New Female Genital Mutilation Case Recorded Every Two Hours In England

Official data shows that over 4,500 new cases of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) were recorded in England over the past year.

This equates to more than one new case every two hours, yet there have been no convictions for the barbaric practice even though it is deemed illegal in the UK.

“FGM has been a criminal offence in Britain since 1985, and since 2003 it has been illegal for British citizens to carry out or procure FGM abroad – but police and prosecutors are yet to secure a single conviction…”

According to the National Health Service (NHS), between April 2017 and March 2018, over 6,000 women and girls who visited a doctor, midwife, or other public health services in the UK had been exposed to the form of abuse at some point.

Breitbart reports: Some cases had already been recorded, but 4,495 were being logged for the first time since the government made it compulsory for medical practitioners to report cases of FGM in 2015.

Since then, there have been 28,326 medical attendances of females with FGM and 16,265 newly recorded cases. However, an estimated 137,000 women and girls in England and Wales have been exposed to the practice overall.

In the past 12 months, nearly half (2,755) of the attendance cases were in London, 1,415 were in the north of England, 1,200 in the Midlands and East, and 745 in the south of England.

Of the cases where both the age of the victim and the place of birth could be determined, 86 percent of the women and girls were born and had FGM undertaken in an African country, the NHS added in a report.

FGM has been a criminal offence in Britain since 1985, and since 2003 it has been illegal for British citizens to carry out or procure FGM abroad – but police and prosecutors are yet to secure a single conviction, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council FGM lead describing the crime as “nuanced”.

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— National FGM Centre (@FGMCentre) June 29, 2018

In response to the new NHS data, the National FGM Centre, run by Barnardo’s children’s charity and the Local Government Association, called for “more to be done to support survivors and protect girls at risk from the practice”.

The organisation’s head, Leethen Bartholomew, said: “Shockingly, today’s figures confirm that dozens of women and girls born in the UK have undergone FGM, despite the practice being illegal for over 30 years.