Gary Gillingwater said he was only trying to help. That's why he only charged $100.

Instead, the 57-year-old man's experiment with castration surgery ended with a guilty plea in Provincial Court yesterday. He pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully causing bodily harm, and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.

Mr. Gillingwater, of Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask., faced the charge after removing the testicles of a man in a surgical procedure at a Fort Qu'Appelle hotel on May 11. Mr. Gillingwater, who corresponded with the man through Internet messages, had no medical experience, apart from castrating cattle, horses and pigs on the family farm when he was a boy, he told the court.

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In a presentencing hearing, Mr. Gillingwater's lawyer told Judge Ken Bellerose that the man seeking the operation was in a desperate psychological state. He turned to Mr. Gillingwater for the medical procedure because he felt he had no other option.

"Mr. Gillingwater is a bright, articulate man who was trying to help someone out," his lawyer, Pat Reis, told court.

The man on whom Mr. Gillingwater performed the surgery can't be named or otherwise identified because of a court order.

Crown prosecutor Lane Wiegers said the two met through a Florida-based Web site dedicated to the topic of human castration. The man asked on the site's bulletin board whether anyone in Western Canada could remove a person's testicles, and was directed to Mr. Gillingwater.

The Fort Qu'Appelle resident billed himself as "TopDog" and "CutterCanada" on the Web site and said he had been doing human castrations since 1975.

In fact, Mr. Gillingwater had never done the procedure.

He told court that, in addition to his farm experience, he studied how to surgically remove a man's testicles on the Internet.

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"There's a lot of stuff out there," he said. "You'd be surprised."

On the night of May 11, Mr. Gillingwater removed the man's testicles in an hourlong operation, done without any anesthetic.

Mr. Gillingwater said the man's testicles appeared scarred and damaged. The man had made previous attempts to remove those parts of his body, Mr. Gillingwater told the court.

After the operation the man started to bleed profusely from his groin.

"If he hadn't been taken to hospital, the man would have bled to death after the surgery," Mr. Wiegers told the court.

When Fort Qu'Appelle RCMP seized Mr. Gillingwater's computer during the investigation, they found hundreds of e-mails from across North America and Europe addressed to Mr. Gillingwater's aliases, the Crown prosecutor added.

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"Many of those people wanted such a person's services because it is a long process to undergo a complete sex change," Mr. Wiegers added.

However, Mr. Gillingwater e-mailed them back saying he was no longer doing the surgery, Mr. Reis told court.