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A man has been jailed for six-and-half years for endangerment after performing circumcisions.
Philip Ogbewe, who has an address in Greenlanes, Drogheda, Co Louth, pleaded guilty to seven counts of endangerment for performing six circumcisions on infant boys as well as another on a boy aged 5.
RTÊ reported that the 59-year-old was contacted by the children’s parents who discovered him by word of mouth among the African community and that he referred to himself as “Dr. Philip”, however he denies having made out he was a doctor.
The parents who approached Ogbewe who performed the procedures for a heavily discounted price of around €300 were shocked to discover that he was not in fact a doctor.
While Ogbewe claims to have used a numbing spray on the children, some of the parents claim that no pain relief was administered to their children.
Some of the parents had been quoted €1,500 to have the procedure done at a hospital but opted for the more affordable services of Ogbewe who charged between €300 and €350 in most cases.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that on one occasion Ogbewe handed the mother of one of the boys a plastic bag of detritus from the procedure to dispose of.
In another instance he refused to tell a nurse who had brought her son to him what he had used on the child.
The offences took place between January 2018 and October 2019 when Ogbewe was out on bail after circumcising another child in 2015 who had ended up in hospital due to complications.
Ogbewe was jailed in 2020 for offences related to the 2015 case for three years which was backdated to November of 2019 before being released in October 2021.
Although he had been charged with deception for allegedly calling himself a doctor, this charge was dropped by the prosecution.
Ogbewe, who has four other convictions related to road traffic offences, was granted an extension of his legal aid should he wish to appeal his sentence.
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