‘I felt a splash of cold water - then the cutting’

Juliet Imiruaye relives the day her family had her circumcised against her will. Political Reporter Michael O’Farrell reports.

AS a child growing up in Nigeria’s delta region, Juliet Imiruaye was used to neighbourhood celebrations following female circumcisions.

“It’s like the Holy Communion you do here - people bring you presents of money, clothing. We participated in the dancing, singing, eating, jubilating, but we never knew what was coming to our own selves.”

Then one November day at the age of 15, Juliet returned home to a household filled with supplies.

“I saw big white fish, big containers of oil, big fat yams. They were things for celebration. I saw three mats, bags of rice, everything.”

Her time, and that of her two sisters, had come.

The next day a feared aunt the girls called Big Mamma arrived with hoards of other relatives.

Juliet began to scream. The doors of the house were locked to prevent escape.

“They told my younger sisters and myself to go and take a shower - a cold bath - and to give particular attention to our private parts, to wash them thoroughly.

“We did that all in panic. We were shaking, shivering from the fear of pain and everything.”

In the back garden a mat had been laid down. Juliet was asked not to wear her underwear.

“I was given the order to lay down. I was lying flat and my uncle came in and sat on my chest with my arms folded. That was to restrain me, to pin me down.”

Four women restrained her legs preventing any movement whatsoever.

“The next thing I felt was a splash of cold water to my private parts and the next thing I felt the cutting.”

Screaming and shouting with pain, Juliet did her best to wriggle.

“My mother said to me that I am a disgrace - ‘the other girls keep quiet’ - and she took a piece of cloth and pushed it into my mouth.”

At one point Juliet actually managed to shake off the women holding down her legs. But the crude surgery had begun and had to be completed.

“They opened the door, went out, got men who are stronger to pin me down and that was how I got mine done.”

A cruel, but traditional ritual to initiate a young girl into womanhood, had instead irrevocably marked her for life.

“What they did is reduce the labia minora and the sensory nerves. They removed all the sensory nerves, but the hood is still there.”

It’s now 35 years since that day and sitting in her home in Maynooth, Co Kildare, Juliet, who is married and has four children of her own, laughs in irony.

“At that time we felt our parents were doing us proud. It was an initiation into womanhood. Any girl who has it done, proudly talks amongst her peers because she had this done.”

She never knew, nor understood, the real damage inflicted on her until she went to become a nurse, later qualifying as a midwife.

Then, sick and dismayed at the brutalised women her job brought her into contact with, she began campaigning against the practice and preaching family planning.

“The women, they are just kept there as baby-manufacturing units. The only time when a man sleeps with them is when he wants to satisfy himself.

“The woman has no authority over her own self to say this is what I want. They don’t know what it is to reach orgasm. Their sensory organs have been cut off.”

And the justifications for such barbaric mutilation? “No man will marry you if you are not circumcised. They believe it is to prevent waywardness.

“It is a pride for a man himself to say; ‘oh I have had my woman circumcised, she is tight enough for me’. But without it they feel she is wide as ever.”

Such views, which she bravely sought to counter, ultimately saw her hounded out of her homeland in fear of her life.

Now five years in Ireland she continues her campaign, swearing she will never stop until female genital mutilation is no more.

She has a stark warning about the possibility of female circumcisions in Ireland.

“I will not be surprised if there is an incident here. The Government should be alert, aware. They should be awake to the possibility.”

Juliet was to be deported this week. Having denied her asylum, Justice Minister Michael McDowell also refused to grant humanitarian leave to remain.

But the case was given national prominence by the Gerry Ryan show, and the last-minute intervention of Tánaiste Mary Harney last week saw Mr McDowell agree to a review and a six-month stay on the deportation pending a review of the case.

She is relieved but Juliet’s feelings are nevertheless mixed. Her soul is torn from its heartland.

“There is no place like home. As I’m sitting here now I have the feeling of going back home. But I can never go back to my home town again.”