The first criminal case in the US involving female genital mutilation (FGM) was in November, 2006, when a man was convicted of battery and cruelty to children after removing his daughter's clitoris when she was two years old. Khalid Adem, a 30-year-old Ethiopian immigrant, removed his daughter’s clitoris with scissors in their apartment in 2001. The girl identified her father as the person who cut her genitals in an interview that was videotaped. Khalid Adem, however, testified that he had never circumcised his daughter or asked anyone else to do it. The child’s mother also blames the father. "He said he wanted to preserve her virginity. He said it was the will of God. I became angry in my mind. I thought he was crazy," said Fortunate Adem, the girl’s mother. Female circumcision is not outlawed in Adem's native country of Ethiopia nor was it outlawed in Georgia at the time of this incident. Khalid Adem was not charged under the federal law because it did not apply when his daughter was mutilated. While formally discouraged by the Ethiopian government it remains a very common procedure, with some reports estimating that as much as 90% of Ethiopian women have undergone clitoridectomy. The US State Department estimates that as many as 130 million women have experienced FGM; 168,000 of those cases happened in the United States.
There are four different types of FGM. Type I is commonly referred to as clitordectomy, which is removal of the clitoral hood, with or without removal of all or part of the clitoris. Type II is referred to as excision, which is removal of the clitoris together with part or all of the labia minora (the inner vaginal lips). Type II is the most widely practiced form. Type III is referred to as infibulation. Infibulation is excision of part or all of the external genitalia (clitoris, labia minora and labia majora), and stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening, leaving a very small opening, about the size of a matchstick, to allow for the...