Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to castrate anybody found guilty of being a pedophile and lock them away for the rest of their lives.
According to Matviyenko, Speaker of the upper house of Parliament and close ally of Putin, child sex offenders could soon face chemical castration under newly proposed laws.
Her deputy Andrei Turchak has also suggested that “physical castration” could be an option for the most severe offenders.
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Mirror.co.uk reports: Matviyenko, 72, said Russia should further toughen its laws and called for looking at castration as a punishment and “study the experience of other states”.
But the priority was to jail child sex attackers, she said.
Turchak won applause from senators when he said life sentences should be imposed on first-time paedophile offenders.
The new laws which apply to cases when the victims are under 18 follow a spate of cases which have received big publicity in the Russian media.
An attack this month saw “a convicted paedophile and his male lover” snatch a girl, five from a snowy street.
The child was subsequently raped and then killed, say reports citing law enforcement.
She had been stabbed multiple times and her body hidden in a duffle bag.
When the suspects were later detained, they needed police protection to stop a lynching by furious locals.
The child, Veronika Nikolayeva, had been playing near the cinema and cultural complex where her mother works in Kostroma.
One of the suspects was named as Denis Gerasimov, 44, earlier jailed for paedophile offences including producing child pornography.
He was released from jail in March last year, after serving four-and-a-half years for convictions which included sex with an underage girl.
The other suspect, Vadim Belyakov, 24, reportedly has a conviction for theft.
The case led to politicians vowing to rush new laws through parliament.
