Can Castration Be a Solution for Sex Offenders?

"You're 16, you're beautiful and you're mine."

She wasn't even 16. She was 13, and he knew it when he molested her. But he said he didn't think of her as a girl. He just liked the feeling he got when he was with her.

"We would go out to pizza or the movies, and I felt like I was 16 years old again," Jenkins said. "There were times when I felt like she was my peer and I was her peer. It was confusing to me."

In 1989, the girl's parents reported Jenkins to Virginia authorities after her mother found letters Jenkins had written to the girl under her mattress. But the girl denied that there had been sexual contact. Authorities dropped the case.

In 1993, authorities charged Jenkins with molesting an 8-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister in Chincoteague. Jenkins was convicted in October 1994.

He was released on parole in 1999 but two years later was behind bars again after a 10-year-old girl accused him of fondling her at a Fourth of July picnic. He couldn't stop the fantasies.

"I felt trapped, but it was my fault," Jenkins said. "It just really hit me then. I said, 'Man, you have got a problem , and nobody is going to fix it but you."

In prison, Jenkins read all about castration. He asked his prison therapist if the procedure was available but was told it was not an option. That's when he decided to do it himself.

"The day I decided to do it, I felt the need to pray for the strength and courage to do it," Jenkins said. "I prayed all day long, and a peace came over me like I'd never known before."

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When he thinks about it now, he doesn't regret his decision to castrate himself. The thing he said he is most sorry about is what he did to those girls.

"I still feel guilty about my victims, and I wonder about the trauma I have caused them," Jenkins said.

But he still can't face it. When one of his victims testified in court last week, Jenkins stared into the distance while she recounted in a shaky voice the way he made her and her sister play "Mommy and Daddy."

"I remember him telling me and my sister, 'Well, you can't tell anybody because your mommy will get hurt if you do,' " she said.

Then there were the times Jenkins made her 10-year-old sister perform oral sex on him while he drove around in his van, and the time he touched them both while he gave them a bath.

All grown up and a woman now, she glanced briefly at Jenkins. Then she started to cry like a little girl.