Prague, July 7 (CTK) – The Czech government supported yesterday a draft amendment decreasing the castration lower age limit from 25 to 21 years of age, which was objected by Ombudsman Anna Sabatova, and Health Minister Svatopluk Nemecek said the operation will be performed at the patient’ s request.
In a press release, the Health Ministry said the amendment ensures a better supervision of people undergoing protective treatment.
The respective medical facilities will be obliged to report the patients who do not undergo checks or do not start treatment at all.
The restriction of the sexual instinct is possible with the use of medicaments. However, if the patient stops using them, the instinct is renewed. Another possibility is surgical treatment, which is irreversible.
The European Commission has criticised the Czech Republic for the surgical castrations that are banned in a number of European countries.
However, the Czech Sexological Society has recommended that the surgical castrations should be preserved.
Its scientific secretary, Professor Petr Weiss, told CTK that 4 percent of patients who underwent the surgical treatment commit a sexual crime, compared with 17 percent after treatment with medicines.
Reacting to the argument stated by the European committee for the prevention of torture that only two EU countries allow surgical castrations, Weiss said this is so simply because there exists no specialised treatment for these people in a number of countries.
“There are countries, including the United States, where this option is used in sexual offenders who do not even have to be deviant in a much broader sense,” Weiss said.
In the Czech Republic, surgical castrations have been banned in people under 25 years of age, those in custody or in prison since April 2012. In 2000-10, 80 patients underwent it. In 2012, the government refused to ban surgical castrations, saying they are an alternative to life confinement to institutional care and that they are only performed based on the patient’s free decision.
Nemecek said it will be also possible to perform castration on the patients who have not yet committed any sexual-motivated crime, but where there are serious reasons to suppose that they will do so in the future.
The respective medical facilities will also have to report to the police that a patient wilfully left hospital or shuns regular checks.
“With this measure we react to calls for a change to the system that would allow the detention of potentially dangerous patients in time,” Nemecek said.
The draft amendment provides for assisted reproduction being also performed by gynaecologists and obstetricians.
The change of sex can also be performed on people remanded in custody, serving their sentence, or undergoing preventive treatment.
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