RTÉ investigates First Conviction

[Apileofballyhoo]

https://www.rte.ie/news/investigations-unit/2025/1011/1537945-first-conviction-a-family-torn-apart-a-system-on-trial/

Jaysus.

I haven't seen it but heard the discussion about this case on Pat Kenny's show this morning. Shocking stuff.

Thank you for that link. That is very interesting and very horrifying in equal measures. Will have to listen to it.

Wow. Thanks for this link @Apileofballyhoo- fascinating story.

I just watched it last night and I was speechless really. I don't even know where to start I'm so shocked by it. I kind of knew the courts weren't great for speakers of anything but English as it's well known among native Irish speakers that there's a disadvantage there for them, but I actually kind of assumed it was one of those things where services were better provided for speakers of foreign languages than for Irish speakers as they have actual interpreters. But it turns out the interpreter can say any old gobbledegook as there are no checks, no standards, nothing.

I feel like the rest of it is pure racism really.

The podcast is very good. Listened to it recently. A shocking story of pure racism.

Dr Sinead Harty, who examined the child said, on the basis of the physical examination, that the head and glans of the victim’s clitoris had been completely removed, that this was consistent with FGM, and could not have been caused by falling on a toy.

The Swedish expert is keen on not stigmatising migrant communities, to the extent of denying FGM happens at all.

https://www.irishruleoflaw.ie/ireland_first_case_prosecuting_and_convicting_female_genital_mutilation

https://www.uu.se/en/news/2019/2019-02-05-birgitta-essen-we-mustnt-treat-muslim-women-as-collective-victims

I am prepared to believe that the translation service was inadequate and that that was wrong, but the doctors looked at the child's body.

And I don't trust RTÉ to present the genital mutilation of children as a bad thing if it is a cultural choice by adults.

But wasn't it found in the end that the clitoris was completely intact? They got it completely wrong. That's why the parents were eventually let out.