UK FGM-safeguarding policy as stigmatisation, (re)traumatisation and ‘unbelonging’
Our research found that current approaches to FGM-safeguarding were stigmatising and (re)traumatising
1 This is to acknowledge both experiences: retraumatisation for women living with the consequences of FGM/C, and traumatisation for women/girls who have not experienced or known about FGM/C before safeguarding encounters. individuals, families, and entire communities (Karlsen
et al. 2019), experiences which, for many, led to self-policing practices and directly undermined a sense of belonging in British society (Carver
et al. 2022).
The introduction of mandatory reporting has made professionals in education, social services, and healthcare responsible for FGM safeguarding, and to an extent they have become accountable for its ‘success’ or ‘failure’ (measured in relation to prosecutions, which ignore the problems embedded in these assumptions). At the same time, an intensive publicity campaign in media and political debates around ‘FGM’ drew attention to its assumed high prevalence, framing identified cases as ‘just the tip of the iceberg’.
2 Tran (2015). Mark Tran, ‘Female genital mutilation increase in England “only tip of iceberg”’, The Guardian Online, 30 April. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/30/female-genital-mutilation-england-fgm-girls [Accessed 11 July 2025]. The then Education Secretary, Michael Gove, wrote letters to schools, warning against the risks of ‘FGM’ and encouraging referrals.
3 Burns (2014). Judith Burns, ‘Watch for student radicalisation, Michael Gove tells schools’, BBC Online, 8 May. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27334799 [Accessed 11 July 2025].Despite risk-assessment guidelines set in place by the Bristol Safeguarding Children Board
4 Local Safeguarding Children Boards were responsible for coordinating local efforts to protect and promote the welfare of children in the UK. In 2018 they were replaced by Local Safeguarding Partners. through the Bristol Model, it appears that risk assessments are frequently used incorrectly. In schools, for example, an expectation that teachers would meet with families planning to take their children out of school during term time to establish a likely risk of FGM/C can instead lead to an immediate request for safeguarding interventions by the police and social workers (Karlsen
et al. 2019). As our freedom of information requests to the Department of Education demonstrate, there were 1,910 school referrals made between 2016 and 2018 (Karlsen
et al. 2023). While the reasons for this approach remain unclear, it is likely encouraged by the problematic political narrative regarding the high numbers of girls at risk described above, and the associated warnings by the police, reinforced in the media and by politicians, about exercising due diligence in the lead-up to the supposed ‘cutting season’.
5 Particularly in light of UNICEF figures from 2020 that state the prevalence rate for FGM/C in Somalia is 99 per cent (Karlsen et al. 2023). Also see Ritchie (2016). Meabh Ritchie, ‘This is what it’s like to pee after female genital mutilation’, BBC News Magazine, 24 April. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36101342 [Accessed 11 July 2025]. Rather than providing nuanced attention to the circumstances of each family, mandatory reporting has encouraged a fixation with identifying and responding to the perceived hidden epidemic of offences with approaches which treat
all parents as potential offenders:
The meeting we had with the headteacher was like, ‘the reason we’re covering FGM is because it is done by your community’. When I said, ‘but there are other communities that do it’, he said, ‘it’s mainly Somali communities we’re targeting’. He said, ‘In Bristol, the main communities that do it, it’s them …’. (Mother, FGM-safeguarding study.)
Home visits, following referrals, were reported as the most intimidating aspect of FGM safeguarding:
[The visit was] a horrific, horrific experience. [You] open the door and you see a policeman, [you’re] going to be shocked. I’d never been in contact with police. For the first time to be in contact with the police just by default, just based on where I’m from basically, I think it’s even worse than the stop and search policies. This is targeted at Somalis deliberately. (Woman, FGM-safeguarding study.)
Unsurprisingly, this situation has created considerable concern and a sense of stigmatisation and criminalisation amongst people in affected communities:
A lot of families have said that they feel that they’ve done something wrong when really and truly they haven’t done anything wrong. They feel that they’ve committed a crime. They feel that they’ve been targeted, stigmatised, racially profiled. (Young woman, FGM-safeguarding study.)
The heavy-handed approach has led to stigmatisation and been driven by assumptions repeated in the media on high prevalence and hidden ‘FGM’ crime.
Such misinterpretations of FGM/C prevalence and FGM-safeguarding guidance could also lead to insensitive and upsetting experiences in healthcare settings. This is despite the clear acknowledgment – explicitly evidenced here – that women who have experienced FGM/C are victims of abuse:
[The midwife said] ‘We’re just going to talk about FGM’. She said, ‘in Bristol, it’s highly practised. Because it’s highly practised, we need to make sure, because you were abused, we need to make sure that you don’t abuse your child.’ Abuse? That was due to ignorance, that was thirty-three years ago, nothing that happens now. (Woman, FGM-safeguarding study.)
Yet while such misreading of the guidance can produce problems, negative experiences in healthcare might also be considered inevitable given the new legislative obligation placed on health professionals to ask women about their experiences of FGM/C, without any attention to or training regarding the sensitivity needed to discuss such traumatic events. As such, it is not surprising that FGM safeguarding in healthcare settings appeared to bring a particular risk of retraumatisation:
The parents who had it done they are traumatised … To ask mothers who are traumatised [about that experience] over and over and over again. You’re putting salt on that wound, you’re making it fresh again. They didn’t have a choice when they were young. (Woman, FGM-safeguarding study.)
The negative impact of FGM safeguarding, in schools, healthcare settings, or elsewhere, did not only affect those who directly encountered FGM safeguarding but also spread fear throughout the wider community. This concern encouraged an internalised hypervigilance which led to a self-policing of families’ conduct. Families were changing their behaviour to protect themselves and their daughters from potential intrusive police investigations and medical check-ups:
If you come back from holiday, you have to tell your daughters, if they go in the toilet for longer than ten minutes … some girls, they love to go to toilet, just for a chit chat. But then the teacher [feels she] needs to keep an eye out. If she sees a Somali girl walking out the room, she needs to put a time on her [to see how long she goes out for], which is again stigmatising, because a British girl, she might not [feel the need to] check the time. If they are staying more than ten minutes, [the teacher will] report her. So [Somali people need to] just let your girls know, wee and go back to the classroom. (Woman, FGM-safeguarding study).
Focus group participants explained that a threat of medical examination after holidays was one frequently made during police and social workers’ home visits (Karlsen et al. 2019:42–3), following referrals. It was unclear how often they actually occurred and therefore unclear what role these played in this process (i.e. whether they were simply designed to instil fear). Fear associated with the nature and consequences of safeguarding, particularly a home visit from the police and social services, led some families to decide against foreign travel. This was recognised as a significant loss of freedom which was linked to the discrimination inherent in the policies:
Parents [are] choosing to stay because they fear being targeted. No civil liberty. You cannot exercise your right to travel. (Man, FGM-safeguarding study.)
It shouldn’t be like that, you know, because as [with] everybody else in this country, when you are travelling, you should be able to travel without problems. (Man, FGM-safeguarding study.)
The hypervigilant approach to FGM safeguarding has altered the behaviour of African diaspora families who started policing themselves to avoid encounters with the police and social services. The ways in which FGM safeguarding was driven by a problematic racialised logic was described very clearly in our focus groups: ‘I thought safeguarding was when you think that child is in danger. But for us it was just because we were Somali’ (Woman, FGM-safeguarding study). This was encouraged by explicit experiences of racism in encounters with safeguarding officials:
I speak good English and they felt they could belittle me and undermine me further by saying, [in a patronising tone] ‘Do you understand what we’re saying?’ You know very, very bad practice, humiliating and micro-aggression of racism and discrimination they were presenting and that left me really, really upset. (Mother, FGM-safeguarding study.)
In the focus groups, parents went to considerable lengths to explain why this treatment was unjustified, emphasising their everyday efforts to be ‘good parents’ and maintain society’s expectations of them to uphold standards of good and law-abiding citizens (Carver et al. 2022). The targeting of Somali-heritage families through FGM-safeguarding procedures, despite their ‘responsible’ conduct, could make people feel excluded from the British nation due to their racial and ethnic background:
Definitely my [British] identity was questioned. I didn’t feel like a British citizen … I’ve got a British passport, but I’m not. You are treated differently. I felt like I didn’t belong here. All this time I’ve wasted thinking I fitted in – you question yourself, ‘do I really fit in?’ (Woman, FGM-safeguarding study.)
Participants experienced FGM-safeguarding encounters as ‘an act of unbelonging’ (Carver et al. 2022:4561) as they reflected on what they believed were inherently discriminatory policies. The criminalising measures made them feel like ‘not good enough citizens’, denying them the rights and privileges of British citizenship, despite their efforts to fit in.