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Emotional Fallout

Jere Longman
New York Times
February 2004

As described in the book "Faust's Gold," (St. Martin's Press, 2001) written by an American psychologist, Dr. Steven Ungerleider, Andreas (Krieger) had a dramatic encounter with the presiding judge. First, Andreas presented a wrinkled photograph of himself as Heidi. Then he said of the East German officials, "They just used me like a machine."He described hating his body, and spoke of a mind "crazy with panic," filled with thoughts of suicide. He told of the sex change procedure, and in a moment of brutal poignancy, said of his mother, "She says no matter who I am, boy or girl, she will always love me."Ewald and Hoppner were both convicted of accessory to the intentional bodily harm of athletes and were given probation. Upon testifying, Andreas said he lost his fear of the two men. And he got some confirmation of his beliefs from the verdicts. "The words used in court were that the giving of relatively high doses of Oral Turinabol to a girl around puberty has significantly contributed to development into transsexuality,"said Dr. Werner Franke, the molecular biologist whose research into the East German doping system formed the basis of the criminal prosecutions.  Although the complex decision to have a sex change could not precisely be connected to steroids, the psychologist Ungerleider said, "Emotional fallout from high levels of testosterone can make people unsure who they are."