A 76-year-old man will spend three years in prison after pleading no contest to the unlicensed practice of a health care profession resulting in serious bodily injury after he performed a botched castration on a man he met on a eunuch website. Gary Van Ryswyk signed a plea agreement to avoid the maximum 15-year sentence and will begin his time in state prison later this year.
- The surgery performed on the 55-year-old man took place in August 2019. The prosecution’s case file revealed that Van Ryswyk had an amateur surgery setup in his home in Sebring, Florida. When police received a 911 hangup call from the property, they turned up to the house, where Van Ryswyk revealed he’d just performed a castration.
- The victim was in serious trouble. When police arrived, the man was in a back bedroom where he was not only bleeding uncontrollably but “holding a bloody towel to his groin region.” Beside the bed on top of a table, his testicles sat in a pink container.
- There was blood everywhere. Gruesome crime scene photos show blood all over the floor, on a plastic sheet on top of the bed, and all over gauze that was overflowing in a trash can. Van Ryswyk had a dresser set up with tons of bandages, disinfectant wipes, peroxide, antiseptics, and surgical sutures as well.
- Van Ryswyk planned to put video of the operation online. Police noted a Nikon camera on a tripod in the corner of the room on which Van Ryswyk recorded the castration. He planned to upload the footage after the operation was done but police seized the footage during the raid along with many other surgical instruments that were covered in blood.
- He admitted to having a serious fetish. A detective asked Van Ryswyk what the deal was with his insane surgical collection, to which he responded, “I kinda like medical stuff.” Asked if that was a fetish for him, he said, “I suppose you might call them a fetish. I’m kind of a prepper type, you know.”
- The man knew what he was getting into. The victim revealed that he’d met Van Ryswyk on a UK-based Eunuchmaker website and that Van Ryswyk said he’d performed 25 castrations. He later admitted he’d “only done it about four times.” It was a consensual encounter and therefore he did not initially want to press charges.
- Things obviously did not go as well as planned. The victim said that Van Ryswyk told him the procedure would only take 30 to 45 minutes but it was more like three hours and Van Ryswyk couldn’t control the bleeding. In fact, there was so much blood that he couldn’t see well enough to stitch the wound shut. The victim was eventually flown by helicopter to Tampa General Hospital for “life-saving measures.” He told investigators he regretted the surgery and was having suicidal thoughts.
