A mother alleged to have been subjected to female genital mutilation by a doctor in the UK has told a court she would never allow a daughter to have the same procedure.
The 26-year-old woman, who cannot be named, told Southwark crown court she had first undergone FGM in her native Somalia as a young child. Asked by Edmund Vickers, defending Hasan Mohamed, what age she had been at the time, she said: “I think six years old.”
Asked for her view on FGM, she said: “It’s wrong.” Asked whether she would have the same done to a daughter, the woman said: “Never.”
Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena, 32, a junior registrar at Whittington hospital in London, is charged with carrying out FGM after delivering the woman’s baby in November 2012. He is accused of suturing an incision to her vulva in such a way that it amounted to the reinstitution of FGM. He denies the charge.
Mohamed, 41, denies aiding and abetting the doctor. The woman, referred to in court as AB, has not supported the prosecution case and did not give a statement to police, the court has heard.
Born in Somalia in January 1988, she came to the UK in 2004 when she was 16, she told the court through an interpreter. She claimed asylum, and in 2010 she was given indefinite leave to remain. She was granted British citizenship in 2012.
AB told the jury that after arriving in England she repeatedly went to her GP as a result of problems associated with her FGM. Following her marriage in 2010 she went to the GP to seek treatment for period pain, urinary issues and difficulties with sexual intercourse. She said she was not able to have full intercourse as a result of the FGM.
“I was advised that I didn’t have any problems with infection but I needed to be opened,” she said. AB said she had an operation at Kingston hospital which was successful and ended her problems.
She later became pregnant and attended an antenatal appointment at Whittington hospital. She said there was no physical examination.
She said she was asked whether she had had FGM. “I said yes and I also explained that I went to a hospital and had been opened,” she told the court.
During a number of further antenatal appointments there was no interpreter present, she said. Asked whether her FGM was discussed at the appointments, she said it was not. Asked whether she was warned that she might need an operation before having her baby, she said: “No.”
There was no plan put in place for her to be opened further or deinfibulated before the baby was born, she told the court.
Dharmasena is accused of stitching together AB’s labia after childbirth in a way that reinstituted her FGM. The crown alleges there was no medical reason for him to do so – the only defence for a doctor under the law – and that what he did was against hospital policy and a criminal offence.
AB told the jury that when she was in labour at the Whittington a male doctor came into the room. She said she did not remember his name. Asked whether it was Dharmasena, in the dock, who had come in and delivered her first baby, she smiled and nodded.
She said when she was 9cm dilated in the labour room and things moved very quickly. “They started to prepare to bring the baby out. I can’t remember what was said,” she said. “I remember four of them in the room.”
Asked whether the doctor had to do anything to help her deliver the baby, she said: “He was pulling.”
Asked whether he had done anything else before this, she replied: “I don’t remember. I was in a lot of pain … The only thing I can remember after the baby was born was the doctor saying: ‘You’ve won, the baby’s born and now I’m going to do some stitches.’”
Asked whether she was aware where the stitches were, she said: “No.”
She was asked whether there had been any encouragement to reinstitute her FGM after the birth. She replied: “Never. The doctor was delivering my baby and I didn’t think he was doing anything apart from that.”
The case continues.