ASAPT
Alliance for Sexual Abuse and Prevention and Treatment

September 14, 1998

1002 N. 8th St.
Bismarck, ND 58501
September 14, 1998
Emailed to:
Susan Cordes-Green, Director
Alliance for Sexual Abuse Prevention and Treatment (ASAPT)
Fargo, ND

Dear Susan and the Alliance for Sexual Abuse Prevention and Treatment:

I am disappointed at your response of 9/10/98 to my letter of 8/23/98 for the following reasons: 

Definition of Sexual Child Abuse:

The definition of “sexual abuse” you, Linda and Gladys are now espousing in the name of the ASAPT seems to be unnecessarily narrow and inconsistent with your previous concerns. Why, I now must wonder, did Gladys ask me in 1992 to address the Alliance on the circumcision issue? Sexual abuse need not be done primarily for sexual gratification. Many women tell me that rape, for example, is primarily a crime of domination, humiliation and control rather than sexual gratification. On the other hand, some women claim the cut penis is more sexually gratifying, so they cut their sons, removing his choice and his female partner’s choice if she prefers an intact man. Only the person cut has the right to decide to amputate a healthy body part.

To say physicians receive no sexual gratification from the operation, is speculation, although it is not speculation that the physicians’ financial gratification continues to have a large role in its continuation. It is not accurate to say “the child is certainly not sexually stimulated by the procedure,” since nurses have told me the swabbing of the genitals in preparation for circumcision usually induces an erection (which may make circumcision easier). The circumcised child first experiences sexual stimulation, and is then subjected to pain. It is this transition from sexual pleasure to the imprinting of pain that is so harmful. Must a baby girl experience sexual stimulation to convince adults her genitals have been sexually harmed? And your comment that the circumciser does not experience a sexual response is another assumption. Perpetrators can be found in every profession. And research has shown sexual perpetrators tend to do to others what was done to them.

Intent:

Intent has little to do with the need to stop a criminal act. The courts will not accept as blameless those who did not intend to kill someone when they went through a stoplight causing a fatal collision. You say physicians should be better informed. I whole-heartily agree, but I can tell you they have had every opportunity to access information. They no longer have an excuse. They are either incompetent or practicing fraudulently. In any case they must be stopped. Those whose job it is to be informed, or to inform others, are now legally culpable.

Just look at the ND Quotes. Who is saying this is a medical issue? Who is willing to say this is something so important to do to the child that circumcision is medically justified? Neither federal Medicaid nor the state health insurance (PERS) pays for this elective amputation. Physicians have a higher level of responsibility, not only because they often do the cutting, but because they are supposed to be professionals who practice within the directives of oversight boards who are charged with the responsibility of protecting citizens from physicians who fail their professional duties when they consistently provide inappropriate care, including a pattern of unnecessary surgery (ND Century Code 43-17.1-07, Sec. 4, and 43-17-31, Sec. 6 and 7). Physicians have a moral and legal responsibility not to amputate healthy parts from a child’s genitals even if parents, for whatever reason, provide assent. And contrary to your suggestion, there is little need for additional research. The necessary research has been published, some of it for many years. What is needed is the will to incorporate the findings into a higher and kinder, world-class standard of care. The United States continues to stand alone in their practice of circumcising most baby boys.

Gender Bias:

FGM (female genital mutilation--note that “mutilation” is our term, not that used by those who cut females “for their own good”) is done with the specific intent to make the female cleaner or purer as well as to control her sexuality, all for the well-being of the child and woman she will grow up to be, or so say the cutters and parents who hire them. No harm is intended by the parents or the circumcisers of their daughters.

Your statement that male circumcision “does not make the penis incapable of sexual response;” is usually true (unfortunately, not always), however the identical statement can be made of female forms of genital cutting; but it is also true that one’s sexual response is greatly diminished according to those who have been circumcised as adults and can make a comparison. Even the most extreme forms of FGM do not prevent intercourse, reproduction or even female orgasm. But we must not forget, sexual response is a mind/brain response much more than a genital response of the penis. It is the injury to the mind that has the most lasting damaging effects, as you and your Task Force colleagues are well aware.

Moses Maimonides, an 11th Century Jewish philosopher, specifically says circumcising males makes them less interested in sex so they will be more interested in God. I have recently hear of a circumciser in Bismarck has said this. Ironically, the workshop sponsored in Bismarck by Medcenter One, advertised in your ASAPT March ‘97 newsletter, “System as Perpetrator?” is all too true when it comes to physically and sexually harming males through circumcision.

You say in the opening paragraph of your article, ASAPT Update, 3/97, “Just When You Think You’ve Heard It All,” discussing Alice Walker’s book, Possessing the Secret of Joy, that you “clearly did not find...a respite from thinking about sexual abuse;” and in your concluding paragraph you say again that Walker’s book, did not grant you “the planned-for break from thinking about sexual abuse...,” so you must have thought that FGM was sexual abuse. But according to your present position on male circumcision, FGM could not be sexual abuse. I assume once you have thought through this issue, you will wonder why you asked the readers of the ASAPT newsletter to spend their time on an issue that ASAPT does not address, since there is absolutely no difference of intent between FGM and MGM (see Lightfoot-Klein’s comparisons appended here). In light of your statements dismissing MGM as physical rather than sexual abuse, I must assume ASAPT should not have been and will not be concerned with FGM and its long-term effects either. It seems to me either a statement to this effect is warranted, or allow male circumcision to be an appropriate topic for the ASAPT.

Finally, when you say that the result, even though not intended “may be physical and/or emotional damage,...” let me point out that “may” should read “does.” Circumcision is amputation of healthy tissue; it is mutilation and does cause physical damage. Even the strongest of proponents of circumcision now say it is barbaric if not done with anesthesia, which is the way most were and still are done. But pain is not the issue. One’s right to a whole body (and mind) is the issue.

Missed Point:

But all the above aside, I not only asked the ASAPT Task Force to write a statement acknowledging infant circumcision as abuse, but also to set up an ad hoc group of individuals who are in positions of legal and moral responsibility for this issue so all the state’s implicated bodies can deal with it simultaneously. (Since your Board hasn't met yet, are you, Linda and Gladys speaking for the Task Force when you say infant male circumcision is not sexual, but physical abuse?)

What is most disturbing about your response is your conclusion that since circumcision is not sexual abuse, that you and the members of the Alliance apparently have no responsibility to do anything to stop the physically abusive practice. Professionals are required by state law to report actual or threatened child abuse, sexual or otherwise, are they not? A federal good-Samaritan bill is now pending which would make it a federal crime to refuse to help victims or report such crimes. So now that you seem to have come to the conclusion that this nonconsensual cutting is physical child abuse, who in your opinion has the legal responsibility to address this?

I disagree with Gladys’ view regarding her responsibilities as Director of Child Protection Services. She does not think it is her place to intervene on behalf of a male child when there is threat of physical and emotional harm due to circumcision. But her job is to protect children, not only from the parents, but others who harm or threaten to harm them, both boys as well as girls. Even in her view, the parents are hiring the circumciser and placing their child in his/her hands. It is quite possible the parents will skip the trip to a third-party circumciser and cut their own child. What happens when the parents hold down a 10-12 year old child and cut off his foreskin? This practice, common in Africa and the Middle East, could happen here and likely already has (just as FGM has--see René Bergstrom in the ND Quotes). The male child is helpless. Who has responsibility to address this? The answer, of course, is that we all do. This is why a group must be assembled by the ASAPT Task Force or Child Protection Services to address this issue as we discussed in your office.

Will you tell Rolf Sletten Director of the ND Board of Medical Examiners to ask the Board to take action to stop the cruel and fraudulent practice? Are you going to ask the State Health Officer to make a statement to the press or urge Cathy Rydell, Director of the ND Medical Association, and those teaching at the ND School of Medicine etc., to inform physicians that (as former State Health Officer, Robert Wentz said) the time has come to stop this cutting?

I am angry at this impasse, but more saddened. Cultures have only with difficulty come to see incest and domestic violence as punishable crimes. It wasn’t that long ago when being killed by a drunk driver was considered a terrible “accident;” now it is vehicular homicide. Many forms of domestic violence have been tolerated until recently. Infant circumcision is another common form of domestic violence in this country which is still not being addressed by our state and private agencies.

Just as victims of rape were accused of “asking for it” by what they wore or where they were at night, just as women were beaten because “she provoked me,” just as children were incest victims without there being any community or even family concern (see appended news article), so we too, who have been physically and sexually harmed through the widespread practice of circumcision, deserve to be taken seriously. Boys and girls, men and women in North Dakota can find compassion in your programs and comfort in not being alone if they are incest victims. This level of support and commitment is not available at this time to those harmed like me. We survivors of circumcision’s genital abuse are not seen as adult survivors, so we must find our support outside the systems designed to provide sexual abuse prevention and treatment. What has to happen before our pain, our suffering, our rage is not dismissed? What must happen so that we are no longer revictimized by others apathy or dismissals?

We tire of being told what was done to us was good for us. We are advised to get our heads straightened out, not to straighten out the sickness in our society. If we say those who cut us have harmed us, and want someone to admit that similar actions are harming others, we are dismissed and discounted and even threatened. Survivors survive, when they do, not by undoing what was done to them, but by trying to prevent the same harm being done to others. Have you any idea how frustrating it is to try to prevent this harm year in and year out and be told you are sick for trying?

I don’t need you to commended me for my efforts, but I do need to see you and others who have the moral and legal responsibility to protect children, all children, address this issue through the ASAPT and other organizations. Why must the Bismarck and Fargo call-in talk shows be leading this effort? Please take the high road and convene a meeting of responsible citizens to address this issue. We must all work to protect the more than 3,000 baby boys who are otherwise likely to be harmed by circumcision in North Dakota this year.

Sincerely

Duane Voskuil, PhD
Unrecognized as a sexual abuse survivor
(by ASAPT) as of this year, 1998.

cc. Gladys Cairns and Linda Rice

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A2 Minot (N.D.) Daily News, Saturday, September 12,1998
Judge [says]: Fondling Isn't Sexual Abuse

          CHICAGO (AP)   A judge's ruling that a man's fondling of his two children was not sexual abuse because such behavior is culturally acceptable in his native Sicily has angered Italian-American groups.

          Juvenile Court judge Fe Fernandez ruled in February that the father's alleged actions -- tweaking his 10-year-old daughter's breasts and buttocks and his 8-year-old son's genitals -- were clearly inappropriate and, along with reports of physical violence, contributed to an injurious environment.

          She decided, however, that the fondling was not for "physical gratification" and did not rise to the level of sexual abuse because of the father's Sicilian background.

          Fernandez declined to be interviewed, telling the Chicago Tribune In a story today, "I cannot comment on a pending case."

          The judge ordered the children removed from the home but allowed the father unsupervised overnight visits. An appeals court blocked the judge's ruling pending legal arguments. No date has been set.

          In her ruling, the judge said, "This might be something that the father might be brought up thinking that this is cute -- you pat somebody on the butt or you grab them in the breast area."

          No criminal charges were filed.

 
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