[CrimsonTide4]

Fake doctor charged in castration case
Tuesday, October 7, 2003 Posted: 10:17 AM EDT (1417 GMT)

McKEESPORT, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A man who police say posed as a doctor and castrated a transgendered woman at her request was ordered Monday to stand trial for aggravated assault.

Doug Lenhart, 48, also is charged with reckless endangerment and unauthorized practice of medicine and surgery. No trial date was set, and Lenhart was free on $25,000 bond.

Catherine Watson, 45, told a district court judge at a preliminary hearing that she nearly bled to death from the September 12 procedure, which was done on the dining room table of her McKeesport home in suburban Pittsburgh. She had to be hospitalized.

Asked by Justice Thomas Brletic if she wanted to see Lenhart prosecuted, a weeping Watson didn't answer directly.


"I don't want him to do this again. ... I don't think he's capable," she said.

Allegheny County prosecutor Shanicka Kennedy said Watson's wishes were irrelevant because the state was prosecuting.

Watson testified that she is a transgendered woman who became "Catherine" when she was 6. She found Lenhart through the Internet and agreed to pay him $800. He told her he was a doctor, but not licensed in Pennsylvania, and had performed 23 other castrations, she said.

Police say Lenhart has no medical license. His attorney, James Waymard, said Lenhart had "some experience in this area" and said he felt Lenhart was qualified to perform the procedure.

Watson said she was awake throughout the procedure and in "horrible pain." She said she believed she was bleeding internally, and a friend called an ambulance.

In April, a man was convicted in Pontiac, Michigan, of practicing medicine without a license for performing a castration in his kitchen. He was sentenced to 14 months to four years in prison.

Prosecutors said the man underwent the castration to curb his sex drive because he had a sexually transmitted disease.