Yesterday as I went through boarding at Gatwick Airport I smiled as I watched all the excited children going off on their holidays with their families. Everyone had on their new holiday clothes, and despite the crowded check-ins, people were in a good mood. I boarded my flight to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Addis is a busy hub with connections across Africa.
As we began to cruise, I noticed that many of the women on my flight were wearing full black abayas with hijabs, as were the girls they were with, who were aged between eight and 12. I soon realised that these groups consisted only of women: little girls with their mothers and grannies. There were no men. I remembered that this was the start of the long summer holiday, and that these children did not know what was going to happen to them.
It is the start of the ‘cutting season’. Every year, African women living across the world will take their pre-pubescent daughters back to their place of origin to suffer female genital mutilation – or FGM, for those who are in the trade of trying to stop it.
In Somalia, FGM consists of adult women holding the girls down whilst a ‘cutter’ uses a razor blade to remove the girls’ genitals. Their clitoris, their labia minora and majora. They are then sewn up with just a small hole left for urination and menstruation. They don’t get any anaesthetics. The cutter is paid perhaps a pound or two per girl.
When the girls marry, the man opens them up with a knife for intercourse.
Why is FGM done in the school holidays? The families know that FGM is a criminal offence in the UK, so, to avoid being caught, they take their girls in July, knowing that any infection and immediate pain will have eased by the start of school in September.
It is not just Somalis, but Sierra Leonians, Ethiopians, some Nigerians and Sudanese who put their girls through FGM. Even the Masai of Tanzania and Kenya do it to their children. Indeed, so do some Kurds, Indonesian, Malaysian and Egyptian families.
I am in the business of trying to stop this violence. With 40 years working in policing, either in the UK or advising on it in trouble spots, protecting the vulnerable is in my blood.
I have a message for Home Secretary Yvette Cooper
As one of the first police and crime commissioners, I elevated this issue into public conscience more than ten years ago. I embarrassed the police chiefs into trying to do more, and it worked for a while. I remember being delighted to see plain clothes officers approaching people at the departure gates at Heathrow and Gatwick. Once, I was impressed by the diligence of two detectives from the Sussex Police at Gatwick, who had worked out that the mothers were avoiding detection by routing to Africa by indirect routes: via Istanbul, for example. I watched them as they ‘pulled’ likely groups and warned them that they might be checked on their return.
Over the years, however, these interventions appear to me to have stopped. I imagine it is another case of police, social services and educationalists fearing being called racist. I remember Border Force once produced a training video to inform staff about FGM, but neutered it by using white characters.
I have a message for Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Instead of grandstanding to your union paymasters and wasting tens of millions we do not have on an Orgreave enquiry, put your money where your mouth is and do something effective to stop violence against women and girls. Save these innocent little girls from horrific torture and a life of pain. Stop this abomination.
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