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SUMMARY : Under a French article of law dated June 30, 1990, coercive hospital internment of a mentally disturbed person can be requested, either on the initiative of a third party-e.g. by the family circle- or by the administration on the Prefect's initiative (France's prefects are the commanders in chief of police forces) provided the person is deemed dangerous to himself /herself or to others and will not undergo treatment. We shall report on the observed case of a young man with a record of several prior indictments and condemnations for rape, who was admitted in a mental hospital on the initiative of his (female) lawyer. She had at first requested his adminisrtrative internment in a psychiatric ward specializing in dangerous mentally ill subjects, as the interruption of his anti-androgenic drug treatment had caused murder and rape impulses to resurface. We shall then give an account of the surprising consequences of the young man's internment : the police seem to lose interest as soon as the offender in their custody has been handed over to hospital; special care units for difficult patients will not have him, for the threat he poses is essentially social; psychiatric wards tend to make the stay of sex offenders as short as possible, for clinical signs remain nonexistent as long as they stay behind hospital doors; medical doctors appointed as inspectors consider it unnecessary to visit them; committees when meeting are content with examining the legality of the internment procedure; lawyers are legally entitled to request the "internment on the request of a third party", then to lift it whenever they consider it opportune. Our contention is that there is a good chance that the law may be diverted from its goal, so that the psychiatrist will then be desperately alone in trying to cope with the situation-an anomaly which ought to raise a few questions in the judiciary, administrative and legal bodies. The psychiatrist's sense of isolation bears some similitude with the loneliness of the victim and of the attacker.