Connecticut must step up and outlaw ‘barbaric practice’ of FGM

Fifteen states have not criminalized the barbaric crime of female genital mutilation or FGM — and that is 15 too many. Connecticut is one of those 15 states, despite hearing from an FGM victim who testified in support of an FGM bill in the state legislature in February 2018.

The bill to criminalize FGM in Connecticut would have made the practice a Class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, but the measure died in committee.

Perhaps Connecticut legislators have ignored the fact that both the United Nations and the World Health Organization have labeled the heinous practice as a violation of human rights.

Connecticut is in an ever-increasing minority of states that have not criminalized FGM, even though the Centers for Disease Control has estimated that 513,000 women and girls are at FGM risk right here in the U.S. By failing to protect little girls from this barbaric practice, Connecticut is inviting FGM practitioners and sending a troubling message to perform the brutal procedure with impunity.

During the February legislative hearing on the FGM crime bill, legislators heard the powerful and searing testimony from a 50-year-old woman who has suffered lifelong consequences as a child victim of FGM. Kadi Doumbia, now residing in Chicago, described her daily psychological terror she suffers from as a result of her FGM trauma. Doumbia pleaded with Connecticut legislators to pass legislation to criminalize FGM.

FGM practitioners are fully aware of the 15 states that have not criminalized female genital mutilation. The CDC research arm, the Population Reference Bureau, found that Connecticut has nearly 2,700 women and girls at risk for female genital mutilation. Without a criminal law on the books, Connecticut is giving a green light that FGM is not a crime.

Connecticut’s self-proclaimed child advocate, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, recently wrote a book titled, “The Least Among Us: Waging the Battle for the Vulnerable.” DeLauro proudly boasts of her lifelong advocacy for vulnerable immigrant women and children. Her book is filled with self-congratulatory bromides about the importance of government to protect the less fortunate.

For example, DeLauro says, “My belief is that government has a big role to play in curing the exploitation of women, and that everyone will benefit as it does so.”

DeLauro goes on to list all the congressional bills that she championed for women and children. Perhaps she should lecture her own Connecticut state legislators about the exploitation of women by the ancient cruel practice of female genital mutilation. Unless it’s criminalized, FGM will be performed in Connecticut — again and again. And, by the way, Congress has yet to pass a new FGM bill, since the federal statute was deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge. Will DeLauro champion the federal FGM bill as well?

Furthermore, DeLauro dedicates an entire chapter of her book to the importance of investing in children. She propounds that: “First of all, we know now that a child’s earliest experiences have a long-lasting impact on his or her whole life … Child development experts have been saying for years that what happens to a kid before age three is critically important. Eighty percent of brain development occurs by that age.”

Rep. DeLauro is correct about the impact of child trauma on brain development, as FGM survivor Kadi Doumbia described in grisly detail to the Connecticut legislature. DeLauro expounds throughout her book about her stellar legislative record on child advocacy. It’s time for DeLauro to focus on her own state’s failure to protect vulnerable children from the horrific FGM battery.

Victims of female genital mutilation have testified to state legislators around the country, including Connecticut, that FGM creates a lasting, deleterious impact on females. Ironically, DeLauro’s own state is a national embarrassment over its failure to protect little vulnerable girls and criminalize FGM.

It’s long overdue for the Connecticut legislature to pass legislation criminalizing female genital mutilation. This must be a priority in 2020 — for Connecticut and for the 14 other states that have failed to protect women and girls from the physical and emotional scars of female genital mutilation.

Elizabeth Yore is an international child protection attorney. She heads EndFGMToday, a national initiative to pass state and federal laws to criminalize FGM. She is the former general counsel for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the former general counsel at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.