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<p>Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a crime and it is child abuse. The Government
is clear that we will not tolerate a practice that can cause extreme and lifelong
suffering to women and girls.</p><p>The Serious Crime Act 2015 introduced a new FGM
mandatory reporting duty requiring all regulated health, social care and teaching
professionals to report known cases of FGM in under 18s directly to the police.</p><p>The
Home Office has published information for the professionals subject to the duty and
the police on GOV.uk. This makes clear that upon receipt of a report the police will
record the information and initiate a multi-agency response, in line with local safeguarding
arrangements.</p><p>To improve understanding of the prevalence of so-called ‘Honour
Based Violence’ including FGM, we amended the police Annual Data Requirement (ADR)
to allow police forces the opportunity from April 2018 to record on a voluntary basis
where a crime has been committed in the context of preserving the ‘honour’ of a family
or community. This new voluntary collection is also capturing police recorded offences
of FGM which were initially reported to the police under the duty.</p><p> </p>
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