EXCLUSIVE: Peterborough mom faces online threats after Facebook circumcision post

A Peterborough mom says she’s received a relentless barrage of online insults and threats after writing about her infant son’s circumcision on Facebook.

Christine, who didn’t want her last name revealed, said it all started after she posted a status update about the common medical procedure.

“It was a picture of my son. The title from the picture was ‘Michael did really good today at his circumcision.’ ”

An online anti-circumcision group called Mutilation Watch re-posted her update on its site.

Christine was then flooded with negative and at times, scary, messages.

“They were calling me a child abuser,” she told CityNews. “They said that I had my son circumcised because I wanted to perform oral sex on him…they were calling me a child molester. They said I should have my child taken away from me.”

“Some of them were even threatening to burn my house down.”

“One woman said she was in Peterborough a lot and even got my address and sent me a picture of an old house that I used to live in. It was really scary.”

The U.S.-based group Mutilation Watch trolls social media for baby photos and posts about circumcision.

“We are basically just trying to enlighten the world to the true horrors of circumcision,” Krystal Smith, one of the group’s administrators, told CityNews in a Skype interview.

“I understand that there are some morally grey areas with the idea of sharing pictures of people’s children. We feel that people should be more worried about the babies that are tortured on a regular basis.”

Smith said she didn’t condone the threats directed at Christine, but defended re-posting her son’s photo and opening the floodgate of negative comments.

“There’s absolutely no reason for death threats whatsoever,” Smith said. “That is something that we very much do not support. We ban anyone who goes too far with it.”

“We are definitely working well within legal boundaries,” she added. “It might be hurting people’s feeling but it’s not breaking any type of privacy rules.”

Christine said she’s contacted Facebook “probably 20 times” to ask that the page be taken down.

“Nothing was done,” she said, adding that she didn’t go to the police because it’s an American site.

“These people are threatening people,” she concludes. “I think that the page should be shut down. It’s just disgusting.”

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