Alleged circumcision scandal girl had not been sexually assaulted

Manama: The five-year-old girl at the centre of an alleged circumcision scandal that shook Bahrain this week had not been sexually assaulted, the public prosecutor said.

“The report of the prosecution doctor who examined the girl concluded that she had not been physically assaulted and that her sexual organs have not been mutilated,” Osama Al Asfoor, the public prosecutor, said on Thursday afternoon.

The girl’s mother, a Bahraini divorcee, on Monday claimed that the daughter who was living with her estranged father in a Gulf country had been sexually assaulted and that she had been circumcised by a maid who damaged her sexual organs.

The girl was at the centre of a bitter custody battle.

The Bahraini mother and Gulf father had married six years ago, but divorced soon after the birth of their only daughter. The mother won a custody battle in Bahrain in 2006, but the father eventually had custody of the daughter after a court in his country ruled in his favour.

The 28-year-old mother, however, won visitation rights and often made the trip to her former husband's country to be reunited with her daughter. She was also allowed to receive her daughter in Bahrain.

During the girl’s April visit to Manama, the mother said that her daughter refused to eat and took her to a private clinic where doctors allegedly told her that she had been circumcised and that her organs had been damaged.

The mother took he daughter into a relative’s house where she hid for six days. However, she was arrested six days later after the father alerted his embassy in Manama and the police.

The mother charged that the father had performed an illegal circumcision on the child and filed an official complaint at the public prosecution which ordered the medical check-up.

The girl, in an interview with social experts, denied that she had been sexually assaulted, while the ex-husband's defence team said that the charges were baseless and that the mother’s claims lacked solid evidence.