A father from south London allowed female genital mutilation to be carried out on his daughter as a form of punishment when she was nine, a court heard on Monday. The 50-year-old, who is west African but whose children were born in the UK, allegedly allowed his daughter, now 16, to be cut on two occasions after accusing her of stealing money from the family home.
“This was not apparently out of any cultural or family reason, but more, as she understood it, as way of punishment,” a court at the Old Bailey was told.
During an interview in July last year, the teenager said on each occasion when she was cut she was made to lie on a mat in the hallway of her south London home, naked from the waist down, jurors were told. She said she could not identify the cutter, who could have been either a man or a woman, but recalled her father “egging the person on”.