Manuel da Cruz kidnapped Marie-Christine Hodeau while she was jogging near a forest, 30 miles south of Paris, France, last week. She was able to call the police from the trunk of the car and gave them the make and registration of the vehicle. Cruz killed her before police could help (she actually escaped at one point when he stopped to change cars but he caught her again). The articles I read did not say if she was sexually assaulted too; it does not seem like it. The information she provided led to his arrest and the police recovered her body in the forest.

This is the extra kicker: Cruz, a father of four, had been sentenced to 11 years in prison for the kidnap and rape of a 13-year-old girl in early 2000s, but he was released seven years later (and he returned to the same place where his victim lives)!

Rightly so, this case is generating an outcry against the French judicial system.

It’s also generating pressure for the “hardening of a law introduced in 2005 which allows sexual offenders to volunteer for so-called ‘chemical castration’ – the use of anti-hormone treatment to reduce or destroy the sexual appetite.” This is already used in Germany, Belgium, and Denmark.

Last week, the justice minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said that “she would propose a draft law by the end of this month to toughen the existing legislation. She said, however, that chemical castration would remain ‘voluntary.'”

I know very little about this topic, but I’ve found out that chemical castration is reversible and is used to diminish or switch off the libido/sex drive, but that only lasts as long as the treatment. This legislation and mindset suggests that rapists rape because of an uncontrollable sex drive – but aren’t issues like power and control more at play? And if so, will chemical castration really help?

What do you know/think?