Senegal's police confirm anal examinations of female suspects, and call them consensual

Senegal’s National Police have publicly acknowledged, for the first time, the use of anal examinations as an investigative procedure — and, in the case at issue, their use on cisgender heterosexual women. The statement, issued on the force’s Facebook page, says the examinations were carried out with the consent of those involved.

The acknowledgement was reported and analysed today by Erasing 76 Crimes, whose correspondent Moïse Manoël-Florisse had documented the practice in an earlier report in August. It appears to be the first time a Senegalese public authority has confirmed the use of the procedure to gather medical evidence of an alleged offence involving “unnatural acts”.

The case

Seven people were arrested on 28 July in Rufisque Est, in the Dakar region, in connection with an investigation involving alleged sextortion and online prostitution. Several of the suspects were subjected to anal examinations and HIV tests. The police statement says requests for medical expertise on serological status, and for a rectal examination “with the consent of the respondents”, were sent to the director of the Youssou Mbargane Diop hospital centre in Rufisque, and that one woman in the case tested positive for HIV.

Of the five men arrested, one ultimately said he was bisexual. The others, including the two women charged in connection with online prostitution, have consistently maintained that they are heterosexual. All those involved were brought before the Rufisque public prosecutor’s office on 3 August. Erasing 76 Crimes notes that Senegalese media have not reported on subsequent proceedings.

The problem with “consent”

The police statement asserts consent and stops there. Erasing 76 Crimes raises the questions that would need answering before that word means anything: whether the individuals were told the precise nature and purpose of the examination; whether consent was given verbally or in writing; who obtained it; whether refusal was actually available; what a refusal would have cost them; and whether anyone was able to speak to a lawyer first.

None of those have been answered. Nor has the force explained the legal basis for applying the procedure to women at all. What it has not done is deny that cisgender heterosexual women were examined.

Consent obtained in police custody, from people facing charges that carry years in prison, in a country where refusing an officer’s request carries obvious risk, is not consent in any sense a medical ethics board would recognise. That is not a subtle point, and it is the reason international bodies have addressed the practice as a category rather than case by case.

The medical position has been settled for a decade

Forced anal examinations have no evidentiary value. This is not a contested claim.

The Independent Forensic Expert Group, a body of forensic medicine specialists convened by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, stated in May 2016 that the examination has no value in detecting abnormalities in anal sphincter tone that can reliably be attributed to consensual anal intercourse — and that conducting such examinations forcibly is humiliating, demeaning and almost invariably causes significant psychological suffering. The World Medical Association adopted a resolution in October 2017 calling for a ban and urging physicians not to take part, with specific reference to heterosexual women.

The UN Committee Against Torture has condemned the practice in its country reviews, and the UN Special Rapporteur on torture has said it amounts to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Human Rights Watch has documented its use across at least ten countries — Afghanistan, Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Zambia and Senegal.

Erasing 76 Crimes also points to domestic law: Article 7 of the Senegalese Constitution provides that every individual has the right to physical integrity, and Senegal is party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Convention Against Torture.

The wider context in Senegal

Same-sex sexual activity remains criminalised in Senegal under Article 319 of the penal code. That article was amended this year — a bill adopted by the Council of Ministers in February 2026 hardened the penalties substantially, defining “unnatural acts” to include any sexual act between two people of the same sex and raising the punishment to a term of five to ten years’ imprisonment with a fine of 2 to 10 million CFA francs, up from a previous range of one to five years.

The amendment landed in a year that has already seen repeated mass arrests. Erasing 76 Crimes reported in August that 28 of 99 men arrested on same-sex conduct charges had been released, and separately documented the arrest of eight women suspected of lesbianism in the Dakar metropolitan area. Forced anal examinations of men suspected of same-sex conduct have been documented in the country since at least December 2025.

What is new here is the extension of the procedure to women who say they are heterosexual, in a case that is not primarily about same-sex conduct at all. On Erasing 76 Crimes’ account this makes Senegal the second country, after Afghanistan, in which invasive examinations of this kind have been documented as part of a criminal investigation involving cisgender heterosexual women.

That trajectory is the thing to watch. A procedure introduced to police one criminalised group has moved outward, as these procedures generally do, to anyone the state finds convenient to examine. The organisations tracking it — Erasing 76 Crimes among a very small number of outlets covering Senegal’s courts in any language — are doing so with less funding and fewer partners than at any point in the last decade. The record they are keeping is, for now, the only one there is.