Inmate's surgery not for sex-change

02.12.04 Herald

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

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 of different reasons and not
necessarily as part of a
series of operations that represent gender
reassignment," he told
Parliament's law and order committee.

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

There was a number of other reasons 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 sentencing in the 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.

- NZPA


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