14th January 2013

The Independent:Female genital mutilation - unreported, ignored and unpunished

Ten years after new legislation, still no one has been charged
The failure to punish anyone for carrying out female genital mutilation (FGM) in almost a decade since Labour introduced a new law designed to stamp out the practice is forcing prosecutors to seek alternative methods to tackle the problem. The Government was facing growing criticism from campaigners after an Independent on Sunday investigation into the horrifying practice known as “cutting”, in which the genitals of women and girls are severed by unqualified people in the belief it will preserve the girl’s virginity.

Only a few authorities have reported evidence of the illegal practice in the past three years; many admitted they did not even have a policy in place to deal with cases. Three government departments said they do not collect statistics on the prevalence of the problem.

The findings confirm campaigners’ fears that laws designed to stamp out FGM are failing to protect tens of thousands of British women and girls every year, and have not led to a single conviction. In contrast, France has convicted more than 100 complicit parents and FGM “practitioners” since 1988.

The DPP said he feared it would take another quarter of a century for present anti-FGM laws on their own to produce successful prosecutions, as they ultimately depended on girls reporting their own families to the police. “The nub of the problem is that we are talking about girls of 10, 11 or even younger. We can do all we can to make clear that FGM is an offence, but it is unlikely that a girl would come forward and give evidence against her parents and be separated from them. If we hope against hope that a girl will come forward, we’ll be waiting 25 years,” he said. He added that he was actively exploring ways to use a wider offence where the authorities would not necessarily need a child to be a witness.

The DPP admitted that prosecutors were being hampered by the failure to collect statistics on the numbers of women affected. “We haven’t got the full picture. That needs to change.” He said his plan of action also included the collection of “more robust data on allegations of FGM, so the scale of the problem can be gauged”.

The lack of clear statistics contrasts starkly with Department of Health research carried out in 2007 which estimated that as many as 80,000 women in the UK – more than a quarter of them under the age of 15 – are at risk of having all or part of their external genitals removed, in line with ancient customs. The practice occurs in dozens of countries in Africa, and in some areas of the Middle East and Asia, where it is claimed FGM preserves a girl’s virginity until marriage by limiting her sexual behaviour. The ritual has been illegal in Britain since 1985, and the United Nations General Assembly last month approved a resolution to ban FMG internationally following protests over its lasting impact on the physical and mental health of victims.

However, campaigners have warned that many young girls have been taken out of UK primary schools by their parents to be cut overseas, often with razors, knives or broken glass, usually without anaesthetic.

A Freedom of Information request to more than 500 hospitals and local education authorities found that fewer than 50 kept records of women and girls who were found to have suffered FGM, believed to have undergone the procedure or suspected of being at risk. Many police forces refused to release data, citing “confidentiality” and “sensitivity”.

Jane Ellison, a Conservative MP who is chairman of the all-party FGM group, said knowledge of the problem among public authorities was “patchy at best and often non-existent”. She added: “The law is very clear but I think the implementation of it has been woeful. There has been too much reliance on the idea of a traumatised seven- or eight-year-old girl walking into a police station and reporting her parents, whom she loves and trusts, as criminals.”

An Association of Chief Police Officers spokesman said: “Detection can be difficult because some children are exposed to the practice before they enter the schooling system. There are dedicated officers working in this area and police will investigate where there is information that such practices are occurring. Officers are working with community representatives to highlight serious health issues that can arise.”