Canadian ‘peter meter’ youth program halted; tester charged with sexual assault |
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Canada has had a long, hard fixation with catching people getting aroused over things Canadian “experts” consider mental illnesses. One program in the mid-20th century, nicknamed the “fruit machine,” led to over 9,000 Canadian citizens being investigated as suspected homosexuals, with some even being tested and drummed out of government jobs.
In the wake of the fruit machine program, the fine folks at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) developed and still promote penile plethysmography (PPG). The device, nicknamed a peter meter, is supposedly a lie detector for male genitalia. It’s not admissible in court cases as evidence for the same reason as a polygraph: the data can be manipulated by both subject and tester, and there’s little standardization in equipment or stimuli.
Late last month, Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services in Burnaby, British Columbia was forced to shut down a decades-old program where troubled youths had a device placed on their penises while they were subjected to media depicting stuff like rape and child pornography. The final straw was when one of the test administrators was arrested for a sexual assault allegedly committed during leisure time. Read about the whole sordid story and the CAMH connection below.
Canadian ‘peter meter’ youth program halted; tester charged with sexual assault
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/16/canadian-peter-meter.html
