Edward Bodkin

Edward Bodkin is an American "cutter" (underground surgical practitioner) who was arrested in 1998 after police were tipped off that he was performing and videotaping voluntary human castrations at his home.

The Huntington, Indianapolis county prosecutor charged Bodkin with practising medicine without a licence, a Class C felony that made him eligible for thousands in fines and up to eight years in prison. He ultimately admitted to performing five castrations. On April 12, 1999, Judge Mark McIntosh sentenced Bodkin to four years in jail, with two-and-a-half years suspended and credit for 69 days served. In a prepared statement, Bodkin said:

I felt it prudent to spare the court unnecessary time considerations and graphic details regarding this case. Such details might be repugnant to some and a source of folly for others ... My activities were conducted at the specific request of the parties ... to absolve emotional, psychological or physical needs ... not merely the spurious fancy of some alternate lifestyle.

Background
An only child, Bodkin lived on a farm near Kokomo, Indiana, until he was 10, when the family moved to nearby Russiaville. He developed an interest in castration watching the procedure on livestock on the family farm.

As an adult, Bodkin travelled across the American midwest holding a variety of jobs.

Activities as a cutter
He began advertising his services in the short-lived Ball Club Quarterly magazine, and castrated his "clients" in exchange for their permission to videotape the procedures and their permission to keep the removed testicles, which he kept in jars in his kitchen. The videos were then sold via specialty magazines. Some men claimed that videos of their procedures were distributed without their consent.

According to one source, "'His technique got immeasurably better as he went along.' At first, he used an orange-handled art knife, manicure scissors, a curved needle (known, coincidentally, as a "bodkin"), and rusty needle-nosed pliers. 'It looked like he worked on his car with them,' says investigator Walters. By the last castrations, Bodkin was using surgical equipment purchased from a veterinary supply company - and anaesthetic."

Indeed, several of the surgeries resulted in emergency hospital visits.

While voluntary chemical or surgical castration is legal for repeat sex offenders in certain US states, for individuals undergoing sex reassignment surgery, and for other medical reasons, in otherwise healthy individuals a desire for castration is often viewed as psychotic.