Female genital mutilation parties becoming held in United kingdom, MPs told

Fahma Mohamed (C) and fellow anti-FGM campaigners deliver a petition to parliament. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian

The cutting of girls at female genital mutilation “parties” is even now going on in Britain and not just taking place abroad, healthcare professionals have informed MPs.

The Commons residence affairs decide on committee has heard that “cutters” – typically older women – are flown into Britain for the events, at which as a lot of as a dozen girls might be operated on.

Janet Fyle, of the Royal University of Midwives, explained that by the time the authorities could be alerted, the cutter would have left. “By the time the girls are cut, the female ‘cutter’ is on her flight back to the country she came from. We can’t go after the cutter. We never know who she or he is. The parents have to be held responsible,” she said.

Professor Janice Rymer, of the Royal University of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, shared Fyle’s belief that FGM was happening in Britain. Asked about its scale, she mentioned: “We have no thought. We have no data but I am certain it is taking place in this nation.”

The MPs also heard proof that 75 to 80 girls were undergoing FGM reversal operations in Britain each and every year.

The line of questioning by the MPs in the last evidence session of their inquiry into FGM suggested that their report is likely to recommend that healthcare pros be positioned below a new statutory duty to report situations to the police.

The health authorities have been asked for their response to a tv and poster campaign to raise awareness of FGM, and to a requirement that any ladies who faced a risk of mutilation need to have it recorded in their paediatric “red guide”, which is issued to every little one in Britain.

The MPs heard from French legal authorities that statutory reporting to the police was essential in France and that these accountable for mutilating women had been jailed for up to eight years.

The 1st man or woman to be charged underneath Britain’s FGM laws appeared at the Old Bailey final week. Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena, 31, is accused of carrying out the procedure on a female following she gave birth at Whittington hospital in Archway, north London, on 24 November 2012.

Scotland Yard has launched a campaign to avoid women getting flown abroad to be mutilated, senior officers advised the select committee. They blamed the lack of prosecutions more than the previous twenty many years on healthcare experts for failing to report instances to the police.

Nevertheless, Professor Nigel Mathers, of the Royal University of General Practitioners, stated on Tuesday that police had been not placing the blame in the right place.

He stated it was not needed to area a statutory duty on doctors to report situations of FGM simply because they have been presently below a statutory obligation to report cases of child abuse, and FGM was a form of this: “The problems is in identifying people involved,” he mentioned.

His issues was supported by Rymer, who said that she agreed with statutory reporting in principle, but that most cases encountered by gynaecologists and obstetricians concerned pregnant females in their 20s who had been lower sixteen or so years before.

But she was advised by the committee chair, Keith Vaz, that he had no sympathy with that place and it was for the director of public prosecutions, not healthcare specialists, to determine no matter whether a prosecution should proceed in this kind of situations.

Female genital mutilation parties becoming held in United kingdom, MPs told