Yet no-one has been successfully prosecuted for FGM in Britain in the past 30 years. I suspect not everyone has been looking so hard for cases of FGM as you suggest. It’s not something I can prove. I can’t go around asking individual health workers how tough they are on cases of FGM. However, stats suggest prosecuting folk participating in FGM not a priority; at least it hasn’t been a priority until very recently. Some institutions appear to have been shoulder shrugging when it comes to the issue of FGM. I personally find it hard to distinguish between shoulder shrugging and semi-official toleration.
No successful prosecutions isn’t that surprising (despite the title of this article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/37364079) when you consider that only 18 cases are suspected to have been performed in the UK. The rest of the 170,000 were performed in Africa long before the victims came to the UK. 18 suspected cases where the victims will ask most almost certainly be too terrified to go testify and if the person who did it is identified they may not be in the UK any more.
Considering all that, the level of effort to prevent FGM and help the victims is pretty bloody high.
You are showing cognitive dissonance. The article says at least 18 cases were carried out in the UK. Going by the wording im assuming this means that only 18 cases were carried out beyond much reasonable doubt in the UK. There is a possibility more were carried out in the UK that we just cannot prove. That’s what I take away from the wording here. You then go on to claim the rest were performed before the girls ever came to the UK. How can you possibly know this? You make no mention of the possibility that many of these kids will be British born, but will be taken out of the UK to have FGM performed on them. All in all im convinced it’s far more than 18 cases where British residents or subjects have had FGM performed on them.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/06/female-genital-mutilation-foreign-crime-common-uk
“It’s a custom that is very much alive, not just in home countries but in Scotland,” says Anela Anwar, from the Glasgow-based charity Roshni. “People have given us information saying girls are being cut in Scotland or we hear that girls are taken back home to be cut over the summer holidays.”
Reports that “cutters” are at work, some working in expensive private clinics, have come out of major cities including London, Birmingham and Bristol, says Sarah McCulloch, from the Agency for Culture and Change Management. “Wherever [ethnic minority] communities [that practise FGM] are residing, it is a problem,” she says. "Because why would they stop? Why should they stop? What will make them stop?
Im sure prosecutions for FGM are not easy. They will often be difficult cases under difficult circumstances. However, even the opening lines of the piece you linked to says the prosecution record is a scandal and that the lack of a single conviction is “beyond belief”. Well, I also am beyond believing these lack of prosecutions over the past 30 years were just a coincidental state of affairs.
What on Earth do you put it down to then? Some secretly powerful Somali infiltration into the British justice system? Because it’s not Saudis and Qataris - who are powerful - who are into this, but Africans, mostly Somali, of which there were very few in the UK when the law was brought in. Most Somali Brits are refugees or their children - they are not powerful people.
I think the majority of cases were performed before the woman/girl moved to the UK for the simple reason that it’s a procedure usually done on babies and most Somali Brits arrived here after they were babies.
And I don’t think that when the estimate is 18 they’re expecting the range to extend to the hundreds. That’s not how estimates work.
You’re trying to twist data to support some weird agenda.
Same as with the Rotheram case, fear of being charged with racism.
Yes pretending there’s nothing there to see is a much more helpful agenda.
Sure, I will agree that the majority of cases are carried out on girls before they ever come to the UK, perhaps even the vast majority of cases. But you claimed only 18 or so were suspected as being carried out in the UK. The rest were ALL done before these girls ever reached these shores. This is not true. The extent of FGM problem in the UK is significant-ish.
What do I put the lack of prosecutions down to? I would guess its in part the difficulty in prosecuting these cases. These are intimate family matters. Many cases require investigations into historic crimes. Another reason I suspect is a degree of unwillingness to uncover nasty religous/cultural practices of minorities. And before you say this surely cannot be the case, that I am misguided or wrong for saying so, I refer you once again back to Rotherham. The fact you yourself appear to be downplaying the problem of FGM in the UK suggests it’s not impossible for others in our society to similarly do so. Perhaps if you can us why you attempted to downplay the problem of FGM I can better understand the reasons others may also be doing so.
The other - at least equally big - factor in Rotherham was that the victims were powerless, voiceless and easily ignored by those who had a duty to care for them, partly out of negligence and partly out of prejudice. We know that in Rotherham being young, deprived, marginalised and female was enough for the police to refuse to see the victims as victims and instead to say that they deserved and even wanted what had happened to them. It’s probably worth considering whether this is also a factor in the justice system’s current poor performance in dealing with crimes against victims who are by definition: young; deprived; marginalised; female; brown-skinned; Muslim. Undue culture sensitivity may not be the only explanation here.
I not downplaying the problem of FGM. 18 cases suspected to have been performed in the UK - those are the actual numbers. The others are done outside the UK, and for some reason you can’t see how that makes prosecution difficult. It is still technically possible to prosecute, of course, but gathering evidence is going to be magnitudes more difficult.
I think those are the only reasons behind the lack of prosecution for the 18 fgm cases known over the last 30 years. Rotherham was horribly mishandled by local authorities and it does seem like racism and fear of being accused of racism was part of it (though only part), but it’s not the same with FGM. There’s indisputable physical evidence if FGM has taken place and there’s a very straightforward law against it. But that does depend on finding the people to prosecute and getting people to testify against them.
It’s ridiculous to assume that this is so easy that only some sort of weird conspiracy could explain the lack of prosecutions. Seriously, if you gave birth to a baby in London you wouldn’t think that they just ignore FGM from the amount you’re asked and informed about it even as a white Brit. But I don’t think that actual experience counts for much against Fuzzy’s fuzzy notions of conspiracy - of which I am apparently a part.
How am I pretending? There are lots of cases of FGM but most, by a huge margin, weren’t done in the UK. Please remember that most of the “new cases” aren’t young girls turning up mutilated when previously they weren’t, they’re adult women whose childhood “surgery” is usually discovered when they start having children. See here: England had 5,700 recorded cases of FGM in 2015-16, figures show | Female genital mutilation (FGM) | The Guardian That mentions 43 new cases included women and girls born in the UK.
Again, the nurse quoted there wants more to be done, but doesn’t say what more can be done. Education is the important one - teaching that women aren’t dirty or sinful, that it’s OK for them to feel pleasure, that it’s not in the Koran, that it carries physical dangers, etc - the stuff that’s in the leaflets at baby clinics and is addressed in secondary school sex education (fgm is directly mentioned there, in London anyway). Empower women and girls in more general ways so that they might be able to refuse to be taken on “holiday” if they have suspicions about the real reasons they’re going. Keep track of the numbers of fgm so you can tell if your efforts are making a difference. Offer counseling to victims and support to parents who may be feeling pressured to do it.
There is quite a lot you can do but as far as I can tell an awful lot is already being done. It’s just the actual prosecutions that have so far failed to happen. Given that even a doctor who sort of “re-sewed” a woman who’d been a victim of FGM after she’d given birth was prosecuted (unsuccessfully, because he did it for misguided medical reasons) I think lawyers would be leaping at the chance to prosecute someone who actually performed it on a kid. I hope it does happen at some point and the sentence is long.
In what way do parents taking kids out of the UK for FGM make prosecuting parents for child cruelty more difficult? Im saying it now; had these kids been some weird indigenous Christian sect of parents taking kids out of the UK for FGM then parents would be prosecuted. Kids would have been re-homed. Someone has been tolerating something here. Should parents be prosecuted for such acts? Maybe, maybe not. However, im fairly certain allsorts of dubious reasons will be found not to prosecute. We would not tolerate little Jane being mutilated but we have been tolerating the mutilation of little Aisha.
Once again you are trying to strawman my argument. At no point did I suggest it was only due to fear of racism for the lack of FGM prosecutions. I admitted other possible reasons. Another poster suggested the powerlessness of the victims was a factor. This is probably true. My bigger point about FGM was that is showed the UK authorities could potentially allow Sharia creep in parts of the UK. This potential was denied earlier by another poster. But we have numerous posters since admitting that racial sensitivity, powerlessness of victims and difficulty of prosecution all played a factor in Rotherham. Well, these factors can all theoretically play a part in Sharia creep. Many of the same victims of Sharia are the same type of hidden marginalised victims in Rotherham and of FGM.
Because if the operations are being done in the UK, that’s a rather significant additional point on which the authorities can act and launch further investigations from. They can investigate the doctors (well, “doctors”) as well as the victims. If the operations are overseas, they can’t do that.
Firstly, Western society tolerates a lot of weird Christian shit. The JW’s are only the tip of that particular iceberg.
But more importantly: how would we know the mutilation happened? Who, apart from the parents (who are complicit in the act) and the children (who are unlikely to discuss their genitals in public), are likely to know that FGM has occurred? Families go abroad on holiday all the time, and particularly those with family overseas. If the procedures are being done overseas while they’re away and neither the girl nor the family say anything, how are you suggesting we find out?
Because your bigger point doesn’t follow from your other ones.
Only if “Sharia creep” involves never talking about Sharia.
Which has nothing to do with Sharia being openly implemented in the UK, which I believe was the initial concern. This is like arguing that because FGM is being conducted stealthily on a small number of victims, it will one day lead to all women being forced to undergo it. Not only does it not follow, the lengths that the families condoning FGM have to go to practice it demonstrate that there are already active efforts to prevent it and prosecute those who practice it.