London - A doctor accused of carrying out female genital mutilation told a court on Wednesday, in the first British trial of its kind, that FGM was an abhorrent practice which had no justification.
Dhanuson Dharmasena denied performing the illegal procedure on a new mother after delivering her baby at the Whittington Hospital in north London in November 2012.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, underwent FGM in Somalia aged six and her labia were sewn together.
Dharmasena told Southwark Crown Court that when she went into labour he had to make a 1.5-2 cm cut through the fused tissue to prepare her for birth.
The prosecution alleges that Dharmasena sewed the labia together again afterwards, thereby performing FGM.
But Dharmasena told the jury he was acting in the woman's best interests to stop bleeding from the incision he had made.
Asked about his personal attitude to FGM, he said: “I regard FGM as an abhorrent practice which does not have any justification in our society.”
The Sri Lankan-born doctor, who moved to Britain as a child, also told the jury there was no medical justification for FGM.
Dharmasena, 32, said he had been working at the hospital for just over a month as a junior registrar when he was called in to perform an emergency delivery on the woman, referred to in court as AB.
He told the jury he had to act quickly as there was concern the baby was in distress and had a low heart rate. “It was becoming an emergency situation,” he added.
Dharmasena said he had received no medical training in FGM and had never seen a patient with FGM before AB. He had also never observed a deinfibulation - the procedure to re-open a woman who has undergone FGM - and he had not read the hospital guidelines on FGM.
He told the court that if he had left the woman to bleed there would have been a risk of infection.
“I was acting in the patient's best interests to stop the bleeding at the apex of the cut I had made,” added the doctor, who demonstrated to the jury what he had done using a model.
Asked what he would have done if the area had already stopped bleeding, he replied: “I would have left it alone.”
Dharmasena accepted he should have sutured the two edges of the labia separately rather than sewing them together, in line with the hospital's FGM guidelines.
He said he was “embarrassed” by what he had done. “Had I known the correct surgical technique I would have done it the correct way,” he added.
The doctor said he did not believe the suture would have prevented the woman having intercourse or giving birth in future, and the jury heard that she had since had a second baby.
Defence counsel Zoe Johnson QC said FGM was “an abomination and an abuse of a woman's human rights”.
But she stressed that the trial was not about sending a message to society that FGM was wrong and told the jury they should leave aside any feelings of horror and focus on the facts.
Dharmasena, of Ilford, denies one charge of carrying out FGM. A second man, Hasan Mohamed, 41, who is on trial with the doctor, denies insisting or encouraging him to carry out the procedure.
The trial continues.
Reuters