A father has been found not guilty of organising for his nine-year-old daughter to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) to punish her.

The 50-year-old man, of south London, had been accused of twice arranging for someone to cut the girl with a razor as she lay on a mat in the hallway.

He was also acquitted of five other charges at the Old Bailey, including child cruelty and wounding with intent.

The man, originally from West Africa, had denied all of the accusations.

The case is only the second FGM prosecution brought to court in the UK, both of which led to acquittals.

During the trial, jurors were told the child could not recall the identity of the person who allegedly subjected her to the ordeal twice between 2010 and 2013.

The girl said she cried in pain and begged for it to stop but her father just encouraged the cutter, the court heard.

The allegations came to light after the girl told a friend, whose mother contacted Childline.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43503416

A woman has revealed how she begged her father to stop the ‘terrible thing’ as he used a razer blade to cut her private parts. The teenager, who cannot be identified, claims she was just ten years old when her private parts were sliced with a razor blade as a punishment on two separate occasions. She told the Old Bailey that her father, a 50 year-old devout Christian, ignored her pleas and even ‘egged’ on the person cutting her at their family home in south London.

The alleged victim said: ‘I was asked to lie down on a mat. I knew what was going to happen. I was begging stop, stop doing it because it was really painful. It did bleed a lot as well. ‘He wouldn’t listen. He would still encourage the person to do it. He just gave the person a signal to keep on doing it. I could feel the really deep cuts inside. I was just supposed to take it.’ She said she was not given any painkilling drugs and felt pain when she sat down or urinated in the days afterwards. The teenager said she didn’t understand what was really happening at the time because of her age.

he said: ‘I would do something wrong and he would threaten me with it. He accused me of quite a lot of things I never did. A large sum of money went missing and I swear I never took it.’ She said she was cut twice in the same year and was later threatened with it without it happening.

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/13/fgm-victim-tells-court-begged-dad-stop-terrible-thing-7384244/

The woman who cut me was my mother’s friend. She just thought it was the normal thing to do. I’ve since asked her why she did it, and her excuse was that when I was born they could tell from my eyes that I was strong-headed and they wanted to tame me, to protect me from their forecast promiscuity

I was 15 years old when I got married. It had been arranged by my family and I’d been sent to America to live with a man I barely knew. A child, alone in an unfamiliar country, I discovered that I was a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM), when I had my vagina cut back open to have sex.

I was subjected to infibulation, the most extreme form of FGM, when I was just one week old in my home country, The Gambia.

The woman who cut me was my mother’s friend. She just thought it was the normal thing to do. I’ve since asked her why she did it, and her excuse was that when I was born they could tell from my eyes that I was strong-headed and they wanted to tame me, to protect me from their forecast promiscuity.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/international-women-s-day-fgm-safe-hands-for-girls-big-sister-movement-a8244026.html

When detective chief inspector Leanne Pook began investigating allegations that a father in Bristol had allowed his six-year-old daughter to undergo female genital mutilation, she hoped the case – the second to reach court – could go on to make legal history. It has been more than three decades since FGM was made illegal in the UK, but there is yet to be a successful prosecution. The first case, in 2015, resulted in an NHS doctor being acquitted in less than 30 minutes.

In the runup to the trial DCI Pook, the FGM police lead for Avon and Somerset, said she felt a huge sense of responsibility to prove the police were taking the hidden crime seriously. Yet, far from becoming a landmark victory, the Bristol case collapsed last month after a judge at Bristol Crown Court ordered the jury to return a verdict of not guilty and described aspects of the case as “deeply troubling”.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/07/reported-cases-fgm-rise-sharply-uk-no-court-convictions

Research shows 75% incidence of female genital mutilation in Bohra Muslim community, despite government claim there is no evidence of the practice

Just weeks after the Indian government declared that there was no data to support the existence of female genital mutilation in the country, a small study has shown a 75% incidence across the Bohra Muslim community.

“My mum told me that a lady would come to remove some extra skin from down there. When the day came, my great-grandmother was holding me tight on her bed,” said 26-year-old “SH”, a law student cited in the report, recalling how she had been cut at the age of seven.

She remembers “sitting on the toilet, crying of unbearable pain, too scared to even pee”. Her mother had reassured her that “everyone in the building has undergone this procedure”, referring to the blocks of flats in Byculla, in the heart of Mumbai, where the Bohra Muslim community has lived for decades.

Her account and those of 83 women and 11 men across five Indian states are included in the first-ever study about female genital mutilation (FGM) in India, compiled by three independent researchers and a coalition of Bohra women against FGM.

The qualitative research, which was released in February, shows the prevalence of FGM among India’s Bohra Muslims – 75% of respondents said they had subjected their daughters to the practice. The survey was conducted with respondents in communities across the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Kerala.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/mar/06/study-reveals-fgm-india-female-genital-mutilation