We need your help to ensure a state medical board does not continue to license doctors who perform female genital cutting on young girls.

In 2017, federal prosecutors charged a Detroit-area physician with performing female genital mutilation (FGM) on multiple young girls between seven and sixteen years old. It was touted as the first FGM prosecution in United States history.

The federal government lost the case so badly that the 1996 Federal FGM ban was ruled unconstitutional. Even though the doctor's own defense admitted she had performed a procedure that involved "removing mucous membrane from the girls' genitalia," she never faced justice. It would not be until 2020 that a new federal law against FGM was passed, but by then it was too late.

However, this is the exact situation state medical boards exist to handle. A fellow physician, a board-certified anesthesiologist, filed a formal complaint calling for her license to be revoked, writing that performing surgery on young girls without anesthesia "amounts to torture." Medical boards have the authority to revoke a doctor's medical license for far less serious behavior.

Michigan dismissed its investigation two months before the court ruling. The doctor who was federally prosecuted for FGM still holds an active, unrestricted Michigan medical license . She is still employed at an emergency room in the Detroit area and could be seeing patients to this day who have no idea their doctor performed FGM on young girls. Prosecutors estimated up to 100 victims over a 12-year period.

As someone who has been documenting the issue of childhood genital cutting in America for over a decade, I've spent the past month filing Freedom of Information Act requests to find out why. It was my original reporting that uncovered that a federally prosecuted FGM doctor still has her license and the medical board closed their case against her with an official record of "No Action Taken," but now I need your help.

I do not yet have the board's internal emails. These communications would show who made these decisions, what they knew, and why they chose not to act. These are public records that the government must make available by law. However, the Michigan state medical board is claiming it will cost $12,792.93 to search those emails and provide those records. It's a classic bureaucratic technique used when a government agency wants to avoid accountability, designed to make journalists go away.

We've challenged those fees as unreasonable, unjust, and internally contradictory. However, if our challenge is denied, I can't pay that bill alone. I've already spent nearly $1000 on this investigation and will likely need more to uncover the full truth. I am prepared to continue filing requests, challenging fees, and investigating until we know the truth, but we need your support.

This is more than one bad doctor. If a physician can be federally prosecuted for FGM and keep her medical license without so much as a hearing, there is a larger issue in the medical system and how we protect children. If it can happen in one state, it can happen where you live too.

Most Americans assume FGM is unambiguously illegal and aggressively enforced. What I've found instead is a system that creates the appearance of prohibition while quietly ensuring no one is ever actually held accountable. Complaints get filed. Investigations get opened. Then, somehow, nothing happens. The infrastructure exists to recognize the problem, but not to respond to it.

This isn't about preventing doctors from performing FGM. That already happened. Girls were harmed, a doctor was prosecuted, and the state agency responsible for medical licensing decided that none of it warranted action. This is about whether the public will have the information they need to hold the medical system accountable for protecting doctors who perform FGM. They don't want you to know what they did. I do. Every contribution is a vote for public accountability, government transparency, and protecting children from harmful genital cutting. With your support, we will uncover the truth.

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Brendon Marotta is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and author. His film American Circumcision appeared on Netflix, and he is the author of Children's Justice. He has spent over a decade documenting issues of childhood rights and medical ethics. You can follow his reporting on HegemonMedia.com.