Couple’s quashed conviction for female genital mutilation declared a miscarriage of justice

Fiona Magennis

A couple have had their convictions for the female genital mutilation (FGM) of their one-year-old daughter, which were quashed after they spent two years in prison, declared a miscarriage of justice.

Their trial was the first of its kind in Ireland and was the subject of an RTÉ documentary late last year.

At the Court of Appeal on Friday, Judge Patrick McCarthy said newly discovered facts disclosed in expert reports show that there has been a miscarriage of justice.

“We find on the balance of probabilities that the applicants are factually innocent,” he said, “For this reason we grant a certificate pursuant to S9 (1) (a) of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993.”

The husband and wife became the first people to be convicted of the charge in the history of the State, after a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury found them guilty in November 2019 of carrying out an act of FGM on their daughter at a Dublin address on September 16th, 2016.

Both had pleaded not guilty.

Their convictions were overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2021 after it found the trial had been “unfair” because of “serious and far-reaching inaccuracies” in how the mother and father’s testimony was translated to the jury.

A jury at a retrial in 2023 failed to reach an agreement, and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) subsequently dropped the charges.

The couple, who are originally from a French-speaking region of Africa, subsequently launched a bid to have their quashed convictions declared a miscarriage of justice.

At the hearing in January, lawyers for the parents said that an examination of the child by Swedish FGM expert Prof Birgitta Essen in December 2023 proved that she had never been subjected to the procedure.

The court heard the DPP dropped the charges after a new report commissioned by the State “broadly” agreed with Prof Essen’s conclusions.