NEW ORLEANS — A 78-year-old Louisiana state prisoner was surgically castrated this week at a hospital in Baton Rouge as part of a plea deal in a child molestation case.

The prisoner, Francis Phillip Tullier, was arrested in 1997 and, according to newspaper reports at the time, was facing more than 6,000 counts of aggravated oral sexual battery and molestation of a juvenile. He was accused of repeatedly sexually abusing young girls for more than 20 years, some of whom had been in the care of his wife, a baby sitter.

A grand jury charged him with nine counts and, in 1999, he pleaded guilty to three of them.

As part of Mr. Tullier’s plea, his lawyer, Nathan Fisher said, he agreed to be surgically castrated within six months. Mr. Fisher said that such an extreme action was necessary if victims and prosecutors were to agree to any sentence that would allow Mr. Tullier to leave jail before he died.

“He didn’t put up a big fight, but I had to do some convincing,” Mr. Fisher added.

Mr. Tullier was sentenced to 27 years. The operation was delayed by Mr. Tullier’s health problems, including prostate cancer.

Last October, after 13 years in prison, he was approved for parole under certain conditions. But a judge, declaring that “it’s time to give Caesar what is owed Caesar,” pointed out that Mr. Tullier had not fulfilled all the terms of his plea bargain.

Mr. Tullier, who paid for his castration as part of the agreement, underwent the 10-minute operation on Thursday at the Earl K. Long Medical Center.

“They tell me it’s comparable to having your wisdom teeth pulled,” said Maj. Richie Johnson of the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Mr. Tullier was back in prison recuperating and was scheduled to leave prison next week. He will be registered as a child sexual predator.

Major Johnson said he had not been able to find any other instances of a similar punishment in Louisiana.

In 2008, Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill authorizing judges to order chemical or surgical castration on the first offense of certain sexual crimes, and mandating it on the second offense, but so far there is no record of such a sentence being handed down under the new law, a spokeswoman for Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections said.

Dr. Fred S. Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University, said that surgical castration as a part of a criminal sentence is very unusual these days, now that similar effects can be achieved pharmaceutically as so-called chemical castration. The most recent example he could recall was a voluntary surgical castration in Chicago in 2000.

For a certain subset of sex offenders, Dr. Berlin said, chemical castration can be effective. But a proper psychiatric evaluation is required to determine when and if it is called for, he said.

Surgical castration is not as irreversible as it may seem, he added. Testosterone pills, which can easily be obtained, can overcome the effects of such an operation. 

Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, National, of Saturday, March 5, 2011.