An Ethiopian Woman Says “Khalid Adem is Innocent”

I have sat through enough acrimonious divorce proceedings to know the levels to which people will stoop to get their own way. Divorce hearings have got to be some of the ugliest experiences in the world, even to those just forced to observe or testify. You can leave the courtroom wanting a drink and a shower — in that order.

Unfortunately, judges don’t have time to read child development research, or even basic, long-proved data on the harm that interrupted attachments have on developing children. Tangentially, just think of the repeated, thoughtless replacements of au pairs and nannies by those who can afford to hire them. The kids no sooner get attached to one caretaker only to find her replaced by someone else. And they no sooner form a bond with one mommy or daddy only to have her or him replaced by the next brief alliance in a string of serial marriages. I mean, in case you wonder why Hollowood children seem a bit messed up, those are two contributing factors right there.

In the Female Genital Mutilation case in Georgia, the discrepancies in the case are so large that anyone reasonably versed in child development — say, your average parent — would be able to drive a truck through the holes in what appears to be a cruel scam.
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Today, a comment came in from an Ethiopian woman whose opinion validates what I also suspect: Adem was set up.

Here is what she says:

As a woman from Ethiopia, I can tell you that there is no way Khalid could have circumcised his daughter.

Men never ever do the actual circumcision of girls. If done, it is arranged by the grandmother or mother with a female practitioner.

The grandmother and mother did it to help their divorce case. They should be investigated for hurting the girl. The mother did not notice the circumcision because it was not done until she did it herself with her grandmother. She is lying.

Please see my blog on this issue

The whole case is a farce

Her post is here. This is a snip:

However, FMC is also no longer practiced by significant portions of the urban population of Ethiopia. Talk to a random group of young Ethiopian women from Addis Ababa and they will tell you that they have not been circumcised (unlike their mothers). A lot of urban Ethiopians don’t even know what this practice entails.

Khalid simply does not fit the profile of an Ethiopian who would insist that his daughter be circumcised. He is not a nomad or peasant who immigrated from rural Ethiopia. He grew up in metropolitan Addis Ababa and came to the US at the age of sixteen. He is an educated, urban and modern African man who became an adult in America. It is extremely unlikely that a person like him would even think of having his daughter circumcised — let alone do it himself.

In Ethiopian, men never ever get involved in the actual ritual of female circumcision. FMC is a female ritual, and it is always the women (especially the grandmothers) that insist on and arrange for the circumcision ritual by a traditional practitioner.

So. It may be just as I suspected. Certainly, it is just as Hirsi Ali described it. Only she was five years old, not two. And there was no anesthesia or pain medicine, as there may have been in this incident.

This case cries out for justice. May the jury see what seems so plain from here.