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Florida man arrested after in-home castration goes wrong

The man told a deputy he had just performed a castration on a man and encountered ‘major issues.’ Deputies found a victim on a bed, bleeding heavily, with a towel over his groin.

In the latest installment of near-unimaginable Florida news, a 74-year-old Sebring man has been arrested for allegedly performing a botched castration surgery on another man he’d met online through a fetish website, deputies said Tuesday.

Gary Van Ryswyk was charged with the second-degree felony of practicing medicine without a license resulting in bodily injury, deputies said.

According to an arrest affidavit, deputies arrived at Van Ryswyk’s house in Central Florida just before midnight on Sunday in response to a 911 hang-up call.

Upon arrival, Van Ryswyk admitted to deputies he had just removed the testicles of a man he’d met on “a website for those that have a fetish for castration," and, that, it didn’t go as planned.

In the man’s guest bedroom, deputies said they found a 53-year-old man with a bloody towel on his groin.

Another section of the house was set up as a “makeshift surgical room,” deputies said, with medical equipment and even a camera to record the procedure.

The victim was flown to a nearby hospital for ‘life-saving measures,’ deputies said, and is currently in stable condition.

Using painkillers he’d purchased online from England, as well as forceps and scalpels he’d acquired, Van Ryswyk said he began the procedure on Sunday around 10 p.m., but the victim’s uncontrollable bleeding made it difficult for him to close the wound.

Van Ryswyk confessed to deputies that he performed a similar operation — with a similar disastrous fate — several years ago in a motel.

Van Ryswyk was arrested Monday and is now being held in jail on a $250,000 bond.