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Castration only way out of prison for child abuser

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Castration only way out of prison for child abuser
Photo: DPA

A German judge told a convicted child sex abuser who attacked boys aged between eight months and four years old, he would never be released unless he underwent chemical castration.

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Sentencing the man to 11 years in prison on Monday, Judge Michael Reinecke said counselling would never be enough to make the 28-year-old man suitable to live freely again. Only hormone treatment to remove his sex drive would make him eligible for release.

“Only when you do that will you get your freedom again,” said the judge, the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday. Hormone treatment known as chemical castration can only be undergone with the permission of the convict.

German courts very rarely lock criminals up indefinitely, but in very serious cases where the defendant could be seen to pose a continued high risk to the public, a preventive detention order can be added onto a sentence. This places a condition on the inmate’s release - in this case chemical castration.

Judge Reineke spoke of the high barriers to the use of preventive detention, which can only be used in extreme cases. “For us this here is an extreme case,” he said, wrote the paper.

The man, from Lemgo in West Germany, had wanted to become a teacher, but in 2008 was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison after it was discovered he had child pornography.

In 2010 he was sentenced again, this time to four years and three months for seriously sexually abusing his partner’s small son. The sentence was relatively light because the man convinced the court of his willingness to reform.

But this was revealed to be a con after a US-led worldwide investigation into online child pornography rings uncovered two further cases of abuse, wrote the paper.

When brought to trial for a third time, the former babysitter admitted having abused and raped a total of three boys aged between eight months and four years old – all of whom had been temporarily placed into his care on separate occasions in Detmold, North Rhine-Westphalia.

The judge said he believed there was no way other than chemical castration for the man to overcome his desire to sexually abuse small children.

The Local/jlb

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