Drug Castration ‘Success’ Admits New Sex Crimes

Years after a convicted rapist agreed to undergo “chemical castration” as part of his probation, he has pleaded guilty to new sex crimes and police are investigating him in connection with up to 75 more.

Joseph Frank Smith, who was dubbed the “ski mask rapist” when he was convicted of raping the same woman twice in San Antonio in 1983, agreed to impotence-causing injections as a condition of his probation.

Smith, 45, moved to the Richmond area after his conviction and appeared on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” in 1984 as a success story for chemical castration.

Officials at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, where he commuted for his treatments, said at the time that chemical castration suppressed the sexual appetite of offenders and made it easier to treat them.

Smith’s attorney, John K. Honey Jr., said he does not believe Smith continued his chemical castration treatments for the full 10 years of his probation.

Smith was convicted Wednesday of aggravated sexual battery and two counts of attempted oral and anal sodomy as well as breaking and entering a dwelling in a June 1993 attack.

The truck driver could be sentenced to up to 60 years in prison and given a $200,000 fine at his sentencing Feb. 3.

Authorities believe Smith, 45, is responsible for as many as 75 more sex-related crimes since 1987, said Toby Vick, commonwealth’s attorney in suburban Henrico County.

Honey said Smith was released from Johns Hopkins in the late 1980s after marrying a nurse at the clinic. They were divorced in 1995.