Oslo - Norwegian authorities have authorised "chemical castration" - through a drug that kills off a man's sex drive - for four convicted sex offenders, who have agreed to undergo the procedure, psychologists said on Tuesday.
"Four male prisoners, all convicted of rape and sexual abuse, have volunteered and have been cleared to received the treatment", psychologist Jim Aage Noettestad said.
All four are serving long prison terms, the duration of which will not be affected by the chemical treatment, which will be administered in a prison in Trondheim, northern Norway.
The four men have, for up to six months, participated in cognitive therapy, which aims to clarify how certain patterns of thought provoke certain symptoms.
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'Ten percent of the released prisoners who have been sentenced for sexual crimes commit new ones' The medicine given is leuprolein, which blocks the production of the male hormone testosterone to a level of castration.
"In Norway, ten percent of the released prisoners who have been sentenced for sexual crimes commit new ones," said Noettestad, who is chief psychologist for the Boeler Regional Security Department in Trondheim.
The men will have to keep taking the medicine, since the effect wears off after some time, he said.
Geir Haarstad, 40 years old and one of the four to undergo chemical castration, told Norwegian daily Dagbladet: "I understand that I have to go through a treatment to discover what my problem is."
Haarstad was sentenced in March to 21 years of confinement, after sexually abusing his 11-year old stepdaughter and strangling her.
Haarstad committed the crime after being released from prison where he had served a sentence for killing his girlfriend when she refused to have sex with him.
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