Former Church of England Canon Geoffrey Baulcomb jailed for three years for GBH for cutting tip of man's penis with scissors

A former Church of England Canon has been jailed for three years after he was convicted of GBH after he used nail scissors to cut into the tip of another man's penis.

Geoffrey Baulcomb, 79, (above) from Eastbourne, caused injuries to the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to the level that could not have been consented to in January 2020.

This was even though the victim had consented the mutilation and it being filmed on a mobile telephone.

A nine-second video of him Baulcomb using nail scissors to perform the procedure was found by police on his mobile phone.

Baulcomb was part of an extreme body modification ring run by Norwegian national Marius Gustavson, 47, who called himself the Eunuch Maker, the Old Bailey heard.

Gustavson was jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years last year after a court heard he made almost £300,000 through his website, where thousands of users paid to watch procedures, including castrations.

Baulcomb pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent in connection with the proceedure.

He also admitted seven other charges, including possessing extreme pornography and making and distributing images of children on or before 14 December 2022.

Prosecutors said some of the material included moving images which had been on the eunuch maker website, run by 47-year-old Norwegian national Marius Gustavson (below).

Gustavson was jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years last year after a court heard he made almost £300,000 through his eunuch maker website, where thousands of users paid to watch illegal backroom procedures, including castrations.

Baulcomb, who was formerly the Vicar of St Mary the Virgin Church in Eastbourne, was said to have been an "acquaintance" of Gustavson, and the pair exchanged more than 10,000 messages with each other over a four-year period.

He retired from full-time ministry in the Church of England in 2003.

But, he applied for "permission to officiate" at church services during retirement, when he moved to Sussex the following year.

Baulcomb was later banned for life from exercising his Holy Orders following a tribunal last year, which heard he was issued with a caution after police found crystal meth and ketamine at his home in December 2022.

He had claimed experimenting with drugs or allowing his home in Eastbourne to be used for drug taking would "better enable him to relate and minister to people with difficulties as part of his pastoral care".

The diocese said the Bishop of Chichester immediately removed his permission to officiate after being contacted by police, and bail conditions prevented him from attending church or entering Church of England premises.

The Old Bailey heard last year that extreme body modification is linked to a subculture where men become "nullos", short for genital nullification, by having their penis and testicles removed.

Gustavson and nine other men have previously admitted their involvement in the eunuch maker ring, which one victim said had a "cult-like" atmosphere.

The life-changing surgeries, described as "little short of human butchery" by the sentencing judge, The Recorder of London Mark Lucraft, were carried out by people with no medical qualifications, who he had recruited.

Prosecutors said there was "clear evidence of cannibalism" as Gustavson - who had his own penis and nipple removed and leg frozen so it needed to be amputated - cooked testicles to eat in a salad.

Gustavson, who was said to have been involved in almost 30 procedures, pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm between 2016 and 2022.

In sentencing Baulcomb Judge Lucraft said: "In terms of your role, you undertook the procedure and did so in conditions far from being sterile and you are someone without any medical skills or training. In considering harm, in my judgment the activity here is either at the low end of category 2 or at the top of category 3. The procedure and the resulting injury is one that is serious. It is a permanent and irreversible procedure and may have long-term effects on the victim with risks of infection and the ability to urinate.

"When interviewed for the (pre-sentence) report you sought to distance yourself from what you had done and to downplay the significance of your offending or the vulnerability of those who had had procedures carried out on them.