While some mothers sacrifice the unbelievable to see their children live better lives, others sacrifice their children’s happiness in unbelievable ways.
In delivery of justice,a woman in central Kenya was jailed for six years after forcing her 13-year-old twin daughters to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) in a rare conviction. A charity which helped rescue the girls revealed.
Florence Muthoni from Tharaka-Nithi county was arrested on Wednesday after a tip-off from the charity Plan International.
She was sentenced by a magistrates court in Chuka on Thursday after admitting to taking her daughters to a circumciser.
A senior aid worker at the charity said Muthoni told the court that she wanted her daughters to undergo FGM to avoid a curse from her deceased grandfather who had instructed all girls in the family undergo the procedure.
“A community member alerted us when they had heard the mother was organising the girls to undergo the cut, so we informed the local authorities,” Mercy Chege, a director at Plan International, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Unfortunately, we were not able to prevent the circumcision as by the time the police conducted the raid and rescued the girls, they had already been cut.”
The twin girls are receiving medical treatment and counselling while police are still investigating as the mother had refused to name the circumciser, said Chege.
According to the United Nations, one in five women and girls aged between 15 and 49 in Kenya have undergone FGM, which usually involves the partial or total removal of the genitalia.
In some cases, girls can bleed to death or die from infections. FGM can also cause lifelong conditions such as fistula as well as fatal childbirth complications.
Kenya outlawed the practice in 2011, but it continues as communities believe it is necessary for social acceptance and increasing girls’ marriage prospects.
Do you think the six term sentence was fair justice for the kids?