A Melbourne man committed suicide after a backyard “sex change” operation to remove his testicles went horrifically wrong.
The botched procedure was carried out in a residential home by an uncertified “surgeon” with no medical training in October 2019, but the individual responsible has never been investigated by police, the Herald Sun reported.
The 24-year-old man, who claimed to be “transgender“, found the unqualified operator online and was made to lie on a tarp on a bed during the illegal orchiectomy, which resulted in excessive blood loss.
He was rushed to Casey Hospital, but despite telling staff that his injuries were suffered as a result of an unlawful genital removal operation, the information was not referred to police.
The maimed man killed himself 18 months later, using a drug bought from an Australian chemical company, and his death is being investigated along with five others by the Victorian coroner.
Cecilia Jones, a friend of the man, said a vet would have been better qualified to attempt the procedure, but he used the rogue surgeon out of desperation, while his mother Rachel Byrne called on police to find the “vile excuse of a human being who attacked and maimed my child”.
“The exploitation of an extremely vulnerable person is something I cannot understand. How could a human being do this to another and have no consequences?” Ms Byrne said.
Pro-LGBT organisations have seized upon the case to demand the removal of barriers to taxpayer-funded “sex change” surgeries.
Far-left advocacy group Transgender Victoria told the inquest “genital surgery can be difficult or impossible to obtain in Victoria or Australia” and said it was necessary to prevent the deaths of people who claim to be transgender, who have among the highest rates of suicide in Australia.
“A trans or gender diverse person will often delay affirming their gender until living in their birth gender becomes intolerable. This often manifests in a strong feeling that their options are to affirm their gender or suicide,” it submitted to the inquest.
However, an April 2024 study by researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch found that the opposite was true, and that patients who have had so-called gender-affirming surgery have a much higher risk of suicide.
“The results of this study indicate that patients who have undergone gender affirmation surgery are associated with significantly higher risks of suicide, self-harm, and PTSD compared to general population control groups in this real-world database,” the authors concluded.
“With suicide being one of the most common causes of death for adolescent and middle-aged individuals, it is clear that we must work to prevent these unfortunate outcomes. This further reinforces the need for comprehensive psychiatric care in the years that follow gender-affirmation surgery.”
