A 42-year-old woman has been arrested for conspiracy to commit female genital mutilation by officers carrying out an FGM awareness operation with colleagues from the Border Force at Heathrow airport.
The Zimbabwe-born British national was arrested just after midday before she boarded a flight from London to Ghana via Amsterdam with an eight-year-old girl. The child has been taken into the care of social services.
The arrested woman was taken to a west London police station before being transferred to Northamptonshire police who are to investigate further.
Specialist officers from the Met’s Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command were out in force at Heathrow on Friday to show support for the international day of zero tolerance of FGM and carry out a proactive operation, working with border force agents. The officers were engaged in “preventative and detection work”, speaking to passengers going to and from countries where FGM is common.
Officers from Project Azure - the Met’s anti-FGM taskforce - were stopping passengers and handing out “health passports” written in a variety of languages, which provide information about FGM, including the fact that it is illegal in the UK. The passports have been piloted in several areas of the UK and are designed as a tool for parents of children who may be at risk to show to extended family should they be put under pressure to have their girls cut while visiting their countries of birth.
Officers also carried out intelligence-led checks on passengers and searches of baggage as well as talking to passengers from communities impacted by the practice.
DCI Jane Scotchbrook from the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command said the action was “one aspect of our continued efforts to raise awareness of this form of child abuse, its associated immediate and long-term health risks, and the absence of any religious teaching that supports its undertaking.”
FGM has been illegal in the UK since 1984, and since 2003 anyone taking a child out of the UK for the purposes of FGM faces 14 years in prison. However there is yet to be a successful prosecution in the UK. On Wednesday a doctor who stood trial for performing FGM on a woman who had given birth to a child in the Whittington hospital in London was acquitted, in a widely criticised trial that critics argued should not have been brought to court. According to the Met, 17 cases have been put forward to the CPS. Only one was taken to trial and was acquitted; four other cases are under review.
