In Seine-Saint-Denis, this place where victims of excision are repaired

“One night in Mali, some women took me away. They spread my legs and cut them all at once. I still remember the blood and the pain.” Crying, Fatou (the patients’ names have been changed), a tall 35-year-old woman, seems to shrink as she confides in Céline Mirolo, a sexologist midwife who is seeing her for her first appointment at the Let’s Repair Excision unit at the André-Grégoire Hospital in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis).

Circumcised at the age of 9, Fatou has only one desire: to have surgery to treat her sexual problems. "The operation can soothe physical pain," the midwife cautions. "But it's not a magic wand that will make the trauma and sexual problems associated with circumcision disappear."

In other hospitals, they would have simply operated on her to bring out the intact part of the clitoris. Not in Montreuil. In this unit, created in 2017 by gynecologist Sarah Abramowicz, mutilated women benefit from multidisciplinary care combining sexology, psychology, support groups, and social support. This comprehensive and coordinated support is the subject of a three-year experiment, as part of the Île-de-France plan to combat female genital mutilation launched in February by Aurore Bergé, Minister for Equality between Women and Men.

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