DARWIN, Australia, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- The Northern Territory, Australia, Child Abuse Taskforce said an aboriginal circumcision ceremony that sent three teens to the hospital is not child abuse.
Three teenage boys were medically evacuated in December after a circumcision procedure that was done on 20 young men as part of an initiation ceremony, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Wednesday.
One of the boys, 17-year-old Bryce Miller, was injured so badly in the procedure, his grandfather said he found him sitting in a pool of blood.
"I wasn't happy at all, with the whole people who done the job," William Miller said, adding that no one in the family would ever take part in the ceremony again.
Bryce Miller, who begged his family to let him take part, said he doesn't regret his decision, but admits he realized something was wrong when it happened.
"When I got cut, and I seen the blood squirting through on the wrong side, it was bad. Squirting out bad ... heaps. And losing a lot of blood," he said.
The child abuse task force investigated the cultural ceremony and has so far found the injuries don't constitute child abuse.
"No abuse was found to have occurred and in the absence of that and in the absence of criminality ... it's a parental decision on how to bring up the kids," said Northern Territory Attorney General John Elferink.
