Man Pleads Guilty in Botched-Sex-Change Case

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A former church minister and Boy Scout leader who cut off another man's genitals in a makeshift gender reassignment surgery (search) in a hotel room pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license.

Jack Wayne Rogers, 59, of Fulton, Mo., admitted on Friday he performed the grisly operation about two years ago.

Circuit Judge Gary Oxenhandler followed the recommendation of prosecutors, sentencing Rogers to 17 years in prison for assault and seven years for the illegal surgery.

The prison time is to run concurrently with a 30-year sentence handed to Rogers in April after he pleaded guilty to child pornography and obscenity charges.

Rogers promised Michael Abercrombie he'd remove his genitals in a four-hour operation. That time passed, complications developed and bleeding refused to stop.

Abercrombie, now known as Madison, says she didn't feel like a victim at first, but changed her mind after prosecutors presented her Rogers' checkered criminal history, peppered with allegations of cannibalism and a pornography collection that included photographs of severed genitals.

"I didn't know his motivation when I went into it," she said. "I was under a lot of emotional stress, and it seemed like there was no alternative."

Abercrombie, a nursing student, must undergo additional surgeries to complete her gender reassignment.

Valerie Leftwich, Rogers' public defender, said she advised her client to plead guilty to avoid further prison time.

"He is getting concurrent time," she said. "If he had gone to trial, he very well could have gotten consecutive time."

Rogers was sent to prison for four months in 1992 on federal child pornography charges. He is still being investigated in the torture and killing of a Skidmore man.

Branson Kayne Perry, 20, disappeared in April 2001. A police search of Rogers' property turned up a necklace belonging to the man.

Rogers has denied killing Perry and has not been charged.