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Dad Watched YouTube To Learn How to Circumcise Son
A man who used a box cutter to cut off his infant sons’ foreskin at home told a North Carolina jury he watched videos on the internet to learn how to do it.
Gives you a whole new look at the medical degree from Google University, doesn’t it?
Johnny Eric Marlowe has been sentenced to one hundred fifty days in jail for circumcising two of his kids at home with the box cutter – one each in 2005 and 2006. Marlowe’s ex-wife, Amber, testified that the father of fourteen with no medical training allowed one of the boys to bleed for eleven hours after the “surgery,” and asked for the court to give him the maximum sentence allowable.
Instead he got a misdemeanor count of child abuse and a few months in jail – the North Carolina jury was deadlocked on the charge regarding the second boy’s circumcision.
Marlowe told the court God told him to circumcise his sons. And what do you know – he’s done it to himself too!
He’s also kidnapped someone and been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. And did we mention he’s an admitted polygamist with a history of opting out on medical attention?
Back in 2004, he checked his wife out of a hospital in Pennyslvania when doctors suggested she have a Cesearean birth because their child was large (nearly twelve pounds). In that case, he was right – she delivered the baby at another hospital and was able to have a natural birth as she had with six previous kids. But while he was championed then as a man standing up for the rights of a family to choose their own medical care, hindsight allows you to wonder if it might have been indicative of his true state of mind.
It’s true at-home circumcisions are common. You know them better as a bris or brit milah. But if your rabbi told you he just watched a bunch of YouTube videos and brandished a box cutter, I’m pretty sure you’d chase him back to the synagogue.
Image: Culthelp
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