EXCLUSIVE DETAILS: Norwegian Queer Activist Who Produced Extreme Genital Mutilation Porn Lodges Appeal for Reduced Sentence

A former queer activist from Norway sentenced to life in prison for launching an extreme body modification website dedicated to streaming “grisly and gruesome” footage of castrations and limb amputations has appealed the length of his sentence. Marius Gustavson, known as the ‘Eunuch Maker’ of London, along with five of his main accomplices, told the Old Bailey that their sentences should be reduced on the basis that their victims had consented to undergo grievous bodily harm.

Gustavson was the ringleader of a “grisly and gruesome” criminal enterprise that sold footage of men being castrated and mutilated as pornographic content. The Eunuch Maker site, which operated on a pay-per-view subscription basis, had amassed over 22,000 registered users and brought in nearly £300,000 before it was shut down by authorities.

Police officers who arrested Gustavson in 2022 discovered the man’s own severed penis kept in a drawer at his home in Haringey, north London, a full four years after he’d had his appendage amputated. During court proceedings, it was further revealed that Gustavson had cooked the testicles of one of his victims, which he ate in a salad.

Marius Gustavson, leader of an international castration pornography ring. Photo: Met Police

On February 27, Gustavson and four of his accomplices appealed their sentences. The verdict is expected next month.

Apart from Gustavson, the four other men involved had received jail terms ranging from 3 years to 12 years for their role in the plot, and have similarly filed an appeal for a reduction in their sentences. The men are named as Jacob Crimi-Appleby, David Carruthers, Ashley Williams, and Damien Brynes.

Byrnes, 37, from north London, was handed a five-year sentence for removing Gustavson’s penis with a kitchen knife on video at his home in February 2017. Crimi-Appleby, 24, a former nurse from Epsom in Surrey, was jailed for three years and eight months for using his access to medical supplies in order to freeze Gustavson’s leg, leading to the need for it to be amputated in February 2019. Carruthers, 62, and Williams, 33, of Newport, Gwent, were jailed for 11 years and four years, six months respectively.

Of the six other men who have previously appeared in court and admitted their roles in the body modification fetish group, the majority were involved in the medical profession. Among them were Peter Wates, a retired former member of the Royal Society of Chemists, and Janus Atkin, who was training to become a veterinarian.

In addition to Crimi-Appleby and Brynes, Nathaniel Arnold, 47, was also a former nurse and had assisted Gustavson with removing some of his own body parts. Arnold, who has not joined the appeal, facilitated the partial removal of one of Gustavson’s nipples. Arnold also admitted stealing lidocaine while working as nurse at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital between January 2016 and January 2022, and possession of extreme pornographic images.

Brynes, Arnold, and Crimi-Appleby have all admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Shockingly, a video presented in court showed Byrnes cutting off Gustavson’s penis with a kitchen knife, while joking, “Well, that’s one off the bucket list.”

Barristers for the men argue that the sentencing guidelines used to determine how long they should be jailed for did not adequately account for the fact that the men they butchered had consented to the illicit medical procedures.

Representing Gustavson, Julia Smart KC told the Old Bailey court in London: “That is our primary submission, that the sentencing guidelines are not designed to deal with this situation.”

Yet prosecutor Caroline Carberry KC argued, “We really can’t lose sight of what is part of this unprecedented offending. It is a business described by one of the victims as a ‘cult’, or something that became a cult… It was busy and profitable in the niche and wholly unlawful process of extreme body modifications by way of unsafe backstreet surgeries performed by unqualified individuals.”

Reduxx has spoken with one of Gustavson’s victims, who has chosen to remain anonymous. He explained that Gustavson had employed methods of psychological manipulation, including a hierarchical rewards system that “made it feel like a game.”

Men who had undergone a verified genital mutilation – whether removal of testicles, penis, or both – or limb amputation were awarded a profile badge that increased their status, and thus their respect, within the online community.

Separately, Gustavson also pleaded guilty to making and distributing two indecent videos of a child between January 2017 and January 2020. The anonymous source involved in the court case recalled the “wave of revulsion” he felt after an officer told him that among the sadomasochistic pornography found on Gustavson’s devices, there were also depictions of child sexual abuse.

Still from a surgical pornography video created by Gustavson and his team which depicts graphic genital mutilation.

As previously reported by Reduxx, the anonymous man who came forward presented a horrifying victim impact statement to the Old Bailey, wherein he described being strapped down and administered testosterone blockers by Gustavson. The hormone inhibitors, he said, had the effect of altering his brain chemistry in a manner which made him “more pliable to manipulation” in the period leading up to the surgical sexual abuse.

“When I hear that people consented to these procedures I wonder what definition of consent they are going with, because I sure as hell did not consent to what happened to me that drug-fueled night,” the victim said. “I would never have volunteered for castration by burdizzo.”

The victim added that he felt the sentences had been fair, and has voiced his opposition to any reductions.

“I think the original judge was very fair in his sentencing of the offenders and has already given them ample discount for the consent aspect of their crimes, an aspect I still question and doubt as I certainly did not consent to what transpired on that grisly day,” he said.

Reduxx has located various social media accounts belonging to Gustavson. He has used the handles @nullotheo, @ampunullotheo, @chubtheo, and @theo-eunuchmaker. His accounts on X were followed by men who identified as transgender, as well as those involved in chastity fetishism, eunuchdom, and nullification. On one account, he displayed a stylized “non-binary” pride flag in his header.

Reduxx also independently located a blog belonging to one of his victims. The young man appeared to be proud that he had undergone the procedure and posed with a jar containing his severed testicles, while advertising videos of the surgery for a mere $20.

Last May, Gustavon and six other men involved in the network were convicted on multiple charges relating to grievous bodily harm (GBH), which in criminal law refers to the most serious form of assault, involving the intentional or reckless infliction of serious bodily harm, potentially leading to permanent disfigurement, long-term disability, or even death.

Gustavson, who was personally involved in at least 30 procedures between 2017 and 2021 before he was arrested, received a life sentence with a minimum term of 22 years. When handing down the sentence, Judge Mark Lucraft said Gustavson had been the mastermind of a “large-scale,” “gruesome and grisly,” and “extremely dangerous” enterprise, which the judge described as “human butchery.”

Judge Lucraft said he was “entirely satisfied” that the motivation “was a mix of sexual gratification as well as financial reward.”

The men involved in the scheme used a variety of tools, including clamps used for animal castration. Gustavson auctioned off body parts online through his website, eunuchmaker.co.uk, where he also sold graphic videos of castrations and amputations. Registered in 2016, it offered the option of paid monthly memberships for streaming videos of penectomies. Premium subscriptions included the option of a “free castration performed by the EunuchMaker.”

A registration form on the site listed possible “gender identities” based on sadomasochistic criteria. Among them were eunuch, nullo (nullification), and cutter, a euphemism for a person who performs male genital modification surgeries.

Gustavson also offered to sell the severed penis of one of his victims for hundreds of pounds, with approimately 22,000 subscribers paying to access videos on the Eunuch Maker website. A VIP, full-access membership cost £100.

The Eunuch Maker site drew international participation. In Berlin, a ring of amateur surgeons who castrate men for sexual gratification were involved with the enterprise. One German man associated with Gustavson claimed that he castrated, or partially amputated the genitals of, eight men between July 2018 and March 2020, while on trial in 2021 for murder after one of his victims died.

One of several sites owned by Gustavson is cited in criminal charges filed October 21, 2020, in the U.S. state of Oklahoma against two men who participated in fetishistic genital surgeries. After leaving a man “open” to die after an operation, Bobby Lee Allen and his partner Thomas Evan Gates were charged with conspiracy to commit an unlicensed surgery, maiming, and failure to bury a dead human member, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

In another grisly case involving Gustavson’s forum, an elderly Florida man was sentenced to three years in prison following a bloody botched home castration he performed and recorded on camera, apparently intending to broadcast the footage through the Eunuch Maker site. Gary Van Ryswyk, 76, performed the genital surgery in August 2019 on a male victim, then aged 53.

Prior to relocating to London and launching his twisted scheme, Gustavson was Chairman of the Board for the Buskerud chapter of transactivist lobbying group The Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity, now known as FRI. Gustavson was involved in a leadership position at the organization from 2001 through 2007. During this time, FRI went by the name ‘The National Association for Lesbian and Gay Liberation,’ or LLH.

In 2018, The Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity (FRI) successfully lobbied the World Health Organization to officially depathologize fetishism, sadomasochism, and fetishistic transvestitism by removing them from the 11th revision of the International Classifications of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11).

According to Gustavon’s LinkedIn profile, he was a volunteer and Senior Steward for London’s Pride organization between 2016 to 2019.

Reduxx is your source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% independent! Support our mission by making a donation.