This year, in March, my son went through an experience no little boy should have to go through, and I’m still seeking justice.
I’ve been at home with him and was planning to return to work. He is 2, and one day I arranged to take him to a daycare center for about an hour to get him acclimated.
Later that day while changing his diaper at home, I noticed his penis was red and irritated. It seemed odd, but I ignored it and cleaned him up.
The next day, I took him back for an hour and a half. When I was changing his diaper that night, I saw that his foreskin was completely retractable. The head looked bald and raw, the way the skin looks when you pull a hangnail too far back. It was really red at the head. He seemed a little dazed and out of it, and he fussed and cried when I tried to clean him. He didn’t want me to touch it at all, and he didn’t want to get into the tub.
I was shocked. I thought, did they really pull it all the way down? The whole thing was able to retract. I wanted answers.
When I called the daycare, they claimed nothing had happened, so I turned to public authorities. The first thing I did was call the police. I thought they’d be able to get some understanding of what happened before I would. But the officer who took the report seemed confused by my complaint, even though I explained the problem thoroughly.
That was going nowhere, so they sent me an investigator. She was of no help. She didn’t even know what time my son had been there—I had to tell her. The video she obtained from the supervisor showed only the worker’s face, and because the worker had a “straight face,” the investigator didn’t believe she had done anything wrong. I turned to the Alabama Department of Human Services, which has jurisdiction over these things, and got the same results. Everybody I contacted about this has been slow.
Even the doctors who examined my son don’t understand. Shortly after the incident, I took him in. My son’s usual doctor wasn’t available, and another doctor was filling in. She didn’t know anything about intact penises. She said, “Good thing boys are resilient. He won’t remember it.” I asked her if her kids were circumcised, and she said it wasn’t relevant. I said, “But it is, because you don’t understand.”
I made a follow-up appointment to see his regular doctor. She had examined him before and would know his penis looked different. But she disappointed me too. She said these things sometimes happen naturally. But I had done my research. I knew it’s not supposed to happen until he’s around 10 and told her. She said I was wrong. When I asked if she could write a note saying he had been retracted forcefully, she said she didn’t want to get legally involved.
My son’s doctor is the only person besides me who knows what his penis looked like before this happened. She did include in the notes that there are adhesions on his penis now. But still, it’s hard to get an attorney without direct evidence. I found an attorney I wanted to use, but he said he had a conflict of interest because he knew the owners of the daycare center.
Every step I took was a dead-end, and I was getting too irritated and angry. I was sexually molested when I was little, and every step I was taking to seek justice in this was making me angrier. I ended up letting the whole case go for a while, at least on the surface, so I could cool off. But I was still so angry inside, and I couldn’t let it go.
He doesn’t seem to be in pain now, but he does go into a daze sometimes. I can’t forget this. I can’t let that go by. They seriously hurt this man—forcing his foreskin down. How much pain was he in? How loud was his cry?
This is the pain I wanted to protect him from when I decided not to have him circumcised as a baby. I looked it up online and found information with Intact America and other sites. If you teach a kid to properly clean, you shouldn’t have problems. I knew it wouldn’t be that hard. But these people, they see an extra layer of skin and say it’s so much work. It’s really not. After his birth, the hospital staff kept trying to get me to OK his circumcision. What is our fascination with being circumcised? I feel like we should leave infants’ genitals alone until they’re old enough to decide whether or not to alter their body. The extra layer of skin does serve a purpose.
If I can’t turn to the justice system, they’re leaving me no choice but to handle it myself. Recently I started looking again for someone in the justice system to help me figure out how to move forward. I want to see what avenues I can’t go down.
They’re going to still feel me, because I’m going to be walking up and down the road where the daycare is with a big sign. Something’s got to give. As soon as I get off work, I will be down there, walking up and down, because somebody’s got to see it. Somebody’s got to hear this story. I’m not going to give up. I’m really not.