News
2006-08-22
Ramsey suspect
visited Thai sex-change clinic
With its large,
open transgender population, Bangkok, Thailand, is a
haven for foreigners in search of acceptance and gender
With its large,
open transgender population, Bangkok, Thailand, is a
haven for foreigners in search of acceptance and gender
reassignment surgery at a cheap price. The latest to
reportedly inquire about a sex-change operation was
John Mark Karr, the American schoolteacher who says he
killed 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey in 1996.
Karr, 41, had a consultation at the downtown
Pratunam Polyclinic, according to Thep Vechavisit, one
of the doctors there. He declined to provide
additional details but confirmed Sunday that Karr was "one
of my patients."
A staffer at the dingy clinic said Karr had
talked with the doctor about sex-change surgery. She
declined to give her name because she was not
authorized to speak to the media.
The clinic, which cosponsors a popular
transsexual beauty contest, specializes in sex-change
operations and advertises a large menu of plastic
surgery procedures in the English-language Bangkok Post.
Breast implants cost $1,125, liposuction costs
$625, and sex-change surgery is $1,625, a bargain
compared with U.S. prices, where male-to-female
reassignment surgery typically runs in the tens of
thousands of dollars. Thep said mostly Thais and other
Asians, especially Vietnamese and Japanese, came to
him for gender reassignment surgery. Occasionally he
also gets foreigners from America or Europe.
He said he performs about one sex-change surgery
a week. Each procedure takes about two to three hours,
and patients are typically able to return to their
hotels a day after the operation. He said most patients have
been living as women, dressing and taking hormones for years
before appearing at the Bangkok clinic.
His cramped office is stuffed with boxes of
papers and photos of before-and-after breast
enlargement, the most sought-after procedure. He has
been performing sex-change surgeries for 10 of the 20 years
he has worked as a plastic surgeon.
"I'm pretty popular," he admitted Sunday. (AP)
Click here to follow The Advocate on Twitter.
Page 1 of 1