A 16-year-old girl confided to her teacher she had been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) at the age of three during a trip to Kenya, a trial has heard.
Amina Noor, 39, went on trial at the Old Bailey on Wednesday accused of assisting a non-UK person to mutilate the girl’s genitalia in 2006.
The girl, who is now 21, cannot be identified for legal reasons.
Ms. Noor has pleaded not guilty but prosecutor Deanna Heer, KC, said there was no dispute the girl had been subjected to FGM in Kenya, nor the child was a UK citizen.
But Ms. Noor has insisted she was not aware FGM was going to be carried out and thought the girl was simply going to be “pricked” to draw blood.
Ms. Heer said the incident only came to light when the girl was aged 16 and confided in her English teacher at school.
Defendant Came to UK Aged 16
At the age of 16 she came to the United Kingdom and was later given British citizenship.Ms. Heer said when she was interviewed by the police Ms. Noor described FGM as “sunnah,” an Arabic word meaning “tradition” or “way,” and said it was a practice which had been perpetuated for cultural reasons for centuries.
The jury was told 94 percent of females of Somali origin living in Kenya underwent FGM, according to United Nations figures.
But the prosecutor said: “That very common practice is not limited to piercing or pricking. In fact, 87 percent of women and girls who had undergone FGM in Kenya had their genitalia cut, with some flesh removed,” she said.
The jury was told that after the teenager confided in her teacher, she was asked about what had happened and said she remembered it involved an injection and recalled she was, “happy and able to run around and play” afterwards.
When she was anatomically examined in 2019, it emerged her clitoris had been completely removed.
Chose not to Accompany Girl Into Room
Ms. Noor said she went with another woman to a “clinic” where the girl was called into a room for a procedure. She declined an invitation to accompany the girl into the room because she was, “scared and worried.”Later, in a formal police interview, Ms. Noor denied being threatened prior to the FGM procedure.
Ms Heer said: “She was asked whether, when she arrived at the clinic or even before then, she felt she did not want it to happen. She said, ‘yeah I thought about it but then, you know, got it done.'”
The prosecutor told the jury they would have to decide whether or not Ms. Noor’s actions were consistent with someone who knew the girl would be subjected to FGM.
Ms. Heer said: “She did not insist on being present when (she) was called into the treatment room. She did not talk to the Kenyan lady about what procedure would be carried out, she did not look at the wound and said (she) did not appear to be in pain.”
She added: “Given what we know had been done to, can that be true? Or has the defendant sought to minimise her responsibility?”
In 2019 the first successful prosecution for FGM in the UK led to a Ugandan woman being jailed for 11 years for mutilating her three-year-old daughter at her home in east London in 2017.
She was not identified for legal reasons.
