On 21 November 2018, police in Tharaka-Nithi arrested a woman accused of forcing her 12-year-old twin daughters to undergo female genital mutilation, commonly referred to as the cut.
County Commissioner Muzne Abdullatif said her office acted after receiving a tip-off from officers working with Plan International, a non-governmental organisation, that the two girls had already been cut. She said the twins had undergone the procedure two weeks earlier and were then placed in a safe shelter.
The mother declined to identify the circumciser. She said she took the girls through the cut because of a family curse she believed had affected the women in her lineage.
“My dead great grandfather left a curse compelling all girls in his lineage to undergo the cut. If girls do not get the cut they go mad,” the woman said.
She also claimed the girls had begun showing mental complications before recovering after the procedure. The woman said she had previously subjected her older four daughters to the cut for the same reason.
“I have to choose between death and circumcising them,” she said.
Authorities said the woman was being held at Chuka Police Station as the case was handled.
