The British police have been spectacularly inept or deliberately malevolent when it comes to the non prosecution of the offence of Female Genital Mutilation. There have been specific laws to prevent this appalling abuse on the books in the UK since the mid 1980’s, but political correctness and a fear of ‘offending’ the Muslim community that is very closely linked to this practise, have stopped any cases being brought successfully before the courts.
Therefore I welcome the news that a man from Bradford (surprise surprise) has been arrested and is being investigated for FGM related offences. According to the Bradford Telegraph and Argus newspaper the man was arrested after allegations were made that the man was planning to take his one year old daughter out of the UK for FGM. The man, who at this stage is not being named by the police, has been arrested and released pending further enquiries.
The Bradford Telegraph and Argus said:
A BRADFORD man arrested on suspicion of planning to subject his one-year-old daughter to female genital mutilation (FGM) has been released pending further investigation.
A Twitter message late yesterday evening from West Yorkshire Police inspector David Harland read: “Officers from @WYP_BradfordW have this morning arrested a male on suspicion of making plans (to) fly his one-year-old daughter to another country to subject her to Female Genital Mutilation.
“A significant arrest to protect the most vulnerable in our community.”
Time will of course tell whether or not this arrest will amount to anything but observing the police’s historical inaction about the issue of FGM doesn’t give me confidence that will not try to push this matter under the carpet or ‘no crime’ it in some way. Other countries such as France take a much more robust approach to the issue of FGM than Britain does and up until 2014 there had been at least 40 trials of FGM practitioners or parents who were caught arranging or carrying out FGM. In Britain there has been a total of zero convictions and some police forces such as West Midlands Police have a policy of non prosecution as they believe that not prosecution cutting parents is ‘in the best interest of the child’. It’s plain to see what approach works best and it’s the French approach of having a robust prosecution policy for FGM. Britian’s policy on the other hand has been worse than useless and has condemned thousands and thousands of young girls and children to the most disgraceful physical abuse.
Not the first arrest. There was some poor sod of a doctor, a Sri Lankan I think who was done for this (conveniently at the same time as questions were being asked a select committee because of no prosecutions).
He was actually guilty. Technically. He had to cope with a difficult birth and was trying to do his best to repair the mess caused by some previous FGM practitioner.