Mö is the first intersex person in the world to file a mutilation complaint.
His case went to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which has just dismissed it, this Thursday, May 19, for a question of procedure.
However, the Court recognizes the illegal nature of sterilizations "without therapeutic purpose", deemed "incompatible" with "respect for the freedom and dignity" of humans, and opens the way to a future victory, once the procedural issues have been settled. .
She is the very first person in the world to file a complaint for genital mutilation.
Mö, an intersex person whose story we told in 2019, had been waiting for this decision for seven years.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) finally dismissed his request this Thursday, May 19, deemed "inadmissible" for a procedural question, while paving the way, according to his lawyer Mila Petkova, to a victory next on the merits.
For seven years now, Mö has been fighting in court to have a life of suffering, inflicted by doctors and a society that has never accepted its difference, recognized.
Mö, 44, was born with a variation in sexual development, i.e. atypical genitalia, like about 2% of the world's population.
Mö was in perfect health, but did not fit into the "man" or "woman" boxes as imagined by the doctors who followed him.
Five surgeries
So the medical profession convinced her parents that it was necessary to operate on her, to get her into one of these boxes, in this case, the "woman" box.
This is the beginning of a long series of medical acts, medical prescriptions of all kinds that will forever affect his mental and physical health.
In all, he underwent five major surgeries between 1980 and 1993. He was sterilized, he was injected with hormones, his external genitalia were corrected, considerably reducing the sensations at this level.
And he is forced into “bougirage” sessions, which are very similar to rape or torture sessions.
From age 4 to age 11, they have to go to the hospital regularly where they insert what looks like dildos to enlarge their vagina.
“They had cases with ten sizes of dildos.
I was naked, under the hospital paper shirt, I was cold, I was crying.
They looked at the size of the vagina, they had to maintain it all the time so that I was penetrable… until I was in pain”, recounts Mö Later.
We will ask his family to do it too.
Lies
These sessions and the associated heavy medical treatments will disrupt his life, his sexuality, plunge Mö into drugs and risky behavior, without Mö having the tools to understand what is happening to him.
Because the medical profession, accuses his lawyer Mila Petkova, voluntarily hid his condition from Mö: "There were real lies about his state of health", she explains to 20 Minutes .
“It would be desirable that there no longer exist in the minds of the parents the slightest ambiguity in the sex of their child so that little Mö is really brought up as a girl without any attitude of intersexuality”, reports for example the mail from a doctor.
For all these reasons, Mö had filed a complaint in France, in November 2015, for “violence resulting in mutilation or permanent disability”, “sexual violence” and for “definitive deterioration of the genitals”.
Mö's complaint was rejected by the court and then by the Court of Cassation because of the limitation period, which was ten years from the age of majority, but his lawyers argued that Mö had only been able to learn of his story. in 2000, when she finally manages to get her hands on her medical file.
The judges of the ECHR for their part dismissed Mö for a question of procedure: they and they believe that Mö should also have acted in civil proceedings and should have invoked in cassation in writing the arguments developed in first instance on torture - in particular the article 3 of the ECHR “No one may be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” – explains Benjamin Moron-Puech, professor of law at the University of Lyon II.
“We are not chimeras”
Even if the court's decision is disappointing for Mö, who will not be compensated for the moment, it is a good sign for the future since the Court recognizes the illegal nature of sterilizations "without therapeutic purpose", judged "incompatible" with "respect for the freedom and dignity" of humans.
"This judgment is a victory not for the victim herself but for the evolution of the rights of intersex people because it announces an evolution, since she says that children cannot be sterilized without their consent", explains Mila Petkova .
“The court manufactures an inadmissibility which allows it to save time, and from this inadmissibility, it allows itself not to answer the substantive question, while providing the bases for a future decision going in the direction of the applicant »,
For Mö it is a disappointment but this trial will have had a merit, he believes, that of “raising awareness that this is a real important social subject which it is urgent to talk about.
It has to be used to highlight all our difficulties and to prove that we exist, that we are not chimeras, or inventions of a pseudo-LGBT lobby”.
“The fight continues, and in many ways”
This decision is in any case one more warning addressed to France, where the consent of those operated on is still not required when they are minors.
"The minor's consent must be systematically sought if he is able to express his will and participate in the decision", thus indicates the bioethics law of August 2, 2021. However, as explained by Benjamin Moron-Puech, specialist in the intersex question in law, 87% of operations on intersex people are carried out before the age of 4, an age when the minor is not able to fully express his agreement.
For Mila Petkova, “the institutions condemn these interventions.
At all levels it is said that it is illicit, but the practices continue, nothing happens”.
Mö will now continue his legal action to have his suffering recognized: “The fight continues, and in many ways.
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20 seconds of context
In this article we have chosen, with Mö's agreement, to replace the personal pronouns he/she with “iel”.
We also decided to use the midpoint, to bring out the mark of both the masculine and the feminine in the chords.
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Torture
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Justice
Human rights