Friday, 29 March, 2024
HomeMedico-LegalFirst UK FGM case collapses

First UK FGM case collapses

UKDocProsecutors in the UK have been accused of pursuing a "show trial" after a National Health Service (NHS) doctor facing a landmark female genital mutilation case was acquitted in less than half an hour, reports The Daily Telegraph. Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena had been accused of illegally stitching a young mother back up after she gave birth, re-doing the mutilation she suffered as a six-year-old in Somalia.

His prosecution was the first of its kind in Britain and had been hailed as a landmark in the campaign to stamp out the illegal practice. But his defence barrister, Zoe Johnson QC, said Dharmasena had been "hung out to dry and made a scapegoat" for hospital failings. Hospital trust failings meant the mother had not been identified earlier as a victim of FGM and Dharmasena, then a junior registrar, faced the "nightmarish scenario" of discovering she was circumcised as she went into emergency labour.

He cut the woman open to deliver the baby, and then partially re-stitched her afterwards because she was "oozing" blood. He insisted he only carried out a single figure-of-eight stitch, which he thought was in her medical interests. He was later told by superiors he should have sutured her on either side. He had never treated a woman with FGM before or received any training in it.

Johnson said the case had its root cause in serious and systematic failings at the hospital, but the blame was pinned on the young doctor.

[link url="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11390629/NHS-doctor-cleared-of-performing-FGM-amid-claims-he-was-used-as-a-scapegoat.html"]Full report in The Daily Telegraph[/link]

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