UK ‘needs to put female genital mutilation cutters in court to stamp out the practice’

 
Backing: International Development Minister Lynne Featherstone said religious leaders could force change
Rebecca Reid

Police should target “cutters” who perform genital mutilation on girls in Britain, rather than the parents who pay for it, International Development minister Lynne Featherstone says.

The minister, who this week visited Kenya to see how female genital mutilation is being stamped out there, said Britain needs to speed up the first prosecution here to send a warning that the practice will not be tolerated.

FGM has been illegal in the UK since 1985 but nobody has ever been prosecuted — a fact blamed partly on the reluctance of children to give evidence against their families.

Ms Featherstone, who plans to meet Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Niven, of the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command, to discuss the issue, said: “The cutters who are performing illegally… they must be the first route in. It will remain difficult to get the parents. Prosecuting cutters is the more obvious route in…the view is it is challenging to get parents.

The answer is not 20,000 sets of parents in prison. But we do need the prosecution message to be made. I am afraid there does need to be an example case.”

Ms Featherstone visited a town in Kenya this week where the Catholic church and a group of male village elders are helping to stamp out the life-threatening practice.

She is carrying out research to see if any of the anti-FGM work abroad can be used in the UK, and said: “There are 200,000 people of Kenyan origin in Britain, mainly in London. To make our UK girls safe we have to plough on with this FGM work to tackle it at its source, which is predominantly Africa.” She added: “There is always the risk that the diaspora will take their girls out of the country even though it is illegal and difficult. It happens all the time.”

In the Kenyan town she visited teenage girls no longer have their external genitals cut in readiness for marriage, and are instead sent away into “seclusion” for a week to learn about becoming a woman, in a rite of passage similar to that of teenage boys.

The NSPCC launched a helpline on Monday for people worried about girls at risk of FGM, which can also involve a piercing or removal of the clitoris. It has already had 28 calls, and 13 reports have been made to police.

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