Women handed three years for abetting FGM in Samburu
Veronica Lengerasi (right) and Janet Lenolkulal (centre) in the dock at the Maralal Law Courts on Thursday 10, 2022. The duo was handed a three-year jail term after they were found guilty of subjecting a 13-year old girl to FGM.
Two women in Samburu were on Thursday handed a three-year prison sentence each for forcing a 13-year-old girl to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM).
A Maralal court found Janet Lenolkulal and Veronica Lengurasi guilty of performing the illegal procedure.
Senior Principal Magistrate John Tamar gave the duo the alternative of paying a fine of Sh200,000 each.
Mr Tamar noted that FGM was still rampant in Samburu despite intensified campaigns against it by the national and county governments and activists.
“FGM is common in Samburu but is a backward rite of passage which is punishable by law. Ignorance of the law is not defence.
That is why I see it fit to give out a deterring sentence,” he said.
The two women were arrested on May 18 last year in Porro village, Samburu Central, while performing procedure on the girl against her will. They have 14 days to appeal against the ruling.
Kenya outlawed the practice in 2011, but it continues secretly away from the glare of security authorities. The Samburu community believes FGM is necessary for social acceptance and increases the marriage prospects of young women.
In Kenya, the ritual involves removing the external parts of a woman’s genitalia. Nearly 90 percent of the women in remote Samburu villages are circumcised, often by crude means, when they are teenagers.
FGM causes many physical and emotional problems for women.
The United Nations estimated that 200 million girls and women have undergone the procedure worldwide. In some cases, girls die from excessive bleeding during the cut and others develop infections that cause lifetime painful conditions, among them fistula.
Kenya is lauded as one of the countries believed to be making tremendous progress in the fight against FGM.
