A heart-breaking letter from an
11-year-old girl begging for a charity for help to avoid female genital
mutilation reveals the very real threat for many girls in the UK.
The
girl’s cry for help was prompted by her discovery that her 12-year-old
sister had been taken to her grandmother’s home in Gambia, west Africa
for the procedure.
'I really hope you can help me, not to have my private cut,' she writes after discovering her sister's horrific fate.
The letter, sent in 2010, was today
published by campaigners in a bid to alert teachers to the importance of
reporting suspicions of female genital mutilation (FGM) to the authorities.
In
the letter to charity Equality Now, the 11-year-old girl says her
sister ‘had her private cut’ by her aunties and grandmother in their
native Gambia.
She explains
how her mother, sisters and brothers came to the UK from west Africa in
2005 to join her father who was studying at university in the UK.
Five
years later, as the family was watching a ‘TV programme on African
culture showing girls having their privates cut’, she describes how her
sister suddenly burst into tears and a few days later told their father
what had happened.
‘She said
it was done one weekend by my aunties at my nans house. Last Friday mum
took her to our GP to have her checked and the doctor said it was done
to her.’
According to the
11-year-old’s letter, the older sister had been told ‘the spirits will
come and kill her immediately’ if she spoke of the procedure.
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