Female Genital Mutilation Scandal In Michigan Rep’s District Spurs Bill

WASHINGTON, DC — A congressman whose state is at the center of a sprawling federal investigation into illegal female genital mutilation procedures has introduced legislation that would increase federal penalties to 15 years in prison. The bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Dave Trott, a Birmingham, Michigan, Republican, also nudges states to increase reporting requirements of suspected FGM, an internationally condemned procedure practiced in some cultures to curb women and girls’ sexual desires.

The procedure has been a federal felony punishable by up to five years in prison for about two decades, but Trott and U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Manhattan, New York, Democrat, said the penalty isn’t tough enough to effectively deter the practice. Their bipartisan SAFE (Stopping Abusive Female Exploitation) Act tacks another decade on the sentence, matching the 15-year penalty in a tough new Michigan law.

The state law, signed earlier this month by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, targets not only doctors who perform the the procedure, but also parents who allow it — which Trott and Maloney's SAFE Act doesn't do. The Michigan bill package toughening penalties moved swiftly through the Legislature after the Justice Department filed charges in April against a former Detroit emergency room doctor accused of surreptitiously performing the procedure on two 7-year-olds from Minnesota in February.

Five others have since been charged — a doctor and his wife who own the Livonia clinic where the federal government said the procedures were performed, as well as a woman said to be there in a support capacity. Also charged are two parents whose daughters are believed to be among at least 100 in Metro Detroit who have been subjected to the procedure. The defendants, members of the small Muslim sect Dawoodi Bohra, deny the girls were cut and have said through their attorneys that the procedure is a constitutionally protected religious ceremony.

The case against the six Metro Detroit residents is the first court test of a two-decade-old U.S. law criminalizing FGM. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention estimates that more than 500,000 girls and women in the United States are at risk for risk for genital mutilation. The list of health problems associated with FGM include chronic pain, infection, infertility, depression and childbirth complications that put the lives of both the mother and child at risk. In 2008, nearly a dozen global organizations — including the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the UN Population Fund — decried FGM as a violation of human rights and called for its elimination.

“Recently, this staggering statistic hit home in southeast Michigan,” Trott said in a statement, noting that the doctors charged in the case “and all those who commit these horrendous crimes against innocent children must be held accountable for their unconscionable action.”

“We must protect our girls, and this legislation increasing the federal penalty is critical to eradicating this barbaric practice from our communities,” he said.

Maloney said FGM has increased in prevalence in the United States over the past 30 years, while it has decreased in practice around the world.

“We’re clearly moving in the wrong direction,” the Manhattan congresswoman said in a statement. “By increasing the penalty for this despicable crime and introducing a provision to encourage states to implement reporting laws, we hope to make it clear that this behavior will not be tolerated.”

Trott and Maloney said the SAFE Act would put U.S. penalties for genital mutilation in line with those in other developed nations. The United Kingdom and France laws against FGM are up to 14 and up to 20 years, respectively.

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