Exclusive: At least 14,250 women and girls living in the UK have undergone FGM

“It was painful, so painful, there was blood everywhere,” Yeabu recalls. “There were other people watching in the room. They were singing their own songs. They were happy when they were cutting me.”

Yeabu* was 16 when her parents sent her to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) in Sierra Leone, telling her afterwards: “You’ve become a proper woman now.”

She says she remembers knowing what was going to happen to her, but was too frightened to fight after seeing other children held down while fighting and biting the cutters.

“As a young girl you have to do it because for them it’s decency,” she explains. “When you’re with your man you are clean if you do that, that’s the mentality.

“I was frightened but we don’t disrespect our people. I they say that’s part of our tradition we have to go through it, but it’s not something I wanted.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/fgm-female-genital-mutilation-police-heathrow-airport-crackdown-operation-limelight-national-centre-a8155981.html

Fears of having children taken into care may be driving a recent drop in the number of women and girls who have experienced female genital mutilation (FGM) identified by the NHS, a charity has warned.

NHS Digital figures published this week show that the number of new cases of FGM reported by the NHS between July and September has fallen by a third since reporting first started in April 2015.

The latest figures show 1,060 women were identified in the NHS as having experienced FGM, also known as female circumcision or “cutting”, down from 1,570 in the first quarter of reporting.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/fgm-cases-new-figures-drop-could-be-misleading-warning-forward-equality-now-freedom-rcm-a8093741.html

A woman and child have been banned from travelling abroad, to avoid the risk of female genital mutilation (FGM).

On Thursday, Sheffield Family Court gave police the go-ahead to issue FGM protection orders to protect “a victim and a potential victim”.

A total of eight FGM protection orders have been granted to South Yorkshire Police since they were introduced in 2015.

Police said the two had been identified during an ongoing investigation.

The orders allow police to “prevent them from being taken out of the UK and into a situation where they could be at greater risk”, a South Yorkshire Police spokesperson said.

FGM, also termed female circumcision, is illegal in the UK and carries a sentence of up to 14 years in jail.

The term refers to any procedure that alters or injures the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

Det Sgt Suzanne Jackson, of South Yorkshire Police, said: “The effectiveness of these orders has enabled us to safeguard victims and potential victims, and further prevent the detrimental and devastating long-term effect they could and may have been subjected to.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-42030739

Your sponsored roundtable on educating girls (Society, 4 October) is to be commended both for laying bare the critical need to address this issue in general, and for acknowledging the complications and taboos around menstruation as a severe obstacle to progress. It is difficult to understand, however, why the painful topic of female genital mutilation was not also a focus of discussion. One required element in some communities of the lengthy initiation ceremonies to “adulthood” mentioned is that girls must undergo FGM. This cruel initiation, often at or just before puberty, is the marker by which potential husbands (often already owners of other wives) are in traditional thinking assured of their soon-to-be purchased wife’s virginity. Raising a girl and paying for her FGM is expensive – ceremonies are often held around harvest time when there’s more money – and bride price is increased if the girl-woman is “pure”.

Until girls are no longer perceived as chattels for exchange on the open market, the practices of FGM and early “marriage” (child rape) will continue. As your commentators acknowledge, FGM and early marriage will only be abandoned once men and women alike see these practices as patriarchy incarnate, the literal imposition of men’s power on female bodies. Assumed patriarchal entitlement remains to be challenged in many parts of the world, but nowhere more than in places where its imposition actually precludes young women even receiving an education which will empower both them personally and their wider communities.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/06/fgm-and-disability-also-hinder-girls-education

Police are targeting Eurostar terminals to protect children from female genital mutilation (FGM) as officers say they are ‘absolutely determined’ to obtain the first successful prosecution for the crime since it was outlawed over 30 years ago.

Inspector Allen Davis, from Scotland Yard’s sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse command, said it was ‘really important’ to show the practice, made illegal in 1985, is not tolerated.

A police operation to protect children from practices including FGM, forced marriage, breast ironing and child abuse linked to beliefs focused on Eurostar terminal in London and Kent today.

Difficulties getting people to report FGM and testify against family members is one of a ‘number of reasons’ nobody has yet been convicted, Mr Davis said at St Pancras.

‘We are absolutely determined to obtain a successful prosecution,’ he said.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4877470/FGM-campaign-aims-protect-children-coming-abroad.html

“FGM is violence, child abuse and sexual assault  …and of course we handed out Vulva cupcakes” is not a phrase you hear every day. But of course, it isn’t every day you speak to Leyla Hussein.

Leyla has been at the forefront of the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM) for over a decade. Her willingness to talk candidly – and at times even humerously– about her experiences has played a key role in challenging the culture of silence around FGM.

Leyla’s campaigning has taken many forms from fronting TV documentaries, to founding therapeutic services for survivors, to lobbying parliament At the heart of all of her work, however, is an acute understanding of the physical and psychological impact of FGM; an understanding rooted both in her personal experiences and her psychotherapeutic training.

Lewis Garland spoke to Leyla about her path into activism, the progress being made in the fight against FGM and the difficulties, from threats of violence to the impact of austerity, faced by those on the frontline.

What was your path to becoming an anti-FGM activist?

“I never planned to become an activist. I was cut when I was seven years old but it wasn’t until many years later that I began to question the practice. The catalyst was when I had my daughter. I found the whole process very traumatic but no one seemed to understand why. Then an amazing and brave health professional asked if I had had FGM and supported me in a way no one else had before. I am naturally curious and started asking why this had happened to me and why so many girls are being cut. My activism comes from this curiosity and my fierce determination to protect my daughter.”

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/tle-pick/fgm-violence-child-abuse-sexual-assault-leyla-hussein/08/09/

Almost all women aged 15 to 49 in the east African state of Somaliland have suffered female genital mutilation. But a campaign to highlight the physical and psychological damage caused by the practice is starting to have an impact