FLORIDA: Boy spite-circumcised, has leukaemia, father keeps mother away

It's official: he's cut. Ah well, only 13 years till he can sue...

the Sun-Sentinal (Florida)
December 15, 2015

Boy at center of circumcision fight has acute leukemia; mom seeks visits

by Marc Freeman
The 5-year-old Palm Beach County boy whose parents' battle over circumcision was followed around the world now is in a fight for his life.

The child was diagnosed with acute leukemia last month — apparently soon after he was finally circumcised as his father long wished, according to developments revealed for the first time in court on Tuesday.

But the mother, Heather Hironimus — who was jailed for nine days in May until she consented to the circumcision — asked the court to let her see her boy as he undergoes chemotherapy treatments. The boy's father, Dennis Nebus, has had temporary full custody since mid-May, after Hironimus hid with the boy for almost three months in a Broward domestic violence shelter.

Nebus wants Circuit Judge Jessica Ticktin to bar Hironimus from any visits because of claims she "willfully" violated a prior court order by posting on social media about the child — in his case the leukemia diagnosis — in Facebook posts that apparently were distributed on the Internet by anti-circumcision activists.

"She has shown total disregard for this child," argued May L. Cain, attorney for Nebus, further blasting Hironimus and her attorney for their decision to "feed the press" by announcing in recent court pleadings the circumcision has happened.

"You know that all of the things that have gone on in this case and in the pleadings have been picked up by the media," Cain told Hironimus while asking her questions Tuesday. "You were on the front page of the Sun Sentinel, right? You didn't think that putting out there that your child was circumcised is a private matter that should have been private for him? Do you think that the world has the right to know that he's been circumcised?" [But the ownership of his genitals was not a private matter that should have been private for him?]
 
Brian M. Moskowitz, the West Boynton mom's lawyer, told the judge that because the boy has been circumcised there is no longer a reason for the court to keep her from the child because she would have no reason to kidnap him.

"The issue of circumcision has been removed, and that was the underlying basis for the order" giving Nebus, of Boca Raton, custody, Moskowitz said. "The circumstances have changed."

The attorney also said the child's medical crisis is even more reason for the court to allow her access to the boy.

"This is when the child needs both parents more than ever," Moskowitz said. The 31-year-old mother has seen the child only one time — in his hospital room on Nov. 10 after Nebus, 48, told her about the boy's condition — since her arrest in May.

The child is now in remission and living with Nebus, but still has chemotherapy treatments ahead to ensure the boy has a good chance of being cured, according to Dr. Carmen Ballestas, his pediatric oncologist.

Ticktin said she would consider the positions of both sides before issuing her ruling on the mother's request for visitation rights "as soon as I can."

In September, before the diagnosis, Hironimus was granted permission for supervised visits with the child at a neutral site, a Delray Beach family center, with a plan for an off-duty cop watching at her expense. But the visits never happened because of continued quarrels among the parents over details about the meetings, such as Nebus insisting she not accompany the boy into a bathroom.

Then, in early November, Hironimus was suddenly summoned to the hospital for her long-awaited reunion with her son — just not as she ever envisioned. She spent 3-1/2 hours in the hospital room with him, playing together with his toys and watching the movie "Finding Nemo."

After she told the boy she would be back the next day, "He had a big smile on his face," she said. But when Hironimus returned to the hospital she said she was met by security guards preventing her from coming to the room.

Hironimus testified that she only posted online about the boy's diagnosis so her family and friends could pray for him. She said she's no longer in direct contact with the circumcision opposition groups that supported her after she decided to fight the procedure she agreed to in a 2012 parenting plan.

"We have a mother here who consistently does not follow the rules," Cain told the judge. [We have a mother here who consistently puts her son's welfare ahead of "rules" unconscionably imposed by a control-freak father through a compliant court.]

Hironimus still remains bound by the conditions of a pretrial intervention agreement that resolved her criminal case in July. Hironimus was not required to plead guilty, but she admitted "responsibility for interfering with a lawful custody order."

She's required to undergo a mental health evaluation [but Nebus isn't?] and finish all recommended treatment; submit to random drug testing; and check in with a probation officer once a month.

The State Attorney's Office will drop the felony count in the summer if Hironimus successfully meets the requirements, including the completion of a four-hour parenting course. If she fails, she could once again face prosecution and a maximum punishment of five years in prison for a conviction.


Earlier story

SYDNEY: Botched circumcisions part of child abuse at boy's home

news.com.au (Australia)
December 12, 2015

Boys had penises cut off, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hears

by Megan Palin
WARNING: Disturbing content
A MAN who alleged his penis was cut off by a male staff member at a Sydney boys’ home was one of many children who were mutilated and severely abused at the facility, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

Gordon Myers, 50, told news.com.au he was 13 when he was sent to the institution for the first time in 1978.

In his submission to the commission, Mr Myers said he was raped and bashed by various staff at the home on a regular basis over the five years he lived there.

He said a male staff member who “didn’t like little boys with foreskins” used to perform illegal and botched circumcisions on the children at Daruk.

“He cut my penis off,” Mr Myers told news.com.au.

“I had just turned 13. He took me into the clinic and said ‘we have permission to circumcise you’. I said ‘no you don’t’.

“He knocked me out with a needle and I woke up in the middle of it and there was (a second staff member there as well), I screamed in pain.

“Because I was so tiny, he probably thought, stupidly, ‘don’t give him as much anaesthetic to put him under’.”

Mr Myers said there was “blood everywhere” and that he was sent to Windsor Hospital where a surgeon “sewed (his) penis back on”.

He claims the hospital “covered up” the incident.

A spokeswoman for Hawkesbury District Health Service — which replaced Windsor Hospital — told news.com.au there were no records of the incident because they had likely been destroyed.

“Having checked with our hospital’s Medical Records Department, the records for the old hospital would have been destroyed if the patient had not presented again within a certain period of time,” the spokeswoman said.

“The Medical Records manager confirmed that she has previously discussed the subject with the patient identified, and advised that unfortunately no records can be located.”

Mr Myers said his penis “never grew” as a result of the trauma.

“All the nerve endings aren’t there,” he said. “It was a complete reattachment of the top of it.”

He said the deformity had a profound effect on his life.

“I can’t have children and I can’t have sex,” he said.

Mr Myers provided news.com.au with copies of medical documents which reveal Dr Philip Sutherland examined him in March this year for his submission to the Royal Commission.

“I can confirm that the size of Gordon’s penis and scrotum are childlike,” the report read.

Mr Sutherland referred Mr Myers to urologist Stephen Ruthven for further assessment.

Dr Ruthven concluded in a report sighted by news.com.au that Mr Myers had “testicular microlithiasis”, a condition where small clusters of calcium form in the testicles.

Dr Ruthven could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Mr Myers said he was not the only child whose penis was severed by the staff member at Daruk Training School.

“Every now and then he’d grab a kid to rape or circumcise and I was one of them,” he said.
Mr Myers said he was returned to the boys’ home following surgery.

“(The staff member) wanted to have another go and rape me a second time,” he said. “He raped me heaps of time before that but I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“I just lost the plot and flogged him. I turned very violent.”

Mr Myers said dozens of boys were brutally, sexually and physically abused by staff at the home and that the perpetrators hadn’t been brought to justice.

He said an extensive cover-up linked to a VIP paedophile ring had protected the offenders and prevented them from being investigated.

Senator Bill Heffernan recently campaigned for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to expand its investigation to include the judicial system.

In October this year he told Senate estimates that he had given the commission “very disturbing” police documents that named at least 28 alleged paedophiles, some of whom were prominent Australians.

But he said the commission had told him it could not investigate the cases because they were outside its terms of reference.

Carl Orme, 50, told news.com.au he was also a resident of Daruk Training school in 1978.

Mr Orme said he was routinely physically and sexually abused by several staff members at the home and that one at the school often taunted the boys and severed some of their penises.

“There was a male (staff member) there, and I will never forget his name,” Mr Orme said. “He was a very sick man.

“He’d start fondling with you and things and he would always threaten to circumcise everyone. “He used to scare you and everything, he’d get scissors out and grab hold of the old fella’ saying, ‘I’m going to cut it off if you don’t sit still, I’m going to cut your willy off’.

“His excuse was ‘it’s clean to be circumcised’.”

Mr Orme said the new arrivals were often the staff member’s main targets.

“Sometimes he would tell one of the boys that he liked, especially the new arrivals, and then take them back to the hospital,” he said.

“Then a couple of days later, that same little boy would come back so traumatised, everyone felt for him, as most boys had already been in the same position.

“I was taken to the hospital and told that they were going to circumcise me. I went off my brain and started to fight the officers in the room.

“I threw everything that I could at them, as I’d heard that two months before, one of the little boys had his penis cut off and I was so scared, and wasn’t going to allow anything like that happen to me.

“All my life I have wondered about that little boy, I still to this day try and think of his name. I also wonder whether he made it through life.”

The Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse is the largest Royal Commission in Australia’s history. It is focusing on the sexual abuse of children in institutions that were supposed to care for them.

After being granted an extension last year, the commission will now conclude at the end of 2017.

ZIMBABWE: Father circumcises son, 5, with nail-clippers

New Zimbabwe
November 21, 2014

Cruel dad circumcises son aged 5 with nail clippers

A MUTASA man appeared before a Mutare magistrate this week charged with trying to circumcise his five-year-old son with a set of nail clippers.

Peter Nyashenga, 35, of Tengwe Village under Chief Muparutsa, pleaded guilty to contravening sections of the Children's Act when he appeared before magistrate Anne Ndiraya.

He was remanded in custody to Tuesday next week for sentencing.

The court heard that the abuse occurred on November 11 while the child was in the custody of Nyashenga after he recently divorced his wife.

Prosecutor Brian Goto said on the day in question, Nyashenga called his son into their house and locked the door.

He then instructed the boy to undress and fished nail clippers from his pocket which he used to clip the foreskin of his son's penis.

The case was reported to police by Nyashenga's brother after noticed that the boy was in pain and the minor spilled the beans after being questioned.

The boy was taken to hospital and a medical report was produced in court as an exhibit.

The court also heard that Nyashenga savagely assaulted the boy the day before the attempted circumcision, resulting in his neighbours complaining about his ill-treatment of the child.

Asked why he committed such an offence, Nyashenga said his intention was not to harm the minor.
"Your Worship my intention was not to harm but to circumcise him," he said.

DARWIN: ABC's coverage of circumcision botch "insensitive"

The Drum
March 6, 2014

ABC circumcision reports were culturally insensitive

by Murray McLaughlin
In January, the ABC reported on an Aboriginal initiation ceremony involving circumcision in which three boys were injured. Below, Northern Land Council media officer Murray McLaughlin writes that the reporting smacked of value judgement and cultural superiority. The ABC's head of current affairs Bruce Belsham writes in defence of the investigation here.

Over more than 35 years I have sat in many long meetings in Aboriginal communities in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. But the meeting on February 19 this year at Borroloola had a real poignancy. About 40 Aboriginal men were gathered at the Northern Land Council's regional office and they were hurting.

I was there in my job as media officer for the Northern Land Council, with NLC chairman Samuel Bush-Blanasi and two other members of his executive, to hear the anguished reactions of men, young and old, to a story that the ABC ran on January 22 about a traditional initiation ceremony before Christmas that had gone "horribly wrong".

The ABC had learned that three young men had to be flown from Borroloola to hospital in Darwin after they had been circumcised. Norman Hermant, the ABC's social affairs correspondent, travelled all the way from Melbourne to Borroloola, a small, very remote and deprived town in the Northern Territory's Gulf country, with "just one mobile number in hand and a list of other 'less likely' numbers". He has written here about his assignment.

The one number belonged to the health centre's ambulance driver, William Miller, whose grandson was one of the three who were flown to Darwin. He was most upset when he saw his grandson bleeding from his circumcision cut and was the main interviewee in Hermant's story, versions of which were shown on 7.30 and other ABC programs, including online.

Miller appeared nervous at the meeting I attended and his sense of upset was, at first, still apparent. But, catching the mood of those before him, he apologised a couple of times for having caused offence by speaking to the ABC about his grandson's injury - thereby offending precepts of Aboriginal law, as the men attest in their statement below.

The greatest sense of offence felt by the men was reserved for the ABC story itself. When the NLC party arrived from Darwin, the chairman was presented with a typed statement, which encapsulated the sentiments forcefully articulated later at the meeting of men. It is reproduced here in full with the permission of the men attending the meeting:
We, the Garrawa, Yanyula, Mara and Gurdanji people of Borroloola are deeply hurt and disappointed at the recent story told by the ABC about our Young Men's Initiation Ceremony. This ceremony has existed in our cultures for thousands of years and is very sacred! The sacredness of our ritual strictly forbids viewing and comment by the public. Open discussion in front of women and those who are uninitiated is a very serious infringement. In the past such an infringement would have met with dire consequences. Moreover, we feel that we have been ridiculed in the story and demand that the record be set straight. We have been conducting this sacred ritual in Borroloola area for generations in a safe and sensible manner. It should be understood that there were more than 100 boys initiated in the recent ceremony period without incident. In later years, we have carried out the practice with the support of the Borroloola Medical Clinic but in our own environment not at the Clinic. In the past we had the support of Aboriginal Male Health Workers and especially the support of Dr Peter Fitzpatrick while he was a permanent local based doctor. Changes in Health Department policy means that the community now lacks a permanent doctor. An integrated Community Model would certainly benefit the community and prevent such occurrences. We strongly believe that in this insistence our sacred practices should not have been put in the spotlight. We do have a right to privacy which should have been respected. The community is in shock and our old people in particular are deeply hurt. We demand an apology. The way this story portrayed one of our most sacred rituals has deeply offended us and we feel that it has impacted on our Cultural Integrity!
The statement, with its request for an apology, has been sent to the ABC. NLC chairman Samuel Bush-Blanasi has asked for it to be handled quickly because feelings are running high out Borroloola way.
Hermant's report has damaged the previously satisfactory relationship between the Aboriginal people of Borroloola and the ABC. It has also caused ostracism of Miller, in spite of his apology, by the overwhelmingly Aboriginal town. Worse, there's a widened rift between the Aboriginal townspeople and the medical clinic.

...

Hermant reported that the NT Child Abuse Taskforce had received two notifications about the incident, but an investigation had not identified any wrongdoing.

The Northern Territory Attorney General, John Elferink (a lawyer and former policeman with experience in the bush and exposure to Aboriginal cultural practices), accepted that finding.

"No abuse was found to have occurred," Elferink told Hermant, "and in the absence of that, and in the absence of criminality ... it's a parental decision on how to bring up the kids," he said.

Earlier story