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The stark alternatives of surgical castration and incarceration ignore some other programs for treating sex offenders. One newly popular approach, sometimes dubbed chemical castration, uses a drug called Depo-Provera,* which sharply diminishes sex drive in men by reducing their production of testosterone. The drug gained national attention last summer when a Texas jury sentenced Rapist Joseph Frank Smith to ten years' probation instead of prison after he volunteered to undergo Depo-Provera therapy. Smith entered the nation's largest program at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The program has 150 patients, 80% of them on parole and probation; nearly half are taking Depo-Provera. Dr. Fred Berlin, a co-director of the program, emphasizes that Depo-Provera is only one part of the therapy. The drug temporarily controls the men's sexual appetite while intensive psychotherapy seeks to change their behavior patterns. Berlin claims that during the program's 3½ years of operation, only 15% of the offenders have committed new offenses, compared with a rate that Berlin says can be as high as 85% for sex offenders who are only imprisoned.
Other Depo-Provera programs are under way in at least six locations. A program at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem also includes "aversion therapy," in which sex offenders are shown sexually enticing slides and are subjected to foul odors or mild electric shocks if they become aroused because of deviant feelings. Not all specialists in the field are impressed by these experiments. Richard Seely, who runs a highly regarded psychotherapeutic program for rapists and child molesters in Minnesota, considers Depo-Provera dangerous. He cites two men who became so depressed while taking it that they committed suicide. And in a 1972 experiment he conducted, the drug's effects seemed more psychological than real. "As the next step up from the vindictive barbarism of castration, Depo-Provera leaves me with little hope," says Seely, who believes that what hope there is for treating violent sex offenders lies in years of confinement and therapy.
Rapists Brown, Vaughn and Braxton are likely to wind up with the years of confinement even if they opt for the surgery, which is known "as a bilateral orchidectomy. The last time emasculation was seriously discussed in the U.S. as an alternative to prison was in 1975, when two child molesters told a San Diego judge that they would submit to castration in return for probation. The judge was willing, but it was impossible to find a doctor in California who would do the operation. Surgeons demurred then—as they probably would today—for fear their patients might change their minds after the operation and sue, and because it seemed unethical to perform a procedure whose only medical purpose was to mutilate. —By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by B.J. Phillips/Atlanta and Richard Zacks/Chicago
* Used by women in 83 countries as a long-term birth control agent, Depo-Provera has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for contraception because tests suggest that it causes cancer in female dogs and monkeys. But doctors may prescribe the drug for other purposes, including treatment of sex offenders who volunteer with full knowledge of the risks involved.