Category Archives: Child protection

Breast-ironing: UK government vows to tackle abusive practice

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Home Office says ritual is child abuse and should be prosecuted under assault laws

The government has vowed to confront the practice of breast-ironing, calling it child abuse and saying the police should prosecute offenders under assault laws.

In a written parliamentary statement following Guardian revelations that the abusive practice was spreading in the UK, the Home Office said it was committed to challenging the cultural attitudes behind all “honour-based abuse”, but gave no indication it would legislate.

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Breast-ironing: British peer to raise issue in parliament

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Leading QC Alex Carlile hopes to force wider scrutiny of the practice after Guardian revealed ‘dozens’ of girls subjected to abusive custom

A British peer is to table questions in parliament on the secretive practice of “breast-ironing”, after the Guardian revealed that the abusive intervention is spreading in the UK.

Alex Carlile, one of the UK’s leading QCs who is a former deputy high court judge and a member of the House of Lords, told the Guardian that he hoped to trigger a wider scrutiny of the practice in the UK.

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Breast-ironing: ‘the whole community needs an education’

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Practice that aims to slow girls’ physical development is both ineffective and dangerous, say doctors

In a quiet suburban house on the outskirts of a city in northern England, Maureen* – a mother of two in her late 30s – sits cradling a large dark stone in the palm of her hand.

She had just been using it to crush spices for a family meal. But a few years ago, she was using it for a very different purpose.

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Revealed: ‘dozens’ of girls subjected to breast-ironing in UK

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Perpetrators consider it a traditional measure to stop unwanted male attention

An African practice of “ironing” a girl’s chest with a hot stone to delay breast formation is spreading in the UK, with anecdotal evidence of dozens of recent cases, a Guardian investigation has established.

Community workers in London, Yorkshire, Essex and the West Midlands have told the Guardian of cases in which pre-teen girls from the diaspora of several African countries are subjected to the painful, abusive and ultimately futile practice.

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