BREAKING THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE:
Witnesses Speak Out
Betty Katz Sperlich, R.N., and Mary Conant, R.N.
Presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations,University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 9-11, 1996.
Infant male circumcision is a brutal custom carried on from one generation to the next in the United States. How can we break this cycle of violence against children? Swiss psychologist Dr. Alice Miller discusses the cycle of violence in her book, Banished Knowledge, saying,
In my experience, the main reason parents give for circumcision is because the father is circumcised."When a small child is tortured by ignorant adults...unless his subsequent life allows the old wounds to heal in love...will later injure [his] own children, maintaining that [his] behavior does no harm because [his] own loving parents did the same."
As enlightened witnesses, each one of us has special contributions to offer, especially those of us who were in the circumcision room strapping babies onto circumcision boards and witnessing the screams and the mutilations.
Accomplices to circumcision don't come forward as witnesses because they fear backlash from both those who are circumcised and from those who have circumcised others. Witnesses face threats to their jobs, ridicule, and the accusation of harassing innocent parents. Accomplices are shamed and discredited into silence.
Those who speak out against the brutality are saying what everyone realizes, but is afraid to admit: genital mutilation of babies is sick and wrong.
[The complete paper is published in Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy, New York: Plenum Press, 1997 (ISBN 0-306-45589-7).]
Betty Katz Sperlich, R.N., is, along with Mary Conant, R.N., co-founder of Nurses for the Rights of the Child, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rights of infants and children to genital integrity. Her work includes empowering, supporting and advising other nurses who want to stop the socially-sanctioned genital mutilation of minors. Since 1981, she has served as a staff nurse primarily in maternal-child health at St. Vincent Hospital, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and since 1992 she has been an R.N. Conscientious Objector to infant circumcision. She has a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Harvard University.
Mary Conant, R.N., is, along with Betty Katz Sperlich, R.N., co-founder of Nurses for the Rights of the Child. Her work includes empowering, supporting and advising other nurses who want to stop the socially-sanctioned genital mutilation of minors. Since 1979, she has served as a maternal-child health staff nurse at St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and since 1992 she has been an R.N. Conscientious Objector to infant circumcision.
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