US

No Picture
News Briefs

Federal judge rejects ban on female genital mutilation

November 21, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Detroit, Mich., Nov 21, 2018 / 02:56 pm (CNA).- A federal judge in Detroit ruled Tuesday that a law banning female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States is unconstitutional as it is currently written. This ruling dismisses six charges of FGM against a Michigan doctor in the first court case challenging the FGM ban in the U.S.

Female genital mutilation, or the cutting or removal of a female’s clitoris and labia, had officially been banned in the United States since 1997 under the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act.

Dr. Jumana Nagarwala was arrested in 2017 and was accused of cutting the genitals of at least six girls at a clinic in the Detroit area, Fox 2 Detroit reports. The defense argued that the doctor was not cutting, but “scraping” the genitalia.

U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled that congress does not have the authority to make FGM illegal because the ban fell under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Since the FGM is not “commercial or economic in nature,” Friedman wrote, the clause is not applicable in this case.

The three adults charged in the case— Nagarwala, another doctor and his wife— are members of the Dawoodi Bohra, a small Indian Shiite Muslim sect located in a suburb of Detroit.

Nagarwala’s lawyers cited religious freedom to defend her actions, saying she and the other doctor were being “persecuted for practicing their religion by a culture and society that doesn’t understand their beliefs and is misinterpreting what they did.”

Until modern times, the cutting or removal of female genitalia was considered a “cure” for various ills – hysteria, excessive sexual desire, lesbianism, etc. and was covered by some insurance providers well into the 1970s.

Now, FGM is widely understood by the United Nations and numerous other international human rights groups as a “harmful traditional practice.” The procedure has no health benefits for women, multiple health risks, and is considered a human rights violation. Some of those health risks include severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

In the United States, an estimated 500,000 girls under the age of 13 have had the cutting procedure or are at risk of receiving it. The practice is found in some Christian communities as well as Muslim— many religious leaders, including Pope Francis, have spoken out against FGM.

Nagarwala still faces conspiracy to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and obstruction charges, according to Fox 2.

 

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Cardinal DiNardo denies priests named in report ‘credibly accused’

November 21, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Houston, Texas, Nov 21, 2018 / 09:16 am (CNA).- Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, has denied that he allowed two priests to remain in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse against them.

 

CBS News aired a report Nov. 20, citing accusations against two Houston priests, Fr. Terence Brinkman and Fr. John Keller, who are presently in active ministry within the archdiocese.

 

During the meeting of the U.S. bishops’ conference held in Baltimore last week, CBS asked DiNardo if he was aware that “you have two priests with credible sexual abuse allegations currently in active ministry in your diocese?”

 

DiNardo, who serves as president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, asked which priests were being referenced. On hearing the names of Brinkman and Keller, he immediately responded that neither was a credible allegation.

 

“That’s not a credible one,” DiNardo said of the accusation against Keller. Regarding the allegation against Brinkman the cardinal replied that “[the accusation against] Terry was never credible.”

 

Under the Dallas Charter and Essential Norms governing how U.S. dioceses are to handle sexual abuse allegations against priests, a “credible” accusation is any allegation which has the semblance of truth or not found to be manifestly false or frivolous.

 

Since 2002, all accusations of sexual abuse against a priest in an American diocese are examined by an independent, lay-led diocesan review board which determines if they are “credible.”

 

Citing court documents, the report says that Fr. Brinkman was accused of sexually abusing a minor, but that a civil case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston said that the accuser had offered a physical description “that does not match Fr. Brinkman.”

 

The website Bishop-Accountability lists the accusation as having been made in a civil suit filed in July 2010, and concerns alleged events in the mid 1970s. The CBS report made no reference to these dates but did display the same image of Fr. Brinkman that appears on Bishop-Accountability.

 

Fr. Thomas Keller is accused by Mr. John LaBonte of giving him alcohol and fondling him in his bed during an overnight trip. LaBonte was 16 at the time of the alleged incident.

 

LaBonte told CBS that he presented his allegation to the then-Diocese of Galveston-Houston in 2002, at the height of the last sexual abuse crisis in the Church in the United States.

 

Citing a letter received he in 2003, LaBonte says the diocese confirmed that Keller behaved in a manner “inappropriate for a priest” and was receiving “therapy” but that they “could not conclude” that that the incident “constituted sexual abuse.”

 

Both Keller and Brinkman remain in active ministry. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston could not be reached for comment.

 

DiNardo has committed to release a list of all clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston by the end of January 2019. That list will include accusations dating back seven decades.

[…]