A doctor accused of carrying out female genital mutilation on a young mother has told a court it was an abhorrent practice with no justification in our society.
Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena, 32, told Southwark crown court that he had never received training in FGM during his undergraduate medical degree, nor during his postgraduate studies.
Dharmasena is charged with carrying out FGM on a woman after he delivered her baby in November 2012 at the Whittington hospital in London. It is the first case of its kind in England and Wales.
The woman had been subjected to mutilation as a child in Somalia, and during her labour Dharmasena made two incisions to ensure the safe delivery of the baby.
He is accused of reinstating her FGM through the way in which he sutured the incisions after the baby was born.
Zoe Johnson QC, defending, told the jury: “This case is not about sending a message to society that every right-thinking man and woman condemns the practice of FGM.
“I am sure you would agree all reasonable people would consider it an abomination and an abuse of a woman’s human rights.”
She asked the jury to focus on the facts of the case. “He [the doctor] will tell you that at all times he acted in what he thought was AB’s [the alleged victim’s] best interest.
“Dr Dharmasena’s defence is that the incision and the repair, which he has acknowledged and accepted from the outset, were necessary for AB’s physical health and that the incision and repair were connected with childbirth.”
Dharmasena is the first person to be charged in England and Wales with committing FGM since the practice was outlawed in 1985.
He told the court he was born in Sri Lanka and had moved to the UK aged four in 1986. He was a Hindu, he said, and nothing in his religion or culture supported the practice of FGM.
“I regard FGM as an abhorrent practice with no justification in our society,” he told the jury.
He said he had never met the woman until he saw her in the labour room at the Whittington.
He also said he had never met a victim of FGM until that moment, been trained in deinfibulation – a surgical technique that involves opening up the labia – or carried out deinfibulation himself.
The doctor said that five months after the incident involving AB, he was made a senior registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology. He held that position for almost a year before he was interviewed by police and charged with committing FGM under the 2003 Female Genital Mutilation Act. At that point in March 2014, he was suspended from the medical register and has not been able to have face-to-face contact with patients since.
Dharmasena appears in court alongside another man, Hasan Mohammed, who is charged with aiding and abetting the offence.
Both men deny the charges.
The case continues.
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