Alan Turing

Alan Turing was a mathematical genius and cryptographer. He was also reported to have thought up an imaginary computer. While attempting to crack a Nazi code during World War II, he ended up actually building one. Not a small feat by any means and his work helped to defeat the Allies.

Now here's where this becomes a horror story. In January 1952, Turing was openly homosexual when homosexuality at that time was considered either a crime or mental illness. Picking up a young man one night, he took him home. The young man burgled Turing's home and when Turing went to the police station to report it, he was arrested for homosexuality which was then illegal in England. He was tried and convicted and given the choice of two sentences; two years in prison or chemical castration.

He chose chemical castration. He was to receive hormone injections once a year to render him impotent, which it did and caused humiliating anguish. It caused his body to bloat and as he told one of his friends in horror,"Look at me! I've grown breasts!

Two years later, Turing committed suicide by biting into a cyanide covered apple.   No doubt the treatment he was subjected to was enough to cause the despair which would lead him to take his own life. 

Because he was homosexual, this genius of a man who was brilliant enough to build one of the world's first computers, a leader in artificial intelligence, was forced to undergo a horrible fate. One that he could not live with. The story is tragic in the extreme.

But it brings up an interesting point. What if all rapists and child molesters were given this treatment? Even though they would have no sexual desire, would they still be able to hurt someone, if only with their hands? Would they still have the need? And if this was implemented, would it help solve the extreme over crowding in prisons? Would this be the answer to terrible problem of killers, rapists and molesters being set free over and over to commit their atrocities on yet another victim? Is it barbaric to consider such a thing in this day and age? Or is it a fitting justice for the victims of such crimes?

Alan Turing was a lot of things; eccentric, brilliant and openly gay but he not a killer. He was not a rapist and he was not a child molester. He was a homosexual.

Therein lies the difference...