VICTORIA — British Columbia’s children’s minister says she killed a controversial government sex-testing program for young offenders after discovering a chief medical technician who administered the test was recently charged with sexual assault.
Mary Polak said Thursday she was deeply concerned about the use of a testing device called the penile plethysmograph, which was attached to the genitals of young sex offenders.
Under the program, sex offenders as young as 13 were required to look at images of nude and semi-nude children and listen to audio descriptions of forced sex while their physical responses were measured.
Polak said the alleged sexual offence did not involve the chief medical technician’s work with young offenders as part of the Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services program that has been in use for 25 years.
The man, who Polak did not name, was working under a government contract, but his employment ended when the charges became known.
Originally, the government decided to temporarily suspend the sex-testing program pending the outcome of an investigation by B.C.’s independent children’s representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, who originally said she will conduct a review to determine if the tests traumatized any children.
But Turpel-Lafond said she now will conduct a full-blown investigation which will likely involve interviewing the young offenders who were subjected to the sex tests.
“We have to do the due diligence to be assured that there was no concern inside this service,” she said. “Now that I learn that there was an individual responsible for this program charged with a serious sexual offence, I need to probably expand this to an investigation.”
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and Vancouver-based Justice For Girls questioned the program, saying it was primitive and appeared to be a remnant from the 1950s.
“In considering not only the questionable efficacy of the program with respect to youth, and in addition to the revelation that there has been a charge laid against one of the chief medical technicians involved, it was my decision that we ought not to restart the program and rather that the suspension should continue permanently,” Polak said.
She said the program was supposed to help develop treatments for sex offenders, but the questionable nature of the procedure outweighs any possible medical benefits.
“The main emphasis here is that our concern is to ensure that we have these youth being looked after appropriately,” she said. “They are sex offenders, no doubt, but they are also youth, and we have to make sure we’re balancing the need to provide them with appropriate treatment, also though with respect for them as individuals.”
In an earlier interview, Andre Picard, provincial director of Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services, said the penile plethysmograph was one of several effective tools used to study and prevent youth sex crimes.
On Thursday, Picard referred calls to the Children’s Ministry, saying he did not wish to comment on the program or the charges against his co-worker.