FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                     
Contact: Mary Ciugu, (254) 20 271-9832/913
July 11, 2011                                                
equalitynownairobi@equalitynow.org

 LIBERIAN JURY DELIVERS “GUILTY” VERDICT ON RUTH BERRY PEAL’S CASE
On 8 July 2011, the case of Ruth Berry Peal, who was forcedly genitally mutilated, rested after one month of hearings. The jury retired to deliberate on the arguments presented by the state prosecutor and the defense lawyers and returned with a verdict of “Guilty”.   The judge announced that he will deliver the sentence in five days but before adjourning made references to the Liberian Constitution and article 4(1) of the African Protocol on the Rights of Women which provides for “Every woman shall be entitled to respect for her life and the integrity and …

I am so thrilled! I just read in Pambazuka of the first hospital in Burkina Faso, “The Pleasure Hospital” that is reconstructing clitorises for women who have been subjected to female genital mutilation. Since I started thinking seriously about women’s rights to pleasurable sex and sexuality I have always wondered about women who have been FGM’d. Do they have pleasurable sex?
I have read a few books by African women who have suffered from the practice. Those that readily come to mind include Aman’s autobiography, Aryan Hirsi’s Infidel and Waris Dirie’s Desert Flower. If I remember correctly Dirie is critical of the practice, Hirsi wrote eloquently about the torture she and her sister underwent in the …