Circumciser sentenced but girls still cut

Some of Kuria girls at the prayers meeting singing songs denouncing the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) practice. at Ntimaru Market. 31/08/14. PHOTO: TITUS MUNALA /STANDARD

December was often received with great anticipation by one circumciser because it is the female genital mutilation (FGM) season in Kuria, Migori County. She knew it was her season to make a killing.

For every girl that she circumcised, Pauline Robi would pocket Sh400, in cash.

Years of experience had made her an expert handler of the scalpel, and she had the full support of the local community which loudly championed FGM, a practice that subjects innocent girls, some as young as ten years old, to torture.

At one of the FGM ceremonies, angry locals even went to the extent of repulsing armed police officers who had come to the rescue of five girls awaiting the cut outside Robi’s hut on December 10, 2012.

Fast forward to today: Robi is in a Migori prison serving a seven-year jail sentence for FGM, but the stories of her atrocities remain heart-wrenching.

On December 9, 2012, a 16-year-old secondary school student sneaked away from her home in Kuria East and went seeking Robi’s services. Yet her father, an evangelical pastor, had vowed that his daughters would only go through the rite if he was dead.

Nevertheless, the girl had her plans perfectly laid out. She sneaked into one of her uncle’s homes, from where she ventured out the following morning with another girl who was also going to undergo the cut.

The two girls walked to Robi’s homestead the following day, even as the pastor had set out to search for his daughter.

The pastor knew that it was the FGM season thus suspected his daughter may have visited the well-known circumciser’s home.

And true to form, as soon as the pastor arrived at Robi’s house, he found his daughter and the other girls waiting for their turn to face the scalpel.

Grab his daughter

He managed to grab his daughter, but they had barely walked a short distance before a group of youths armed with rungus and pangas beat him up, snatched the hapless girl and frogmarched her back to the circumciser.

The pastor was forced to stare helplessly from a distance as the unthinkable happened to his daughter; before he took her to a nearby medical facility for treatment and later reported the incident to the police.

Later, Robi was arrested and taken before a magistrate at Kehancha in Migori County and charged on two counts of FGM on August 15, last year.

Then Kehancha Senior Resident Magistrate C M Kamau who handled the case, convicted her on the two counts, and jailed her for seven years, citing the seriousness of the offence and the need to deter other potential offenders from pursuing FGM.

“It is well within public knowledge that FGM is widely practiced in this court’s jurisdiction... I agree with the prosecution that stern action needs to be taken to stem this vice,” ruled the magistrate.

Robi appealed the verdict at the Migori High Court arguing that she had been forced to commit the FGM act by an angry mob which had even repulsed security officers who tried to intervene.

But State Counsel Monica Owenga told the court that there was sufficient evidence that she had committed an illegal act.

Justice David Majanja, sitting at the Migori High Court on August 15, dismissed her appeal. The judge noted: “...should she be released, she is likely to perform the FGM again.”

However, the FGM practice is still being carried out in parts of Kuria, including an incident in December last year where the house of an area chief was torched, allegedly over his concerted efforts to fight the vice.

The incident, in which the house of Ntimaru-West Assistant Chief John Mosabi was torched, followed the rescue of 800 girls from FGM in Kuria West.