Thousands of British women and girls
have had their vaginas deliberately mutilated.
Most are from African or Asian ethnic backgrounds.
It's female genital mutilation, or FGM.
In big cities, it's a tradition among some communities.
And in Bristol, as many as 2,000 young girls are at risk.
If this was little white girls this was happening to,
the whole world would be running round crying outrage at it.
Why it happens is to control women
in a world where women aren't perceived to be equal to men.
Children who are subjected to FGM
suffer from comparable levels of post-traumatic stress disorder
as children that are subjected to chronic long-term abuse.
FGM has been illegal in the UK for over 30 years.
But no-one has ever been successfully prosecuted,
and getting conclusive evidence is immensely difficult.
I have investigated children that have been murdered,
and I have not tried any harder or done anything any differently
when I've been investigating FGM.
You only have to pick up a newspaper and open it
to read the headline that we've had this law for 30 years
and we have never applied that law
to someone who's done that to a little girl.
Do I feel this huge sense of responsibility to rectify that?
Yes, I do.
Leanne Pook. I'm a Detective Chief Inspector.
And I am the force and the regional lead
for our response to female genital mutilation.
In my day, when I first learned about FGM, god forbid,
we sat in the lecture theatre
and got played some truly horrifying footage
of a child being cut in some sort of hut
back in Africa somewhere.
The screaming stays with you forever.
That was probably about 15 years ago
and I can still probably hear it now.
There's different types of FGM.
Type one, the clitoris is cut off or partially cut off.
Type two involves the removal of the clitoris and the labia minora.
So what happens in type three FGM
is that everything is cut away,
the types one and two type of cutting away,
and the two sides of the vaginal sort of area, the genital area
are squeezed together and then pinned in place
and then stitched together.
Type four covers any other type of injury to the genitals
that we haven't spoken about in the three types before.
Type four often involves a small cut or injury,
so it heals quicker and is harder to detect.
I think practising communities understand
that they have to adjust their practices to evade law enforcement.
It's about making sure people don't get caught.
Chief Inspector Leanne Pook is about to start
one of the most complex investigations of her career -
one that will prove hugely controversial.
I got a phone call from the head of a charity,
a Bristol-based charity that's involved in the FGM work.
She told me that she in turn had had a phone call
from one of the young people involved in the charity.
He'd taken a taxi ride earlier that day,
the taxi driver had asked him what he was up to
and then the taxi driver had said to the passenger,
"I don't agree with, you know, the very bad type of FGM
"where they cut everything away, but the small cut is, you know, OK,
"and so that's what I've had done to my daughter."
As the FGM specialist of the force,
Leanne - herself a trustee of the charity which received the tip-off -
assembles a team - Detective Sergeant Dave Lewis
and Detective Constable David Evry.
It is ridiculously hard to get that prosecution.
We're not chasing to be the first in anything,
it's chasing the...
the desire to make people aware of this horrific process.
We think that we're only scratching the surface, really.
At the very centre of this is, in this particular case,
a young girl and we need...
The state has an obligation
to protect that young girl and her rights.
Leanne interviews the witness, whom she's known for years.
He was an outreach worker of the anti-FGM charity
where she is a trustee.
With the evidence provided by him,
they're able to identify the taxi driver.
He has several children - including a six-year-old girl.
If you've not got anything concrete to warrant further investigation
then you have to pull back.
And on this occasion with the witness statement
we felt that we had enough to, er...
..get the girl examined medically.
And the biggest concern is that, actually,
it might bring back memories of what's happened.
But without knowing whether she'd been cut, we wouldn't....
We weren't going to get further on.
So we're an hour and 40 minutes in
and I can't quite decide what that means at the moment.
It's only when we get that phone call that we know, really,
so I'm... Yeah, legs of jelly, actually.
Hi, I'm OK, Lindsay, thanks - how are you?
Thanks ever so much, Lindsay.
No.
No, that's fine.
I can't thank you enough, actually.
Thanks ever so much. OK, thank you.
Cheers, bye-bye. Bye.
The examination revealed an injury to the clitoris itself
which, of course,
tied in with the account we'd got
of a small cut or something similar.
I am an investigator who's in part of a group
specialising in this area
that's spent years being criticised
for not ever investigating offences successfully.
There is a bit of you that's pleased you've got that opportunity.
Leanne and David review the father's alleged words
from the original witness statement.
He said, "It's very wrong. Lots of people in my culture do it
"but it's wrong," and I agreed that it was.
The male then said,
"My daughter has the small one but other people cut off the vagina."
He said, "So women don't feel sexy all the time."
In terms of tying in with what's been found in the medical,
it does all tie in quite nicely. Yeah.
Through our investigation we identified that the children
had never left the UK,
so it gives you more of a drive to tackle it
because you know that it could just be happening around the corner.
This would be where you, Dave and Leanne would be sitting.
Ethically it was important to all of us that the little girl
had the opportunity to let us know what she thought about it.
She might talk to us about what had happened.
And you can see the cameras...
Specialist child interviewer Detective Constable Katherine Crowe
and the little girl's social worker
discuss how the police plan to interview the six-year-old.
Victims of FGM get lifelong anonymity,
so the social worker - brought in because the parents are now
under criminal investigation - cannot be identified.
From what I've observed at the medical
and what school have fed back,
she presents as quite a shy little girl. Yeah.
There is potential if it did happen, it happened quite recently
and so the medical could have been re-traumatizing for her
or it could have just kind of taken her back to that... OK.
Not all children like drawing,
but probably at the age of six drawing is quite a good thing to do.
I'll get her to draw herself,
see if she can identify... her body parts, I suppose.
I mean, if she doesn't want to talk about it, you know,
we're not going to force it, are we?
In terms of FGM, we see it more coming up into the school holidays.
You know, where the concerns are that girls are going abroad
and being cut and then they have the extended period to recover.
If teachers, doctors, or social workers suspect a child
is at risk of FGM, they have a legal duty to report it.
The majority of police work on FGM in Bristol
involves following up on these referrals.
I've done it before where I've had to make a decision
to let a family go on a plane...
..where there was no, nothing that presented to me as suspicious
that FGM may take place...
..but you just never know, do you?
She was a beautiful little seven-year-old girl -
I didn't sleep very well for a few nights after that, I tell you.
Some of Bristol's large Somali community practice FGM.
It's very prevalent in a number of cultures.
And it's seen as an attack on those individual cultures
and that we're not accepting of them.
We have to treat FGM like we would treat
any other child protection matter.
It's still abuse of a child, and we're treating it as such.
Being called racist is...
is one of the...is one of the biggest digs you could take at me
because that's absolutely the converse, is why I've got involved.
There's an awful lot of public commentary
on the fact that there's been legislation since 1985
and there hasn't ever been a successful prosecution.
I've been a policewoman longer than I've been married to somebody,
I've been a policewoman longer than I've been a mother.
And it's an enormous part of your life.
So when people attack the police service
you're bound to take it, a bit personally.
This morning, me, Dave and Dave
are going to meet with our FGM lead within our local CPS.
They discuss an ongoing global debate
about smaller Type 4 cuts or injuries like the one in their case.
Some have asked whether it should be permitted as a cultural practice,
others whether it legally amounts to mutilation.
If it doesn't, they might not get their case to court.
That's a nonsense to me, actually.
And if we've got people running round with razor blades
taking little chunks out of kids...
I just think, do you know what?
If we had a little white girl here
and we took off the very tip of her finger
there would be bloody outrage.
People need to know that these girls are held down by often their mothers
and their aunts and their grandmothers.
Just because something can be minor,
a minor nick or a pinprick
or a cut to the clitoris
or, you know, parts of the vagina -
any cut is painful.
The school are aware that we're coming,
it's all been arranged, parents will be notified.
We're going to go to the school,
and we're going to pre-assess the girl for suitability and willingness
and if she is suitable and willing,
then we will take her to an interview suite to interview her.
If she's not willing, we won't force her.
We can't force her, so that will be the end of that.
We then had to ask the direct question of,
"Do you remember seeing a special lady doctor?" and she, "Yes."
And you asked her if, could I come and speak to you about that again,
and she said no. Right, OK.
And then she just said, "It's disgusting," didn't she? Yeah.
"No, it's disgusting," or...?
Yeah, she, so I, you know, want to talk about the doctor,
and she said, "It was disgusting."
"Can I talk to you a bit more about that?" "No." Right, OK.
She was happy to talk about, the doctor used a stethoscope
for her to listen to her tummy and heart
and she remembered, she was happy to talk about that, she said,
"Oh, she put something on my tummy and I was listening,
"and I could hear it going boom, boom, boom..." Yeah.
So the disgusting bit refers to the genital... Yeah, examination.
...examination, rather than the process and the whole?
Yeah.
She shut us down really quickly.
You know, we investigate crimes against babies and...
and have a really good success rate
and babies can't tell us what's happened.
So you know, part of the duty on an investigator
is to make sure you investigate well enough
that it doesn't come down to a victim responsibility
to...put all the clues in the basket, you know?
The alleged victim's father has complained at school
about the attempts to talk to his daughter.
He said, "I'm really annoyed."
So anyway, we talked through it and I sort of explained
that there were a lot of games played,
actually, you know, it was all above board,
I was in the room the whole time.
He said he considered not sending her back to school again.
What I would say is we are in the middle...
I really help and appreciate your support,
it's just, we are in the middle of a criminal investigation
where he is a suspect
and I almost feel like I'm asking permission
to investigate this offence, and that cannot be right.
Say, "No," to FGM! Say, "No," to FGM!
Chief Inspector Leanne Pook is investigating evidence
suggesting that a six-year-old girl
has had female genital mutilation.
There is some local suspicion of the police...
..but Leanne is now friends with a key group of women and men
who've become allies in the fight against FGM.
We're really glad to be here.
Glad to here with my activists
and friends from communities, so thank you.
You know, when someone tries to get to know your culture,
where you really know that element of your culture is negative -
and you're doing something wrong, something illegal -
it's not easy for any community, any community
to come forward and say, "Let's do something."
I think she's amazing.
Leanne, she make a change.
Me and you, we've got this nailed, all right?
As a community, we're really concerned about the police -
but Leanne, especially Leanne,
she works very hard with the communities
and she is there for us 24 hours when we need her.
Her phone, her e-mails are open for the communities.
I know there's been some talk of racial profiling.
I just want a conversation about that, really, to say to them,
you know, "Your children are our children as well now."
It might feel like the spotlight is on certain communities.
All I can say to you is that,
if these risk factors were presenting
in the school where my children go to,
which is pretty much all
white-skinned, middle class children...
If these risks were presenting in my kids' school,
I would be going into that school
and doing exactly the same thing.
And I don't want you to be.
We always hear about children being taken away from the parents,
and we're really scared about these things.
That's part of the reason for coming out
so that you get to chat to me and I get to chat to you,
and you think, "Well, she isn't this scary person
"that puts children in a sack
"and runs off with down the street with them."
I've done that once, where I picked up a child,
and ran out of the house with it,
and that was because the mum
had been almost killed
by the violence from the dad.
The one thing I would say is we do all our work
around prevention and education,
but we will investigate FGM crime as well.
Leanne, I just want to tell you,
thank you very much for coming today.
This is a really big thing for us.
Thank you very much.
As Leanne's criminal investigation continues,
the controversy about type four FGM intensifies.
I really don't understand.
"Oh, OK, we should just allow some types."
Are you...? If it was anything else, there would be a massive uproar.
If it was domestic violence, if it was child abuse,
if you could see someone with a black eye, you would do something.
If you saw someone with a little bruise on their arm,
you would do something about it, but, what...?
OK, because it's not a "severe" type of FGM,
we should just allow it to happen.
Which degree of child sexual abuse would be acceptable?
Yeah, no, absolutely.
As long as it's not full penetration?
I mean, where's the borderline? Yeah, no, I know.
When I first got involved in this,
and lots of my...
It was a bit of banter I guess, but they'd all say,
"Oh, Leanne, why have you got yourself caught up in that?"
And all this. I nearly had myself a mini-guillotine made...
..so that, when blokes gave me any grief, I could go,
"Well, you get your bits out, and we'll chop off this much,
"and then we'll carry on the conversation
"when you feel well enough."
I'm sorry but if that was a white child,
a British white child,
I don't think they would say,
"A little nick, that wouldn't hurt her,"
and I think it's this double standard that we have
in terms of child protection.
They don't want to upset, like, the community.
We shouldn't be treated differently.
What, because of the my skin colour?
Actually I think we just need to say,
"Well, it is child abuse full stop."
These young men and women regularly hold events
to raise awareness about the issue.
Now, I'm going to be the voice for the survivors.
Having type one, two, three or four...
..psychologically, is all the same.
FGM is child abuse.
Like the police, they also face opposition.
Especially when they do this -
produce a music video about type four FGM.
# They say it's OK for a little bit
# To be taken away from my clit
# No thank you... #
The really hostile reactions
that we've had towards our work
have been from all sorts of people
from different backgrounds -
whether they're Somali, white British.
Surprisingly, most of the time, led by men.
Men can somehow find a way to be a collective
when it comes to talking about the vagina.
# My clitoris is staying where it is
# You might think we're quite outrageous
# We won't stop till we see changes. #
We have to be really honest to ourselves,
FGM is still something that is happening in the UK
and, if communities feel like they are being targeted and attacked,
have those conversations with the police.
Sit down with each other.
In the criminal case,
the photographs from the alleged victim's medical examination
have been reviewed by the UK's leading FGM specialist.
She will be a key expert witness
if the case goes to court.
She thinks it's possible that the girl may have been injured
but there's a problem which risks jeopardising the entire case.
The original images are blurry
and the new expert wants to conduct her own medical examination.
Photographs were taken of the examination in Bristol
and were sent up to a expert witness in London
who didn't feel that she was able to work from them.
She didn't think the quality was good enough.
And the...
..result of that was that the girl had to undergo a further medical.
She said to me, you know,
"If I'm going to take the stand and potentially
"somebody be imprisoned as a result of what I say,
"I want to be a 100% confident
"that I've examined
"or I've done everything to the standards that I want to do them."
It's just not a very nice thing
for them to have to undergo in the first place.
On the other side, taking off my emotional head for her,
is the looking at the police investigation
and, obviously, it is important.
It's very important. Yeah.
I think everything, for me,
hinges on interviewing mum and dad
and see where we go with that. Yeah.
We needed to get into the house, arrest mum and dad,
get them out separately so they couldn't speak to each other.
Unfortunately, when we got the address, mum and dad weren't there.
Four months after getting intelligence
that seems to suggest a six-year-old girl
has been the victim of female genital mutilation,
Leanne Pook and her team are about to arrest the little girl's parents.
Right, thank you very much for coming, everybody.
Thank you for all pitching up, um...
..looking like police in plain clothes.
No, you all look great. THEY LAUGH
How many polo shirts have we got?
We've only got one polo shirt - that's fine.
but it's a SoulCal one, so we're all right.
There was a real reason for that -
we don't want to upset these communities
any more than this activity already will upset them.
We've gone to home address, and they're not there at the moment.
So we're now making some enquiries
to try and see if we can track them down.
All right, chick, we'll keep you in the loop. Cheers. Bye. Bye.
Do we want to consider just putting a phone call in?
I mean, they know there's police interest.
Let's just put a phone call in, I think.
Because otherwise it'll just drag on and on and on.
Hello, sir, it's Dave Evry from the police.
OK. So shall we come to your house?
So you've left home already?
Sir, could you...go to Patchway Police Station?
Yeah, OK.
OK, bye-bye.
The parents arrive at the police station and are arrested.
The search team set off to examine the family home.
Speaking through an interpreter, the alleged victim's father
sits down to answer questions under caution.
It's now Tuesday the 19th of July 2016.
It's been suggested that your daughter has had her genitalia cut.
That's often referred to as female genital mutilation.
What can you tell us about that injury?
OK, but let's be clear from the start -
the paediatrician, the child doctor, sees an injury.
And an expert that has looked at the photographs
also has seen an injury.
That indicates that something has happened,
so what do you know has happened?
Meanwhile, the search team are back.
Tracy found a number behind a...
A telephone number hidden behind a picture frame, didn't you?
Yeah, we'll have a little look. Thank you.
It's now 17:17,
and we've had a short break in the interview.
Has she ever, to your knowledge, injured herself in her vaginal area?
OK.
So we want to ask you about this conversation that you had
when you were taxi driving with somebody who was a customer.
Do you recollect this conversation with a customer
whilst you were taxi driving about FGM?
OK. Next comment was recorded as,
"My daughter has the small one but other people cut off the vagina."
Just a mistake?
He also said that asked about why people did it - FGM.
The driver, you, said, "So women don't feel sexy all the time."
You were arrested this morning, just before 11 o'clock.
The reason you were arrested was because your daughter
has been found to have a cut or injury, then, to her genital area.
The girl's mother refuses to answer any further questions.
During the search of the family's home,
they find a telephone number hidden behind a picture frame.
Can you talk me through the number behind the picture of some sort -
in the lounge, I think? Yeah, um...
It's, er...
The phone number is Dad's phone number.
How do we know that?
Cos it's the phone number I called him on yesterday. Right, OK.
I've no idea why it was behind the picture.
Why you'd have your own phone number behind the picture.
Normally it's a phone number we don't want people to...
Yeah, know about. ..identify.
This isn't The Bill or Cagney & Lacey.
Very rarely do you get that absolute nugget of information
that unlocks the job. You just don't.
Like, wouldn't it be perfect if it was arranged by text message?
Wouldn't that make our job easier?
But then we'll crack on with everything else,
which we would have had to have done anyway.
PHONE RINGS
Hello, Leanne Pook, can I help you?
Oh, hi, how are you?
How did you get on this morning?
Oh, really?
Yeah. Oh, bless her.
No, no. No, don't be sorry. No, please don't be.
No, please. That's... That's...
Yeah, no, that's fine.
Thanks so much for all your time.
I'll wait to see your report. Thank you.
Cheers, bye-bye, bye.
This time, the second doctor can't see the injury
identified by the first medical.
The lack of corroborating evidence is disastrous for the police.
That was just a hammer blow to our case.
Everything in this case has tied up.
Her dad did speak to somebody,
and indicated that he'd had something done to her.
I am disappointed because...
..I-I think we won't get justice for this little girl.
Female genital mutilation has been illegal in the UK
for over 30 years.
But no-one has ever been successfully prosecuted.
In Bristol, a team in Avon and Somerset Police
thought they were about to change all that.
A six-year-old girl was examined and was initially thought to have
an injury on her clitoris.
At this point, you are, you know, you're thinking,
"Right, OK, we've got something here that we can really, really develop
"and really maybe take all the way."
But the doctor involved in a second medical examination
couldn't find the cut.
To have the second medical and then be told they didn't,
they weren't sure if there was an injury...
..was a big knock back.
But the team don't give up.
They've just received the second medical expert's full report.
She says it's possible that she didn't find anything
on the alleged victim because an injury may have healed.
She pointed me towards some research where other children
who've had type four have healed.
So, yeah, my head in my hands moment was over, really,
and I just thought about what else we could do to strengthen the case.
The case is back on.
If this is the clitoris and this is the clitoral hood,
sort of like that, you probably wouldn't see anything,
and it isn't until the hood is pulled back slightly...
..that you see the injury.
Number one, that's quite a clever type of FGM, because you'd have
to do a fairly decent hands-on medical to detect it.
It requires a certain technique to be able to achieve that type of FGM,
because not only do you have to have someone holding the child down,
you also have to have them still enough to be able
to lift the clitoral hood to get access to the bit
that you're going to do the FGM on.
Dave and Katherine had been doing this painstaking work
around Mum's phone, and then Dave rings me.
There was something that told me I was going to like the phone call.
He tells me that, "We've done an examination of Mum's phone."
Mum's phone was completely downloaded.
There's been a request for a phone number for someone
who does circumcision, and then phone numbers have been exchanged,
which would suggest possibly that someone had been, sort of,
arranging... Right, OK. ..or wanting to arrange that.
I guess the piece of work now is to look at the individuals
that Mum's got in touch with,
with a view to identifying as much information as we can.
The alleged victim's parents are brought in again.
The purpose of this interview is to talk about what has been
found on your phone.
In the text message, there was a particular word you used.
What does the word... SHE SPEAKS DIFFERENT LANGUAGE
..mean?
I understand that this word refers to circumcision
of both boys and girls.
Is this correct?
Were you assisting in FGM being committed?
Has this man circumcised your daughter?
Tell me about the man who circumcises people,
as mentioned in a text sent to your wife.
Is that a question to me?
That's my question to you is - who is this man and tell me about it?
Well, that is what we want to find out.
The investigation has been running for nearly a year,
and the police will later face questions about how long it's taken.
Now, though, they have to present the evidence to the
Crown Prosecution Service, who will assess whether, despite the gaps,
there is enough for criminal charges to be brought.
The decision comes through.
Hello, my name is Katherine Crowe, I'm a police officer in Bristol.
I'm just phoning regarding your client.
He's due to answer bail.
Just to let you know, I've had a decision through from CPS
regarding a charge.
The CPS say the police can charge the victim's father with
child cruelty, for allowing or arranging for her to have FGM.
If guilty, he faces up to ten years in prison.
The case goes to court,
a trial date is set,
and word starts spreading within Bristol's Somali community.
Good afternoon, Leanne Pook, can I help you?
We're stopped. There is some talk about amongst the community,
and it's come to me through people I absolutely trust,
of 300 Somali guys protesting about our case.
The other thing is, there was some quite specific detail around..
where witnesses have come from,
which unnerves me a bit, I've got to say.
This intelligence concerns Leanne.
She's worried threats could be made to the key witness - the young man
who had the conversation with the alleged victim's father in the taxi.
While you were away, there was a bit of intelligence that the
Somali community were planning some sort of a protest.
One of the things that sort of slightly worried me about
that intelligence was there quite a good level of detail.
So, my take on that is they've probably gone and done
a bit of research. OK.
And just to be need to be a little bit aware of your personal safety
and that of your family.
Is everything all right with you? Haven't had any strange phone calls?
No... Anything like that, no?
No, fine.
My absolute priority is keeping all of you safe and happy
and just getting the case through court.
OK, mate, I'll catch up with you soon.
We're just heading into the Crown Court in Bristol.
It's the first day of our trial
so we're just making our way in there now.
There have been...
..there have been many days where I didn't ever think
that we'd get to this point, where we were taking a case to court.
Erm...
And...and so...
as an investigator, as a detective,
as somebody who wants this issue to stop, wants FGM to stop,
I understand the importance of this morning
and the rest of week and the trial.
DCI Pook and her team arrive at Bristol Crown Court.
The defendant's family and friends are also in attendance.
But the widespread interest in this case causes delays.
We knew it was going to be slightly later,
but then when we got here, more delays.
We were in one of the biggest courts there.
That was simply because of the number of people who attended,
pretty much made up of the press, I think,
and also friends and family of the defendant,
so the court was really very full.
I just think that speaks volumes, really,
about how important this case is
and the level of interest there is -
not just in the UK, but beyond - about these issues.
Over the course of three days, the prosecution outlines
the evidence gathered by Leanne and her team to the jury.
But the judge soon makes it clear he's concerned
about inconsistencies in the evidence given by the main witness.
The case begins to unravel.
The court was dismissed for lunch
and we all returned an hour later to, erm...
for him to deliver his decision
around whether or not he would allow the trial to continue,
and he then set out a very detailed explanation around the issues
he saw around the evidence presented by the Crown, eg us,
and on that basis, his decision was that he would direct the jury
to acquit the defendant.
The judge said he found the case against the accused
"deeply troubling", and that the medical evidence was
"wholly inconclusive at its highest".
The equipment used in the first examination was 15 years old,
and the photographs so blurry they were, he said,
"of no value clinically or forensically."
He added that the key witness, "although honest", had been
"influenced" by his views as an activist in the charity Integrate.
The CPS said they accepted the judge's decision,
but that this was "an unusual and unprecedented case".
There was sufficient evidence to prosecute for an offence
of child cruelty, and it was in the public interest.
This is, you know, it's part and parcel of our job, really,
and it's particularly part and parcel
when you take cases like this.
You know, largely speaking, this has never happened before,
so it was kind of an unknown, taking this case to court.
With the collapse of the trial,
Leanne has to deal with the media reaction.
It went through a rigorous process of assessment
regarding the appropriateness of taking it into a court room,
and we all agreed that it was an appropriate case to take that way.
Do you believe that Type 4 FGM is happening in this country,
in Bristol? I didn't say where I thought it was happening
in this country, but I think there's evidence that shows that girls
that have not left this country have had this done.
The family said the two-year investigation had
"placed intolerable pressure" on them and they hoped
"those involved in bringing this prosecution"
would "learn important lessons".
There's various processes that go on to assess criminal cases
when they get to a point where we decide, where it's decided
whether it needs a charging decision or not,
and we followed all those processes,
and there were some evidential difficulties.
We never denied that,
but do I think we did the wrong thing to do what we've done?
No, I don't.
Do I begin to underestimate the impact this has had
on the affected community from which this family comes?
No, I don't.
Do I underestimate the impact it's had on the family?
Absolutely not.
Nonetheless, we have a job to do, we have children to protect,
and that's what we were doing.
It's a struggle for the police to get FGM cases into court
as young victims keep silent about their experience.
And just days after the court case,
DCI Pook faces allegations of a conflict of interest -
because she was a trustee at the charity
where the key witness also worked.
She'd known him for several years,
but interviewed him herself during the investigation.
Avon and Somerset Police cleared her appointment
as a trustee for Integrate.
33 years since FGM was made a criminal offence,
there still hasn't been a single conviction.
Next month, there's another attempt at prosecution,
this time in London, where a man accused of carrying out FGM
on his own daughter faces trial.
Even if one child in this country has gone through FGM,
that is one child too many,
and that's a child who's going to live with
the detrimental consequences of FGM for the rest of their lives.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media