18.3.2016. A former midwife, a mother of two girls and a Dawoodi Bohra community leader sentenced over mutilation of two young girls in Australia’s first criminal prosecution for FGM

A retired nurse, a mother of two girls and a Dawoodi Bohra community leader have each been sentenced to a maximum 15 months in prison after Australia’s first criminal prosecution for female genital mutilation.

A former midwife, Kubra Magennis, and a woman who cannot be named were found guilty in November of carrying out FGM on two girls, the woman’s daughters, between 2009 and 2012.

The older sister underwent a ceremony known as “khatna” in a community member’s home in the New South Wales south coast town of Wollongong. Her younger sister’s FGM was carried out in the family’s western Sydney home.

Both girls were aged seven at the time of the FGM, which was classed as either type one or type four, involving the cutting or partial removal of their clitorises without leaving a scar.

The older girl said in court she had been told to lie on a bed naked from the waist down and imagine she was a “princess in a garden” while FGM was carried out on her by Magennis, who had been asked by the girl’s mother to perform the khatna.

The girl’s grandmother was also in the room and prayers from the Qur’an were read while the ceremony took place.

Read more in the Guardian