Prison operation not for sex change - Corrections Department

01 December 2004

By DANYA LEVY

An operation performed on career criminal Joanne
Martin while an inmate of
Rimutaka Prison was not a gender reassignment
procedure, the Corrections
Department said today.

The publicly-funded surgery on Martin, a 35-year-old
with 157 convictions
spanning 20 years, was performed in August at
Wellington Hospital and cost
more than $2200.

She was escorted from Upper Hutt's Rimutaka Prison
by prison staff and
underwent a bilateral orchidectomy the removal of
the testicles.

However, the Corrections Department had been advised
that Martin's operation
was not part of a gender reassignment procedure,
public prisons general
manager Phil McCarthy said.

"The operation that Joanne underwent can be done. .
.for a number for
different reasons and not necessarily as part of a
series of operations that
represent gender reassignment," he told Parliament's
law and order committee
today.

Corrections Department policy was to provide
services that any member of the
public would be entitled to.

"If a doctor, a surgeon, a hospital says an inmate
is required for an
appointment at this time and this place, then it's
our responsibility to get
them there."

The only exception to the policy was that a
sentenced inmate was not to be
released for gender reassignment operations, Mr
McCarthy said.

"In my understanding, in this case, our policies
were complied with."

Department health officers had liaised with the
hospital and were aware of
Martin's background and the reason for the
operation, he said.

"They had formed on the basis of that information,
and I think correctly,
the view that the operation was permissible."

"The surgeon indicated why the operation was to be
conducted. The reason
behind the procedure was not related to gender
reassignment."

There was a number of other reasons why the
operation could be conducted
including to mitigate natural hormones and drug
side-effects, and cancer, Mr
McCarthy said.

The decision was made by a specialist and the
department didn't "second
guess medical judgments".

"It's all a fundamental human rights issue."

Martin has 87 burglary convictions. In 1988 she
stabbed a security guard who
confronted her with a screwdriver, leaving him for
dead.

Since 2000 she has been freed twice, and both times
has reoffended within
days.

She appeared for sentence in Wellington District
Court last month on three
burglary charges for which she was given a
four-month reprieve, sentencing
being put off until March next year.

© Fairfax New Zealand Limited 2004.