A former New South Wales doctor who excised a woman’s external genitals during an operation to remove a small patch of discoloured tissue on her labia has been found guilty of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm. His victim, aged 58 at the time of the operation, told the court that the doctor had informed her that he was going to remove a lesion, but never mentioned removing anything else. If he had, she said “I would never have walked through that hospital door to start with”. The doctor’s defence, that the complete removal of the woman’s external genitalia was necessary to stop a cancerous growth from spreading, was rejected as spurious. The doctor’s name has been suppressed by the court, though will presumably be revealed when he comes up for sentencing at a later date.
The case outcome has been reported in most of the Australian news media and the ABC. The following report is from the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
A FORMER NSW doctor has been found guilty of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on a patient whose genitals he removed without her consent. The doctor had told a nurse that the patient's husband was dead “so it did not matter anyway” that he had taken her clitoris during the operation, the Sydney jury heard. The doctor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denied maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm (GBH) on Carolyn DeWaegeneire with intent to cause her GBH in 2002. But late this afternoon, the NSW District Court jury found him guilty after another jury failed to reach a verdict last year.
Ms DeWaegeneire, 58 at the time of the operation, told the jury the doctor had informed her he was going to remove a lesion but never mentioned taking anything else, including her clitoris. If he had, “I would never have walked through that hospital door to start with”, she said, adding she “never, never, never, never” would have consented to the removal of her genitals. She had sought treatment for a small patch of discoloured skin on her labia, later identified as a form of pre-cancer.
Ms DeWaegeneire said the doctor told her of his intention when she was about to pass out from anaesthesia on the operating table. “He leaned over me and, for my ears only, he said: ‘I’m going to take your clitoris too’,” she said. She told the jury there was “nothing” left of her genital region. It was “all gone”. Theatre nurse Sharon Demmery said she remembered the operation because of the large size of the tissue which was taken from the patient. “I said, ‘That is fairly radical’, and (the doctor) said, ‘Yes, if I didn’t take that much, the cancer would spread’,” Ms Demmery said. She said something came up about the clitoris, and she told the doctor, “You wouldn’t be taking my clitoris, no matter what.” He then said that “the patient’s husband was dead so it did not matter anyway.”
The doctor had maintained that, far from having an intention to inflict harm on the woman, he was “trying to save her life”. He said he honestly believed the surgery was needed for her health.
Judge Greg Woods will sentence him at a later date.
Margaret Scheikowski, Former doctor guilty of removing Carolyn DeWaegeneire's genitals without consent, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 11 March 2011
While we will all be shocked at this appalling example of medical mayhem, and will applaud the fortitude of Ms DeWaegeneire in facing public humiliation to bring this butcher to justice, we should also spare a thought for the many other victims of genital mutilation whose cases do not reach the courts or the newspapers. We refer, of course, to the thousands of unnecessary circumcision operations performed each year on male infants and boys in New South Wales, all of whom would also have fled from the hospital if they had known what was being done to them and if they had the power to resist or run away. Circumcision may not be as radical or as crippling a surgery as the excisions performed on Ms DeWaegeneire, but it is just as gross an affront of a person’s bodily integrity and human dignity, just as gross a violation of the principles of medical ethics, and just as unnecessary.
Without wishing in any way to minimise the enormity of this case, we suggest that in, some ways, routine circumcision of infants and boys is even worse than what was done to Ms DeWaegeneire. She really did have a pre-cancerous lesion on her genitals that needed limited surgery; none of the infants and boys routinely circumcised have anything wrong with their genitals, and did not need any kind of surgery at all. She gave limited consent to a minimal procedure; the infants and boys gave no consent at all. She had already experienced a full life with a complete body and a normal set of genital organs; circumcised infants and boys will never know what it is like to have a complete body and a normal set of natural genitals.
The doctor’s defence also demands analysis. He was, he claims, “only trying to save her life”, and “honestly believed” that the surgery was necessary for the woman's health. We have heard this defence somewhere before, namely, in every justification for routine circumcision that has ever been attempted. “You may not like circumcision”, say the circumcision promoters, “but it is necessary for your future health; and if you refuse to accept it voluntarily, it must be imposed on you by force, for your own good.” There is no difference at all between Dr X’s defence here and the arguments put forward by circumcision promoters, both in Australia and overseas. They, too, “honestly believe” that removal of part of a boy’s genitals is necessary to save his life, and they they regard issues such as informed consent, medical ethics, human rights and personal preference as tedious humanistic scruples that merely get in the way of their knives. We wonder whether this doctor was as fond of circumcising male infants and boys as he was of performing mutilating operations on women, and if so, why one of these hobbies is regarded as a monstrous crime and the other as medical treatment.
Increasingly, however, it is recognised that the double standard that allows female genital mutilation to be condemned and punished but male circumcision to be tolerated and even promoted as “necessary for health” (as this Dr X claimed with respect to Ms DeWaegeneire) cannot be sustained. If it is wrong to remove a woman’s genitals without her fully informed consent, how can it be acceptable to remove part of a man’s genitals without his fully informed consent? In this age of sexual equality, this is one form of discrimination that cannot be allowed to continue.
NOTE: We find it strange and unfair that the name of the doctor has been suppressed, while his victim must face the glare of publicity. We do not know his name, and so cannot reveal it, but we suspect that entering the term “Butcher of Bega” into Google will bring up much relevant and interesting information about somebody who appears rather similar.