Horrifying Tradition of Ironing Developing Girls’ Breasts Spreading

. . .So-called “breast-ironing” entails taking hot stones to a girl’s chest, as you would an iron, in order to stunt her development. The painful practice may be done numerous times to a growing child, often on a weekly basis, depending on how each girl’s development is affected.

“Breast-ironing” is typically done by female elders in the girl’s family, such as her mother, with the supposed purpose of keeping unwanted male attention away from the child and curb the threat of rape and sexual assault, a report from The Guardian details.

With the massive influx of migration — often without assimilation — the abusive practice has popped up across the pond in an estimated 1,000 cases. The United Nations has categorized the practice as one of the top five under-reported gender-specific global crimes.

“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,” the report found.

An unnamed community activist told The Guardian that she’s aware of 15-20 cases of breast-ironing in Croydon, a town in England, alone. “It’s usually done in the UK, not abroad like female genital mutilation (FGM),” said the activist. “Sometimes they do it once a week, or once every two weeks, depending on how it comes back,” she noted. (Read more from “Horrifying Tradition of Ironing Developing Girls’ Breasts Spreading” HERE)

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