Baby boy dies in Manchester, UK, following legal genital mutilation

Below is a letter to my MP, written following the death of Baby Goodluck, after a nurse circumcised him... without anaesthetic, completely legally.  That baby bled to death.  But this religious mutilation of babies is something we even provide at parental request on the NHS.  I think it should be banned completely.  What do you think?

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Dear Mr Goodwill

This article on the BBC News website, tells how a Manchester baby boy bled to death after being circumcised.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-20503660

It raises two very important issues.

Firstly, this is religious mutilation, performed on babies who cannot conceivably give consent, which the law does nothing to prevent.  Can you think of any other time society would allow this kind of violence on a defenceless baby?

On this occasion, the mutilation, performed legally and by a nurse, without even anaesthetic, resulted in the baby's death.  The parents who sanctioned it cannot be held criminally responsible.  As a lawmaker, how do you feel about the law protecting this activity?  If you do nothing about it, when the next baby dies in similar circumstances, how will you feel?

A baby died, Robert, completely unnecessarily, in the North of England, because we allowed his genital mutilation in the name of religion.  Are we to simply shrug about that and do nothing?

The second issue raised by the article, which was news to me, is that the UK performs this religious genital mutilation, free of charge, at parents' request, on the NHS.  How come we live in a society which actively condones this activity?  I would really like for you to take this up with the Department of Health.

I imagine that you will argue to me, that if the NHS were not complicit in this act of infantile violence, it would drive the practice underground, and we would have more tragedies like Baby Goodluck.  If the practice were banned, parents who mutilate their babies would rightly face prosecution for grievous bodily harm.  Baby Goodluck's parents would presumably face a manslaughter charge.  But instead, society gives its blessing.  Well done us, huh?

Please tell me what you think of infant genital mutilation, and why we allow it in the UK.  Please convey my utter repulsion to the Secretary of State for Health, and ask for his justification for using my tax money to pay for this dangerous and highly unethical activity.

Yours sincerely

Andi Ye

The Ridiculous Way UK Deals With Abuse Allegations

I'm now officially and exceptionally riled about the insane way sex abuse allegations are treated in the UK.

When I was a child, I was warned about going-off with strangers.  (In fact I used my discretion and never suffered for it)

• I remember I used to visit a single guy who lived on the way home from school when I was 8 years old.  I can't remember the reason; but I do remember that I learned useful and interesting things, and that I got told off one day when I broke the ice on a sink of water standing outside his house.
• I remember two retired couples I visited on the next street when I was not much older.  One guy did some metal work with me.  The other guy I eventually got told off by for not shutting his gate properly (he had a mentally handicapped daughter who may have "escaped" onto the road).
• I spent much of my childhood helping a disabled lady who I once met in the street.  I'm sure I profited much more from that experience than from hanging around street corners in boredom.

Could any of those things happen today?  I rather doubt it.  Any of the adults involved would be taking the most extraordinary risk in befriending a kid.  I myself feel almost forced to cross over the road to avoid kids.  I would never ever ever consider working with kids as a youth leader, scout leader, teacher, or some such... it would just be like standing as a coconut on a coconut shy.

What I'm saying here, and saying most strongly, is that a proportion of kids experience sexual abuse from their contact with adults from outside the family environment, who are the focus of all hysteria.  (I suspect it to be a tiny proportion, but like everybody else, I have no way to know.)  Meanwhile the whole population of kids is potentially suffering from a society which effectively forbids any contact between children and non-family adults, and providing a very powerful disincentive for any adult to put themselves in harm's way by having association with kids in any context at all.  I think I'd go further, and suggest that the most likely adults not to be intimidated by the risks of mixing with kids are the abusers themselves, so we may well be concentrating the proportion of abusers among youth workers.

There's nothing particularly new in what I've said above.  But recently society has taken further retrograde steps.  In the merging of abuse hysteria with blame culture, an immediate outcome of the  Jimmy Savile case was that BBC Newsnight was pilloried for not running a story about Savile for which it had insufficient evidence.  There has to be an assumption that a programme like Newsnight will have an interest in running such a story if they can satisfy themselves to the very high standard rightly required that the evidence is absolutely rock solid.  They couldn't satisfy themselves of that, and therefore were right not to run the story.  If you're not rock-solid-sure of your story to run it on-air, you're also not rock-solid-sure of your story to act as if it's a proven conviction to distribute the information within the BBC.  This is absolutely not the job of journalists.  But the blame culture resulted in the people in the Newsnight team who evaluate the evidence being removed from their roles, and a couple of weeks later we have the catastrophe of an innocent man being implicated in sex abuse on the basis of piss-poor journalism and editorial control which came about as a direct result of the first unreasonable hysteria.  When will the BBC, politicians and news organisations in general learn?  You're all a load of bloody hyenas trying to feed off each other and society as a whole, and we all suffer for it!

And now I read that the late Cyril Smith has been accused of child abuse, in a story which - to me - just doesn't hold water.  As I write, let's see if I'm proved wrong about that.  But here's a summary of the story...

16-year old was in a care home in 1962, in which Cyril Smith (later MP for Rochdale) was in charge of discipline.  The 16-year old bunked off work placement and went into Manchester with a friend.  Punishment meted out by Smith: boy was told to take down his pants, had his bottom smacked hard, and when he started to cry Smith - according to the description - stroked his bottom for quite a long time saying "There, there, it's for the best".  The accuser, presumably now 66 years old, reported the incident to the police in 1979 after discussing the incident with a baptist minister.  He says it had been "obviously" sexual and that he had been left feeling "ashamed".

I think the whole basis of publishing this incident - even without allowing for particular embellishment by the accuser - is preposterous.  Today, corporal punishment is illegal; but in 1962 it was the norm.  It was thought to be, in the reported words of Smith, "for the best".  (I'd say the jury is still out on that point.)  Is there anything sexual about telling the boy to take down his pants?  Surely not... I remember being threatened in just such a way myself, "Behave, or I'll take down your pants, put you across my knee and smack your bare bottom".  It was certainly commonplace.  Every part was symbolic of humiliation and pain to shame the misbehaving child to and teach him/her to correct and improve his/her behaviour.  So we come to the "stroking", or to put it another way, "rubbing it better".  Another phrase used in the same era, to the obvious consternation of individuals suffering corporal punishment was "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you".  The concept is that if the disciplinarian is acting out of the perceived best long-term interests of the child to correct errant behaviour rather than out of pure sadism, it act of hitting a child is not an enjoyment.  This particular child said that he started to cry.  It is clear to me that after a "good spanking", the youth's bum would be sore and hot; and that Smith would reasonably have some compassion for the crying boy.  "Stroking", as it's described, would be to an attempt to sensation relief and cooling, not in any sense "obviously sexual".  The concept of feeling shame was central to the whole theatre of corporal punishment; but I suggest the concept of the shame being sexual in nature was rather likely to be a much later modification to the story, and if not that then a misunderstanding of the contradictory emotions, by the perception of juxtaposed malevolence and sympathy.

I publish my opinion about this with the chance of being completely disproved by a Savile-like presentation of overwhelming evidence, but I seriously doubt it.  The only part of the account which really surprises me is that Cyril Smith's knee had any room for youth to bend over it in addition to Smith's belly.  But maybe he was much thinner in 1962 than he was later as an MP.  Whatever the facts of this case, a wholly explicable story has been grabbed by hysteria already, to the extent that Rochdale council has removed a plaque in memory of Cyril Smith 'as a "neutral act" to prevent vandalism'.

What a society we live in.  I feel ashamed of it, to be honest, and it's obviously not sexual!