DIY justice: Russians pay to castrate paedophiles

Three Russians – a member of the Public Chamber, a lawyer and a businessman – have volunteered to sponsor chemical castration for paedophiles.

The activists put forward their proposal to the lower house of parliament and the government, which had earlier criticized a law on chemical castration as being too pricy, writes Izvestia daily.In 2011, the then Healthcare Minister Tatyana Golikova said the problem had no easy solution and that the use of the suggested method against rapists would cost 8mln roubles ($265,000) per year. “We are ready to help the state with our own money,” Veniamin Rodnyansky from the Public Chamber told the newspaper. Another person behind the idea businessman Andrey Ryabinsky is confident that there are quite a few people in Russia who are ready to donate money to protect children from violence. A third proponent, advocate Shota Gorgadze said he was ready to provide not only financial, but also judicial help in fighting paedophiles. According to official statistics, 401 children less than 14 years of age were raped in Russia between January and October last year, three more died as a result of sexual battery. However, experts say that the real number of sex abuse victims might be a lot higher as children often do not tell anyone what happened to them because of embarrassment or because they were threatened. The idea of introducing chemical castration for paedophiles has been mulled over for a number of years, before the then President Dmitry Medvedev signed it into law in February 2012.However, opponents of the method say that it is not efficient as a deterrent. Besides that, unlike surgical castration, it is reversible when the treatment is discontinued. “Chemical castration requires a systematic use of medication. There’s no mechanism that would help to monitor whether the criminal regularly takes it,” MP Irina Manuilova observed. As lawmakers are racking their brains striving to find a solution to the problem and parents are living in fear for their children, the statistics regarding sexual crimes against children continues to rise. This month, 8-year-old Vasilisa Galitsyna was kidnapped and allegedly raped and killed in Russia’s Tatarstan. In Chechnya, 10-year old Linda Vidryaeva was allegedly raped and strangled. Police in Irkutsk region are searching for man who could be behind the alleged murder of 11-year-old Ulyana Alexeeva, whose body was found in a sandpit earlier last week.