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Men sentenced for running castration 'dungeon'
WAYNESVILLE, North Carolina (AP) -- Three men, including a former Topeka resident, accused of operating what police described as a sadomasochistic "dungeon" that included castrations have been sentenced to jail time.
Richard Peter "Master Rick" Sciara, his partner of 20 years Michael Mendez, and the man they called their slave, Danny Carroll Reeves, pleaded guilty to felony castration and maiming.
Sciara had worked as a physician's assistant at the Colmery-O'Neil VA Medical Center in Topeka from February 1976 to June 1999.
Superior Court Judge Dennis Winner said it was difficult to call the dungeon's willing patients "victims," but he said six castrations performed there were certainly a crime.
"I think this is a type of perversion that cannot be tolerated by society," Winner said during a sentencing hearing Thursday.
In plea bargains, Sciara, 62, was sentenced to a year in prison, though he has served all but two weeks of that time. Reeves, 50, was sentenced to eight months in prison, and Mendez, 61, received four months. Reeves and Mendez have already served their sentences and will enter four and two months of house arrest, respectively, and three years of supervised probation.
In exchange for the pleas, the state dropped charges of misdemeanor practicing medicine without a license and conspiracy.
Prosecutors said the men ran a sadomasochistic "dungeon" fashioned from an enclosed carport in 2004 and 2005 at a house in a quiet neighborhood near Waynesville in western North Carolina. Six men, some from as far away as South America, came to the home for castration, while others went seeking other types of body-modification surgery, prosecutors said.
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