HUNDREDS of high-risk sex offenders have received free Viagra under the state-run Medicaid health service for the poor, it emerged yesterday.

The pills, prescribed to enhance sexual performance, have been given to convicted rapists and child abusers whose victims range in age from 2 to 90. The discovery was made by Alan Hevesi, the New York state comptroller, who found that 198 sex offenders had received Viagra from Medicaid in New York over the past five years.

Mr Hevesi wrote to Michael Leavitt, the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, to demand “immediate action to ensure that sex offenders do not receive erectile dysfunction medication paid for by taxpayers”.

“Megan’s Law”, passed in New York after seven-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by a paroled convict in 1994, requires that the photographs and addresses of all high-risk “Class 3” sex offenders are posted on the internet. Acting on a tip, Mr Havesi compared the 7,400 names on the state’s sex offender registry with the Medicaid records of Viagra recipients.

“The whole purpose of Viagra is to increase sexual performance,” he told reporters. “Some of them, as a condition of their parole, are required to take medication to do the opposite, and this contradicts it.”

The two New York senators pledged to seek legislation if the federal government did not change the rules. Senator Hillary Clinton said it was “deeply disturbing and runs contrary to the purpose of Medicaid”. Senator Charles Schumer said: “It is just mind-boggling to think that Level 3 sexual offenders can get Viagra.”

The Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, which oversees Medicaid, planned to issue new guidance to states today making clear that it already had the power to bar sex offenders from receiving sex drugs.

“It’s just medically not appropriate for paedophiles or sex offenders to be getting this type of medication,” a Medicaid spokesman said.

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