Justice politician, Jan Arild Ellingsen of FRP, believes all measures must be discussed in the fight against child abuse, including chemical castration.
Ellingsen took up the theme in Dagsnytt 18 NRK news in the wake of the investigation into cases of attack which have left Bergen reeling.
‘We mustn’t place restrictions on what measures we are permitted to talk about when it comes to child molesting. Therefore, we must also discuss chemical castration. The most important thing is to protect children’, said Ellingsen.
Psychological specialist, Svein Øverland, warned against believing that hormone therapy alone will always stop an abuser. Øverland is one involved in a pilot project in which abusers voluntarily receive hormone therapy to eliminate craving.
‘Getting an abuser to stop abusing is a process that must take place in the prison, but also after the individual is set free. It is necessary to gain more resources put toward this work’, he said.
Øverland said that there is disagreement in the scientific community about whether hormone therapy is the way forward, and researchers in the field diverge on the issue.
Specialist in the field of clinical psychology and sexology, Thore Langfeldt, is among those who have been critical of the chemical castration method, wrote the publication, ‘Manager’.
He pointed out that anabolic steroids nullify the effect of available hormone preparations, and they are readily available.
‘Then you would not have accomplished anything’, said Langfeldt in 2014.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today