A Ugandan woman who became the first person in Britain to be convicted of FGM after performing 'barbaric' home surgery on her three-year-old daughter has been was jailed for 13 years.
A 37-year-old mother was found guilty of cutting her three-year-old daughter despite deploying witchcraft to 'shut up' her accusers.
Mrs Justice Whipple told the mother she had 'betrayed' her daughter's trust and left her with a 'life long burden'. The judge branded FGM a 'barbaric practice'.
A Ugandan mother who became the first person convicted under FGM laws froze ox tongue (inset) with screws embedded in them aimed at silencing police, social workers, officers and lawyers in the case
The mother wrote people's names inside limes, which she froze, in a bid to use witchcraft to stop them reporting her
The court has heard how the mother had an interest in witchcraft and used 'spells' to target and try to 'silence' social workers, police and even the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders.
Mrs Justice Whipple today jailed the woman for 11 years for the FGM offence, with a two-year consecutive term imposed for unrelated offences concerning indecent images found on her phone when it was seized as part of the investigation.
The judge said: 'FGM has long been against the law and, let's be clear, FGM is a form of child abuse.
'It's a barbaric practice and a serious crime. It's an offence which targets women, particularly inflicted when they are young and vulnerable.'
The judge said it was not known why the woman inflicted FGM on her child, contrary to her culture, although witchcraft was a possibility.
On the psychological effect on the victim, she the told defendant: 'This is a significant and life long burden for her to carry. You betrayed her trust in you as her protector.'
The woman's former partner, a 43-year-old Ghanaian, was cleared of involvement following an Old Bailey trial.
The woman had written messages placed inside frozen limes to try to silence her enemies
The pair, from Walthamstow, east London, had been jointly accused of carrying out FGM on their daughter in August 2017.
Today - on International Women's Day - the mother was sentenced for harming her daughter.
Jurors heard the little girl was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital in Walthamstow, east London, on Bank Holiday Monday, August 28, 2017.
Her mother said the girl was not wearing any underwear when she fell and landed on a metal strip on the edge of the cupboard door.
But the consultant who operated on the toddler that evening phoned the police suspecting that the girl had suffered FGM due to the lack of bruising to the girl's groin area typically seen in impact-type injuries.
The kitchen where the surgery took place was so dirty that the police officer's feet stuck to the floor when they searched the room.
They found that the
