The woman who allegedly carried out female genital mutilation on two sisters developed a technique that would leave no scarring and told them to close their eyes so they could not properly report on her, a court has heard.
The crown prosecutor in the first FGM trial in Australia used her closing address in the New South Wales supreme court to accuse the woman, known as KM, of being an experienced “khatna” practitioner who was calculated in her approach.
KM, along with the girls’ mother and a senior cleric in their Dawoodi Bohra Shia Muslim community, is on trial for allegedly carrying out FGM on two sisters between 2010 and 2012, when they were about seven years old.
The court has heard the older girl, known as C1, allegedly underwent the khatna ceremony at the Wollongong home of KM between 2010 and 2011. That the ceremony took place is not in dispute but the case centres around whether the girl was cut on the clitoris as part of khatna or “touched” with a pair of forceps in a symbolic way.
Her younger sister, C2, allegedly had her khatna ceremony in western Sydney.
When the alleged FGM took place KM told C1 to close her eyes and imagine she was a princess in a garden while she was lying naked from the waist down on a bed, the court has heard.
“Not only did it allow [C1] to indulge this very clearly bright girl’s imagination, how convenient for KM that in one way she [C1] would be deprived of that visual sense of being able to see what was being done to her,” the crown prosecutor Nanette Williams said in her closing remarks on Thursday.
“With her eyes closed she would never be able to report what she saw and she would never be able to explain what was seen happening to her.
“If it was a purely symbolic ceremony why did [C1] need to close her eyes? Why did [C1] need to distract herself? Imagine herself somewhere where she was supposed to be?
“You would think if it was symbolic ceremony with prayers being said then she would be invited to be in the moment, to share the moment. Instead she was asked to dissociate herself from what was happening by engaging in that active imaginative process.”
Medical examination of both sisters has been inconclusive, with a doctor finding that although it was possible both girls had been cut on their clitorises, or had part of their clitorises removed, there was no scarring to prove it.
Williams alleged this was because KM was a “very experienced” khatna practitioner in the Dawoodi Bohra community and had perfected a technique that would leave no scarring, the court heard.
“When you look at all of [C1’s] evidence it is consistent with being a khatna procedure involving a cut or injury to her clitoris and it was a not a benign procedure,” Williams said. “She has spoken elegantly, forcefully and powerfully that what was done to her was a khatna procedure involving injury to her clitoris.”
The trial has entered its seventh week, with KM giving evidence in the past week. A recorded phone call between her and the father of the girls was played to the court in which KM told the father to say the girls had hurt themselves playing if any injury was found.
The trial continues.
