Jehovah’s Witness perform ritual circumcision on 4 year old

JW dad convicted for botched circumcision on son

A BC man was convicted of criminal negligence causing bodily harm when he tried to circumcise his four year old son.

He told the court he learned how to perform a circumcision on the Internet.

“The bizarre case centered on a battle over the religious freedoms of the former Jehovah’s Witness, who was trying to follow a literal interpretation of the Bible after a series of misfortunes hit his family.” CBC

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in the literal interpretation of the bible. This extends to risking their lives and their children when they refuse blood transfusions. That doctrine is a based on the Jewish command not to “eat” blood.

The man circumcised himself first. “His first attempt to circumcise himself ended up with his foreskin turning black and only part of it cut off. When he couldn’t stop the bleeding, he called an ambulance, and a doctor in a hospital emergency room ended up stitching up the bleeding wound.” CBC

Doctors and rabbis had refused to perform the operation on the boy. The father thought the procedure would purify his family in a ritualistic worship of Jehovah.

He did the procedure himself and used a horse medication called Wonder Dust.

The man was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness and was defended in court by well-known human rights lawyer Doug Christie. Christie said they might appeal the charges since it constituted freedom of religion.

Related story – Jehovahs Witnesses whisk children away from the law

The appalling story

The man testified in court that, after the boy consented to the circumcision, he fed him some mead — a biblical beverage made from honey — lay him on the kitchen floor, stretched his penis across a cutting board and cut off part of the foreskin.

When asked in court whether the man used ice to ease the boy’s pain, he replied, “Where would the Israelites have found ice?”

He then applied the Wonder Dust, gave the boy some ice cream and told him he could watch whatever movies he wanted that week, before heading off to church, leaving the boy in the care of his mother, who could not stand the sight of blood.

The boy spent the next few days walking with his legs wide apart, until a social worker, who caught wind of the operation, brought two police officers to the house to take the boy into protective custody for a medical examination.

After the medical staff found the boy’s penis coated in a thick cap of black tarry substance from the Wonder Dust, they decided to remove the rest of the family’s children from the home.

Logically the judge ruled the child could not have consented to the procedure due to his age. “Indeed his motivations could be characterized as selfish or even deluded insofar as he believed that he was unable to live in his home at Passover with any uncircumcised male, including his four-year-old son,” CBC
Meanwhile, a surgeon removed “a beehive coating” from the boy’s penis before properly circumcising him, saying later in court that the boy would likely have ended up with a disfigured penis had the operation not been completed. CBC

This is not the only case of a religious fanatic circumcising a child. A Morganton, NC man was convicted on September 29, 2009 of the same procedure without the benefit of anesthetic or proper medical assistance.

“The main reason I did it was, the Holy Spirit pressed me to do it,” he said.