ZWOLLE, 30/08/08 - The Regional Disciplinary Council for Healthcare in Zwolle has produced a positive verdict on a clinic that treated a sexual offender by allowing a therapist to have sex with him.

The sexual offender involved had complained to the council against the psychiatrist and the psychologist who thought up the experiment. He felt humiliated by having sex with the therapist. According to the council, it was however a question of "careful medical-scientific research."

The 30 year old man was treated in the Pompe clinic, a so-called TBS clinic - for serious criminals regarded as non compos mentis by courts. He was held there for a serious sexual offence.

In 1998 and 1999, the man agreed to an alternative treatment method, under which he was given sexual treatment under supervision. The man claims he has now suffered irreparable psychological damage from this.

A therapist hired by the clinic had contact 10 to 20 times with the man. They both lay naked and masturbated.

The psychiatrist who devised the experiment was at the time the clinic's head therapist. The Regional Disciplinary Council concludes that the method according to present knowledge shows "deficiencies." But the psychiatrist is not subject to any disciplinary blame, according to the council.

The method was also applied to other sexual offenders between 1995 and 1999. The clinic stopped the experiment in 1999 after one of the 'treated' TBS patients, once back in society, again committed a sexual offence.