Breast Ironing

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

I agree absolutely. This idea that puberty, the natural development of a woman’s adult body and the natural journey to maturity can be violated as part of some mistaken or bizarre belief system has no place in our society.

As with FGM, the practice of breast ironing is hidden because it is most often carried out by a family member. A recent UN report revealed that 58% of the perpetrators of breast ironing are the girl’s own mother. Although awareness of FGM is probably at an all-time high, the practice of breast ironing will remain hidden unless we in this House speak out about it wherever we can. Breast ironing has been identified by the UN as one of the five most under-reported crimes relating to gender-based violence. That is why this debate is so important

I said that this practice of breast ironing has been found in Birmingham and London. However, because of the hidden nature of this abuse, it is hard to prove the extent of its prevalence in the UK. In the words of Margaret Nyuydzewira, founder of the UK-based pressure group, CAME:

“Breast ironing is a practice that happens in the privacy of women’s homes, it’s hard to see who is doing it, and people are not willing to talk about it. It’s like female genital mutilation: you know it’s happening but you are not going to see it”.

Despite the secrecy around breast ironing, the anti-FGM campaigner and co-founder of Daughters of Eve, Leyla Hussein, recently revealed she had met a woman in the UK who had undergone breast ironing. Recent press coverage has said that it is endemic and experts believe that the custom is being practised among the several thousand Cameroonians now living in the UK.

CAME has estimated that up to 1,000 girls in the UK have been subjected to breast ironing and that an unknown number have been subjected to it abroad. It highlighted to me one case reported to the police in Birmingham where no further action was taken, as it was put down to being part of someone’s culture rather than a crime.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jake Berry]

I am sorry, but I will not, because I must make some progress.

The Mayor of London’s harmful practices taskforce, on which my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) served, described breast ironing as an emerging issue here in the UK. It is precisely the lack of hard facts and figures that has led me to seek this debate on breast ironing and the Government’s response.

It has also led me to do something else. I wrote to every police force in the UK and every local authority in the UK to ask what they were doing about this issue. The police forces that wrote back to me showed real concern. They know that this is a worrying crime and they have a worrying lack of knowledge of it. Some 72% of the police forces that responded either failed to answer a question about breast ironing or admitted that they had never heard of it, while 38% said they wanted more guidance. This demonstrates a lack of understanding among our police forces about breast ironing and the signs that reveal that it is happening. Although some police forces, including West Mercia, Merseyside, Thames Valley and Hertfordshire, are taking encouraging steps to raise awareness, I hope that the Minister will consider issuing guidance from the Department to ensure that this best practice is spread and that those who do not have the information on breast ironing can be enlightened.

I also wrote to representatives of all the local authority children’s services departments. Of those who responded, 23% volunteered the information that they had never undertaken any training in this area, and 65% said that they would like more guidance. Departments in Greater Manchester, Leicester and the City of London are already taking action, but, like the police forces, all the children’s departments in our local authorities want more information. On their own admission, the police and local authorities need further training in dealing with this practice and bringing criminals to prosecution. If we fail to give them the tools that they require to identify and understand the victims of this crime, they will never be able to tackle it.

I understand that there is currently no stand-alone crime of breast ironing in the United Kingdom, and that police and prosecutors have to rely on the existing pool of criminal offences that are available to them. I believe that, as with female genital mutilation, that is not an adequate protection for young women and girls in our country. I pay tribute to the Minister for her work on the Bill that became the Serious Crime Act 2015, which, among other things, provided anonymity for victims of FGM, created a new civil protection order, created a new offence of failing to protect a girl from FGM, provided for statutory guidance, and imposed a duty to report on public sector professionals such as teachers, social workers and doctors. I believe that all those protections should be considered in relation to the crime of breast ironing. I hope that the Minister will consider the creation of a stand-alone offence, and will also extend the protections in the 2015 Act to breast ironing.

As I hope I have demonstrated, this crime is not given the recognition that it needs to be given in our communities here in the United Kingdom. One of the main barriers that I have been able to cite this evening is a lack of awareness among all Government agencies, including police, local authorities and schools. The very people who should be keeping these girls safe do not know what to look for, and, more important, do not know where to look. I ask the Minister to undertake to ensure that the Department gives guidance to those Government agencies on how to spot the girls who are at risk. I also ask her to request the Department to make a thorough study of the prevalence of breast ironing in the UK. If we are to tackle this crime, we must find out where it is taking place and how many people are victims of it.

Yesterday, a colleague asked me why I, as a man, had chosen to speak about breast ironing. The answer is simple. If we in the House of Commons fail to act, if we fail to speak out about this horrendous and abhorrent crime, it is we who are letting young girls and women down here in our country. Unless we speak out and raise the profile of breast ironing, the hidden suffering of young teenage girls will always remain hidden.