Although female circumcision is illegal in the Netherlands no one has been found guilty of this offence so far.

A Moroccan-Dutch man went on trial accused of circumcising his daughter but the court in Haarlem cleared him. The Public Prosecutor appealed against that decision and the Amsterdam Appeal Court is due to hand down its ruling on Thursday.

Scissors
The Public Prosecutor’s Office alleges that the 31-year-old father used a pair of scissors to circumcise his five-year-old daughter. This mutilation came to light after the girl was placed with foster parents, apparently following other forms of abuse by her father, including physical beatings and at least one bite to her face. The foster mother reported the genital mutilation to the police.

The father was jailed for three months for the other physical abuse but the Haarlem court found him not guilty of genital mutilation due to a lack of evidence. Experts were not able to establish when the mutilation took place or whether the father had been present at the time. The girl was then officially removed from her father’s control and he was denied all further contact with her.

Insufficient evidence
The man’s defence lawyer, Micha Jonge Vos, says circumcision never took place:
“It was thought at first that it had something to do with religion, but my client is of Moroccan origin and circumcision is a rare thing in the Moroccan community. Then they thought it was mutilation and the father was accused of serious bodily harm. However, the court was of the view that there was insufficient evidence as to my client having been involved.”

African cultures
Girls from or in Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and Nigeria are the ones who run the main the risk of being circumcised. Many African cultures practise female circumcision as this is regarded as essential for them to have a chance of marriage. Uncircumcised girls are branded unclean and are ostracised by their communities.

Micha Jonge Vos can think of no reason why this young girl would have been mutilated given the absence of any religious or cultural reason for doing so. He thinks it odd that the girl’s father was accused of involvement while her mother appears not to have been under any suspicion. He believes that, right from the outset, the police refused to consider any other possibilities.

“I think it was important in this case that the police should not just have investigated the father, but widen the investigation to include other potential suspects.”

Too few cases
The Public Prosecutor’s appeal against the initial verdict of the lower court is based on the claim that there was in fact sufficient evidence of genital mutilation. Prosecution spokesperson Lisan Wösten says it is not always necessary to prove the parents performed the mutilation themselves. They can also be guilty of being accessories to the bodily harm provided there is evidence of their involvement in the circumcision.
Ms Wösten would like to see more prosecutions for the circumcision of girls, but says too few cases actually come to the attention of the authorities. There are no reliable figures for the number of circumcised girls in the Netherlands.

“We need official complaints, reports and other information to be able to deal with genital mutilation. Advice centres, schools and family doctors could play an important role. The trouble for doctors is their duty of patient confidentiality. All these problems need to be overcome before you can begin tackling it on a large scale.”

The appeal case to be ruled on this week is a major one for the prosecution authorities. If the man is found guilty, more cases are likely to be reported to the police. But if the appeal court clears him, the effect could be the total opposite.