The UK crime writer Ruth Rendell and the consultant gynaecologist Harry Gordon at first seem to have little in common. But they both share an abhorrence of a 600 year old cultural rite which can not only induce agonising pain during urination or sex but also cause serious injury, infection, and death. Most girls who undergo the ritual live in Africa and to a lesser extent in Asia and the Middle East. Increasingly, however, genital mutilation occurs among migrants from these countries who have settled in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Some countries, including the United Kingdom, outlaw the practice, but anecdotal evidence suggests that these laws are flouted.
Few women are prepared to talk about it outside their own close circle.
No one has been prosecuted under the United Kingdom's Female Circumcision Act of 1985. At the Central Middlesex Hospital, London, Mr Gordon runs a weekly NHS walk-in clinic for African women seeking reversals of the mutilation. Those who attend are mostly Somali women. Baroness Rendell visited Mr Gordon's clinic earlier this year. As patron of the London Black Women's Health Action Project, and an active campaigner against female circumcision, Baroness Rendell has been keen to spread awareness of the practice and of the availability and effectiveness of reversals.