Yasmin Mumed remembers the brand new pale pink dress with embroidered flowers.She remembers the morning trip to the busy market with her grandmother. And the candy she got to eat. It was a sunny, happy day.Then her mind flashes to the dark room filled with women. The blindfold. Being laid on her back. The confusion, the fear and the piercing pain.When it was all over, and the blindfold came off, she remembers looking down and seeing a patch of blood on her dress, just below her belly button.Read more:Canadian girls are being taken abroad to undergo female genital mutilation, documents revealMumed was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, at the age of 6 in her village in Ethiopia before immigrating to Canada. She grew up in Scarborough and, now 23, studies at the University of Guelph. She is one of more than 200 million girls worldwide who have been cut.An ongoing Toronto Star investigation has revealed that the federal government is aware of cases in which Canadian girls have been taken abroad to be cut. Canada has failed to address and measure the scope of the problem.Unlike the United Kingdom, which has undertaken research and is tracking FGM cases, Canada has not collected data on Canadian women who, like Mumed, are living with the physical and psychological affects of FGM, regardless of where and when it happened to them. In the U.K., there are an estimated 137,000 women and girls affected.Experts say there is also a lack of local services in Canada for women, and far too few trained professionals, such as doctors and counsellors, to offer support.Mumed was cut three years before she immigrated to Canada at the age of 9. She is now fundraising to go to California to have reconstructive surgery.“I know there’s a lot of young girls out there who are just like me with a similar background, similar childhoods, who have never heard anyone that looks like them talk about this,” says Mumed of what ...
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