For Delisha Boyd, a Democratic congresswoman from Louisiana, it was “a personal matter.” Her mother was raped repeatedly between the ages of 13 and 15 by a 28-year-old relative, and Boyd is the fruit of that rape. A story in the local newspaper of Baton Rouge, the capital of this Deep South state, convinced her last May. “It talked about a 51-year-old man who was wanted for the sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl,” the representative recently explained in a telephone interview. “The guy, they also said, had been arrested for the rape of a five-year-old girl in 2007. When I read that, I said to myself: ‘that’s it.’ I felt I had to do something.”
Boyd, a 55-year-old black woman, The mother of one daughter, she then called another Democrat, Senator Regina Barrow, and the two got to work: in record time, they drafted and got both chambers to approve a law that authorizes judges to sentence those guilty of crimes such as rape, sexual abuse or incest, whose victims are under 13 years old, to surgical castration.
The law was backed by a large majority in the House and Senate in Baton Rouge, controlled by the Republican Party. Three weeks ago it was signed by the governor of Louisiana, the ultra-conservative Jeff Landry, who has recently made headlines for approving anti-trans laws, for requiring public schools to display a poster in classrooms with the Ten Commandments in large, legible print, for reclassifying abortion pills as “dangerous substances” and placing them in the same category as heroin or cocaine, or for importing a new method of execution tested in Alabama: nitrogen asphyxiation.
When it comes into force on August 1, surgical castration will be the first law to go so far in the country: there are 10 other states that allow chemical castration for pedophiles, but it is rarely used and when it is used it is always as a possibility for those guilty of such crimes to obtain benefits such as parole or reduced sentences. Surgical castration is legal in countries with very tough legal systems on crime, such as Nigeria or the Czech Republic. In Spain, chemical castration exists, but only if it is voluntary.
“If we don’t stand up for our children, who will?” asks Boyd, whose legislative initiative is likely to face challenges in court under the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” She has also received harsh attacks from members of her party. “I challenge those who criticize me to close their eyes and think about their sons or daughters at age five. Those children are scarred for the rest of their lives, and that is cruel and unusual punishment, not the penalty for committing those crimes,” considers the congresswoman.
This isn’t the first time Boyd has garnered national attention, a rarity for a statewide politician: The New Orleans representative used her case — the daughter of a teenage mother who “did not die in childbirth but was scarred until her death before age 30” — to try to get rape and incest exceptions for minors under 17 into Louisiana’s abortion law. It’s one of the strictest to go into effect nationwide after the Supreme Court overturned the precedent of the ruling. Roe v. Wade, and with it, federal protection of that right. That time, it was not successful. “Those who claim to defend life only care about it when it is in the womb,” he laments.
Sentences of three to five years
The new law leaves it to the discretion of judges, and after medical advice, to impose surgical castration when the prison sentence is nearing its end. If prisoners do not agree to have their testicles removed or, in the case of women, their ovaries, an operation that must “be carried out,” the text says, “within a week of their release” receive an additional sentence of between three and five years in prison, “with or without hard labour”. The law will only apply to those crimes committed after it came into force. In Louisiana, which has 2,224 people in prison for the types of crimes contemplated by the new text, chemical castration was approved 16 years ago. Boyd has only been able to find one case in which it has been applied, that of “a white man”.
“[Estas innovaciones legislativas] “They can and often do open the floodgates, and serve as an example in parliaments across the country. It is not popular with voters to be behind on punishing people who commit such crimes,” Sandy Rozek, communications director for the U.S. Department of Justice, said in an email. National Association for Sound Sex Offense Laws (NARSOL). His legal team, Rozek confirms, is looking into ways to strike down the Louisiana law. The appeals court that will hear those challenges, the Fifth Circuit, is one of the most conservative in the country.
![Vehicles enter the main gate of the Louisiana State Prison](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/LNXJDQQII5BBRLMCRTBGRPTS7U.jpg?auth=42d60ee72632b3f926659b747c65304413fc3ddd6d669644f922b46f2ad7f907&width=414)
In addition to its potential for contagion, the law has been criticized for the symbolism of reinstating such a penalty in a Southern state with a history of lynchings during the Jim Crow era, when black men accused of infringing on a white woman were castrated. “My response to that,” Boyd says, “is that during slavery, black women were raped by slave owners and by other slaves. It wasn’t even a crime. So please go cry somewhere else. Also, the guy in the story I read in the newspaper was white,” says the congresswoman, who hopes that the law will serve, at least, “to deter some sexual offenders.” “I will feel that all this controversy and all this media attention has been worth it if just one of these horrible men thinks twice about it.”
The effectiveness that Boyd seeks is not guaranteed. “There is no evidence to support that increasing sentences for those convicted of sexual crimes will reduce their recidivism. No studies support such a sentence. It is cruel and useless. The equivalent of cutting off a thief’s hand: a medieval measure,” says Emily Horowitz, professor of sociology and author of From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear (From anger to reason: why we need sex crime laws based on facts, not fearThe best way to reintegrate an offender, he adds, is “to allow them to get a job, have a family, find housing, build social networks… Subjecting them to excessive punishments has the opposite effect.”
Horowitz does not discuss surgical castration in her essay, but she is not surprised that it has reached Louisiana. “These are very popular measures, they win votes, and no one can oppose them without looking like a monster who does not care about the welfare of children. These are horrible crimes, which destroy the victims and their families, but this is not the way. There is a real moral panic, especially with pedophilia, in the United States, and also many myths and misunderstandings. These criminals already receive long prison sentences, and when they are released they are on parole, they are put on a list of sexual offenders that is public. Their neighbors receive notifications, they have restrictions on traveling. They are not allowed to go to parks, libraries, they are forced to put a sign on their door at Halloween. In other words, they receive very harsh punishments, adding another one to the list will not make them less inclined to do it again,” warns the expert in a telephone interview.
During the debate over the bill’s passage in the Baton Rouge Senate, Democrat Ed Price questioned how to fairly apply an irreversible measure such as surgical castration in a state like Louisiana, which has one of the highest rates of wrongful convictions in the country, She also said that racial discrimination is often present in these cases. In response, Boyd, who considers the prosecution of child rapists “a personal matter,” recalls that the law she authored “does not in any case provide for vigilante-style castration,” because the convicted “can always decide to spend more time behind bars if they do not want to undergo the operation.” “All of this has nothing to do with race,” the congresswoman insists, “but with protecting our children.”
A single case in 14 years: the Spanish example in the European context
In Spain, the application of surgical castration is “unthinkable according to our constitutional system and the European Convention on Human Rights,” explains Mar Carrasco, professor of criminal law at the University of Alicante. Carrasco is the author, together with Mar Moya, professor of the same department, of a full scientific article on the subject. They published it in 2021, in the midst of the debate over the processing of the law of only yes is yes, as they both recalled in a video conference conversation.
“Chemical castration is only permitted if the offender wants to undergo it voluntarily, and provided it is accompanied by cognitive therapy to help him contain his impulses,” Carrasco explains. “In addition, it only works as long as the individual wants to take the medication, which has serious health consequences. Most doctrine is very reluctant to do so.” [con su administración]and in no case can it be a generalized measure for indiscriminate use.”
Moya clarifies that the application of this libido-inhibiting treatment began to be discussed in France in 2007. Later, in Spain, after the scandal over the possible release of the Vall d’Hebron rapist, it received the endorsement of a committee of experts in Catalonia, which has transferred penitentiary powers. The measure began to operate in 2010.
Moya and Carrasco only know of one case in which a prisoner decided to undergo chemical castration in Spain. “In Europe, there is the case of Poland, where it is mandatory,” explains Moya. “Surgical castration is in force in countries such as Germany, where it is very rarely used, or the Czech Republic.”
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