It is difficult to imagine a more fatal situation than the one in which surgeon Michael K. put himself and two of his patients in early 2016. In March of that year, a then 17-year-old underwent groin surgery in a Munich clinic. In addition, K. sterilized the young man. After the procedure, the surgeon realized with dismay that he had mistaken the young man for another patient. His surgery was due four weeks later. Michael K. also operated on him for a hernia and he also sterilized him – allegedly because the then 24-year-old and his parents wanted it that way. However, K. did not have written consent for the young man’s vasectomy.
But not only that. The two young men are autistic. After the operation, the mother of the 17-year-old had the suspicion that Michael K. had sterilized her son because of his developmental disorder. Because when K. admitted his serious mistake to her, he is said to have asked her if she ever wanted to raise her son’s children.
This Thursday, the 20th Criminal Chamber at the Munich I District Court sentenced the 53-year-old doctor to a year’s imprisonment on probation, among other things, for serious and attempted serious bodily harm. The parents of the 24-year-old at the time of the surgery also had to answer for themselves in the process. They were accused of having asked Michael K. to sterilize their son as part of the groin surgery. The chamber, chaired by judge Matthias Braumandl, imposed nine months’ probation on each of them for inciting serious bodily harm.
In its verdict, the court emphasized that “definitely none of the three accused acted with criminal energy”, but rather with the “consciousness that they were not doing anything wrong”. According to Judge Braumandl, neither Michael K. nor the accused parents, who are employed as carers for their now 31-year-old son, are close to the “NS racial ideology”.
At the start of the trial two weeks ago, the mother of the 31-year-old protested during her interrogation that her son had repeatedly stated in conversations with her and her husband that he did not want to start a family later. “I can’t do that. I have enough to do with myself,” he is said to have said. Nevertheless, Michael K. had no written consent from the then 24-year-old for the procedure. Even though his parents are the legal guardians, they shouldn’t have advocated having their son sterilized. Moreover, the conditions for approving sterilization were “far from being met,” said Judge Braumandl. Michael K. had a “special duty” to deal with the situation by informing his patient and his parents.
On the penultimate day of the hearing, a patient turns out not to be infertile after all
The chairman described the conversation with the mother, whose son was sterilized by K. because he had mistaken him, as a “communication disaster”. In fact, K. not only immediately admitted his serious mistake, but also campaigned for the vasectomy to be reversed in a clinic in Ingolstadt. In their indictment, the public prosecutor’s office assumed that the then 17-year-old was also permanently incapable of fathering. However, it was only on the penultimate day of negotiations that it turned out that this was obviously not the case. In the meantime, K.’s former patient “cannot be excluded” is probably the father of a child, said the representative of the public prosecutor’s office on the sidelines of the hearing. For this reason, the Chamber only convicted K. of attempted grievous bodily harm in this case.
In addition to the sentence imposed, the court ordered the surgeon to attend a training course on “medical information and consent” and to pay a sum of 10,000 euros to “Aktion Mensch”. The parents who persuaded K. to also sterilize their son during the groin surgery were also required to do further training. Topic: “The rights and duties of voluntary supervisors”.