Eight years for woman who injected victims
Botched cosmetic surgery case shows few villains have wholly black hearts
The criminal courts naturally lend themselves to caricature, to one- dimensional portraits and easy jokes, and there may be no better recent example than the case of the buttocks- injector, Marilyn Reid.
She was sentenced Thursday in Toronto to eight years in prison for illegally injecting purported cosmetic enhancement filler — it was actually silicone, in some instances aged industrial silicone, and she sometimes used an actual caulking gun, the sort most of us use to seal the tub — into the rears of nine women for cold hard cash.
The 50- year- old woman had no training, was neither doctor nor nurse nor pharmacist. She simply set up a website purporting to be able to enhance bums by injecting a substance called polymethyl methacrylate, or PMMA, which isn’t even authorized in Canada.
She put up online a few pictures of great rears — including, apparently, some belonging to a couple of the nine women, presumably before her work and the bums themselves fell apart.
As Ontario Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly said, “at the very least, nine women engaged Ms. Reid’s services. All nine women suffered bodily harm as a result.”
She was convicted of eight counts of aggravated assault; the case of the ninth victim was considered for sentencing purposes.
Given Reid’s time in pre- trial custody, for which she received credit at an enhanced rate, she still has five years and three months to serve.
The judge found she had “preyed on” the women — only one of whom even provided the court with a victim impact statement, so embarrassed are they — lied to those who asked questions, and was “dismissive, insensitive and uncaring ” when advised of the serious complications her work had caused.
The women paid as much as $ 7,200 and as little as $ 1,800 for the procedure, which Reid always performed at their homes or in hotel rooms in brilliantly unsterile conditions.
All nine purported patients suffered grievous results — raging infections that required surgery, sometimes several bouts of it, to remove as much of the silicone as possible; weeks or months on antibiotics; fevers, abscesses and pain and, of course, humiliation.
Reid pleaded guilty earlier this year, and from an agreed statement of facts entered on the record at that time, it’s clear that many of the women delayed seeking medical help, presumably daunted by the prospect of arriving at an emergency room and confessing that this was all in aid of getting what Reid once described as “a nice plump butt.”
When the women got to a walkin clinic or hospital, most of them couldn’t even say what had been injected into their rears; they had no clue.
Yet in a hard world that places a premium on looks and sex appeal, traditionally for women but increasingly also for men, botched cosmetic surgery and avaricious butchers stalking hotels with caulking guns aren’t the unimaginable possibilities they might have been decades ago. Not everyone can afford the sleek doctors of the discreet row of plastic surgeons you find in almost every major Canadian city; not everyone is like me, preferring always to pay more than retail.
( I feel a certain kinship with the women, I confess. My ex once fondly and correctly described my rear as a kettle- stone ass, kettle stones being those big flat ones you can walk on to cross a shallow river.)
The case got significant media attention. Editors and reporters everywhere are not, shall we say, averse to getting “buttocks” into the odd headline, and there was a certain snicker appeal to the story.
But nothing is ever simple either, least of all in the courts. Few villains have wholly black hearts.
Reid, her hair in a tight bun and wearing black- rimmed glasses, buried her face in her hands as Kelly read aloud her judgment; she too seemed, if at long last, ashamed.
The judge found few mitigating factors — Reid is a first- time offender with no previous criminal record and she did plead guilty, the traditional way of showing remorse — but there were a couple of paragraphs in her judgment that hinted at absolute heartbreak.
Reid was, she said, “born with both male and female sexual organs,” had sexual “affirmation” surgery at age seven, and was raised as a female. “She was ridiculed and bullied because of her deep voice,” the judge said.
She has not, Kelly said with considerable understatement, “had an easy time while in custody ...”
It rather brings to a sharp end the nudge- nudge factor.