.
The men couldn't stanch the flow. At about 5 a.m. the newly castrated man stepped out to the street. Someone called police, who found him sitting on the curb in a pair of blood-soaked blue jeans.
He said he'd been voluntarily castrated a couple of hours earlier in the nearby ranch house.
Inside, police found two human testicles in a container in the refrigerator.
"I can't even imagine this," said Lt. Bruce Smith, head of the Oak Park Public Safety Department's detective bureau. "It's bewildering to me."
Investigators aren't releasing either man's name until they sort out whether a crime was committed. Likewise, investigators don't know why the Birmingham man went under the knife.
Criminal or not, home castration is not unheard of.
Several Web sites are devoted to the subject, which some men pursue for erotic reasons. The Birmingham man gave investigators the name of one such Web site.
Dr. Jonathan Metzl, a professor in psychiatry and women's studies at the University of Michigan, said the desire to be castrated could stem from a number of psychiatric disorders.
People who suffer from gender identity disorder feel they are living in the body of the wrong sex and are disgusted by their own genitals, Metzl said. Or, a man with an obsessive-compulsive disorder could feel that his genitals are dirty, he said.
"This is very rare," Metzl said. "The fear of castration is much more prevalent than actual castration."
Self-castrations tend to be more common than leaving the job to someone else, said Dr. Dana Ohl, a urologist at the U-M Medical Center who has operated on botched amateur castrations.
"Usually, when these people just chop their own testicle off, they don't pay attention to the blood supply," he said.
The Birmingham man is out of the hospital and recovering after several hours of emergency surgery Saturday morning. The would-be surgeon, who overstayed his visa, has been released as the investigation continues.
"We may not be able to prosecute this guy," Smith said.
Legally, according to Jim Halushka of the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, you can't commit a criminal assault on a consenting person.
But other legal options are being explored, Halushka said. Police found a bottle labeled "zylocaine" in the Oak Park house, which is being tested in case a prescription-drug law was violated.
Another possibility is a charge of practicing medicine without a license.
Either way, the would-be surgeon has overstayed a student visa by about a year, Halushka said, and that information has been turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "This makes no sense," Halushka said. "This is just too weird."
Police shocked by a castration that went awry
Birmingham man sought out surgery
June 12, 2002
BY JOHN MASSON AND AMY KLEIN
[font=helvetica,arial]FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS[/font]
It wasin his low-slung Oak Park home, he told police, that he quietly performed a castration on a man who contacted him through the Internet.
The 29-year-old Taiwanese national told police he had performed about 50 castrations before his kitchen-table operation on a 48-year-old Birmingham man went wrong.
Now, police are trying to figure out whether a crime was committed.
The man, who said he performed castrations both here and in his previous home in Australia, told police Saturday he had finished the procedure and the two men were enjoying a postoperative piece of pie when the Birmingham man started laughing.
Then he started bleeding.
The men couldn't stanch the flow. At about 5 a.m. the newly castrated man stepped out to the street. Someone called police, who found him sitting on the curb in a pair of blood-soaked blue jeans.
He said he'd been voluntarily castrated a couple of hours earlier in the nearby ranch house.
Inside, police found two human testicles in a container in the refrigerator.
"I can't even imagine this," said Lt. Bruce Smith, head of the Oak Park Public Safety Department's detective bureau. "It's bewildering to me."
Investigators aren't releasing either man's name until they sort out whether a crime was committed. Likewise, investigators don't know why the Birmingham man went under the knife.
Criminal or not, home castration is not unheard of.
Several Web sites are devoted to the subject, which some men pursue for erotic reasons. The Birmingham man gave investigators the name of one such Web site.
Dr. Jonathan Metzl, a professor in psychiatry and women's studies at the University of Michigan, said the desire to be castrated could stem from a number of psychiatric disorders.
People who suffer from gender identity disorder feel they are living in the body of the wrong sex and are disgusted by their own genitals, Metzl said. Or, a man with an obsessive-compulsive disorder could feel that his genitals are dirty, he said.
"This is very rare," Metzl said. "The fear of castration is much more prevalent than actual castration."
Self-castrations tend to be more common than leaving the job to someone else, said Dr. Dana Ohl, a urologist at the U-M Medical Center who has operated on botched amateur castrations.
"Usually, when these people just chop their own testicle off, they don't pay attention to the blood supply," he said.
The Birmingham man is out of the hospital and recovering after several hours of emergency surgery Saturday morning. The would-be surgeon, who overstayed his visa, has been released as the investigation continues.
"We may not be able to prosecute this guy," Smith said.
Legally, according to Jim Halushka of the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, you can't commit a criminal assault on a consenting person.
But other legal options are being explored, Halushka said. Police found a bottle labeled "zylocaine" in the Oak Park house, which is being tested in case a prescription-drug law was violated.
Another possibility is a charge of practicing medicine without a license.
Either way, the would-be surgeon has overstayed a student visa by about a year, Halushka said, and that information has been turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "This makes no sense," Halushka said. "This is just too weird."
