FGM to become ‘a horrific, historical fluke’ as word of reversal surgery spreads
LAS VEGAS, Mar. 23



A 33-year-old victim female genital mutilation (FGM) was ecstatic when she made an after-midnight phone call to Clitoraid head patient coordinator Nadine Gary in mid March. “I was feeling so good, I didn’t want to let go at first,” she told Gary. “It was a strange sensation, and then suddenly I was overtaken by this incredible feeling that lasted several seconds! I had my first orgasm!”

Mariame (whose last name is omitted here to protect her privacy), an African immigrant, had undergone clitoral reconstructive surgery in Trinidad, Colo., nine months earlier. The procedure was performed by Clitoraid’s head surgeon, Dr. Marci Bowers, who volunteers her services to help FGM victims.

In childhood, Mariame and millions of other women were forced to endure the ancestral tradition of clitoral cutting, an act of extreme cruelty typically performed on little girls by their female relatives. Anesthesia is rarely used and the pain is excruciating.

“Over 135 million women and teenagers worldwide are currently living through the consequences of this horrific act of brutality,” Gary said in a statement released this morning. “They can’t experience the physical pleasures of relationships that most women take for granted, and many of them also feel inadequate and ashamed of their plight. Clitoraid wants to help as many of these victims as possible, and to make FGM obsolete by offering and publicizing the surgery that reverses the damage. When you can restore what was taken away, there’s no point in doing the horrible deed in the first place.”

Las Vegas-based Clitoraid, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2004 by Rael, founder and spiritual leader of the International Raelian Movement.

“He wanted FGM victims like Mariame to receive the surgery they need to achieve sexual pleasure and regain their sense of feminine dignity,” Gary said. “That’s why Clitoraid is currently building a hospital in Burkina Faso, West Africa, for the sole purpose of offering the surgery and related therapy to FGM victims free of charge. Dr. Bowers and other volunteers will take part in the hospital’s opening next January.”
But the surgery alone is not enough, Gary said.

“We have to teach them how to get their sense of pleasure back and to overcome their inhibitions,” she explained. “That’s why therapy is equally important. At Clitoraid, we realize that mind and body have to be treated together, so we’re very grateful to Dr. Larry Ashley, a university professor and sexual trauma counselor who volunteered to give individual sessions to each of our patients.”
She added that Mariame had also benefited from a fun, educational workshop inspired by sexual therapist Dr. Betty Dodson.

“The workshop helped her recover her clitoral sensation and overcome her shyness about sex,” Gary explained. “And it helped her accept and welcome the look of her newly repaired clitoris and to trust that it really could give her pleasure now.”

Also helpful to Mariame were vibrators and other sensual toys donated by Clitoraid’s new partner, Good Vibrations, an adult toys retailer based in San Francisco. “Vibrators are instrumental for helping FGM reversal patients recover clitoral sensation,” Gary said. “They reestablish nerve pathways, something the patients can’t achieve solely through finger stimulation.”

Bowers hugs Meite on Monday before Meite's reconstructive surgery. Bowers donates her skills and has an agreement with Trinidad's Mount San Rafael Hospital to use its facilities for $1,500 per patient.

Dr. Marci Bowers slipped into a chair in Exam Room 3, folded one long leg over another, looked at her patient — a young woman with wide eyes and a nervous smile — and got to the point.

"We want to help make your life better," Bowers said.

Mariama is as tiny as the 5-foot-10-inch Bowers is formidable, as soft-spoken as Bowers is confident. Mariama speaks softly and smiles easily, but a few hours with her make clear that her determination is as strong as it is quiet.

She is 26 and lives with her husband and daughter in Virginia, and didn't want her last name used. Originally, she is from Guinea, a country about the size of Oregon on Africa's western coast. Guinea has about 10 million residents, and about
96 percent of the women there have, like Mariama, been genitally mutilated.

Mariama and the six other women, all originally from Africa, crowding Dr. Bowers' tiny Trinidad clinic have traveled a long way to get that fixed. The women have come to this former coal-mining town in southern Colorado looking for more than just reconstructive surgery. They want relief from pain. They are looking for a chance, as one put it, to be normal.


Kady Meite from the Ivory Coast in Trinidad, Colorado. (Korene Gallegos)


"I want to be like everyone else," said Kady Meite, the only one of the women who agreed to have her full name used. "Now, I feel nothing. I feel pain" during sex, she said.

The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million to 140 million women worldwide, but especially in northern and central Africa, have endured female genital mutilation, or FGM.

Usually done to girls before age 15, the practice involves at least slicing off part or all of the exposed clitoris. In some cultures, the cutting is more extensive, and disfiguring. It's done occasionally by health care practitioners but most often by an older female relative.



A lot of people inflict the damage. Bowers, whose clinic is known around the world as a destination for those seeking gender-changing surgery, is one of a few trained to surgically restore the clitoris, as well as repair other damage.

Since 2003 when she took over the work of Trinidad's pioneering sex-change surgeon, Dr. Stanley Biber, Bowers' practice has exploded to more than 200 of the surgeries a year, and there is a waiting list of patients. Bowers certainly didn't need more to do.

Nevertheless, she went to France a little over a year ago to learn a reconstructive technique developed by Dr. Pierre Foldes, which essentially cuts away scar tissue and surrounding skin to expose whatever is left of the clitoris.

In many cases the procedure also requires more extensive reconstruction.

The women gathered in her office last week are the second group Bowers has performed the reparative surgery for; both times she has donated her services.


Kady Meite, 43, originally from the Ivory Coast in West Africa, speaks with Dr. Marci Bowers before going through a female genital mutilation reversal surgery in Trinidad.

Because the procedure is new and rare, insurance seldom covers it. But Trinidad's Mount San Rafael Hospital has agreed to a flat rate of $1,500 per patient for use of one of its two operating rooms.

Like most of the women in Bowers' clinic, Meite had no idea repair was possible until she learned about Bowers on the Internet. "I said, 'Oh, my God. I don't believe it.' "

Meite is 43. She has been married 22 years and has four children. She would like, after all this time, for sex with her husband, Mustapha, not to hurt.

Betrayal of trust

As Bowers made her way from exam room to exam room Monday, a theme began to emerge as each patient recounted her story: A young girl would visit some trusted female relative in a different town or a distant village. One day during that visit, she would be taken somewhere. Someone would hold her down, and a knife would appear.

"We went on a vacation to visit my aunt," Mariama said, describing her experience. "Then one day, she took me and her granddaughter — my cousin — to a different village. It was like there was going to be a party or a big ceremony. They were cooking food."

Mariama remembers being taken outside into the bush, where "a lady had a small knife." They forced her to the dirt. "I think they didn't want to get blood on a blanket."

She remembers being sliced three times. "The knife was not sharp enough. It hurt so much, I thought I was dying. I screamed so loud one lady physically was sitting on my face" to muffle the screams.

It took two months for the pain and bleeding to stop. In the meantime, the wound became infected, and Mariama got sick with a fever.

She was 8 years old.

When Mariama asked her mother why this happened, her mother explained that it was their culture.

The custom is most closely associated with Islam. Newsweek has reported that Dr. Foldes has received death threats as a result of his surgeries. Still, the women who have come to Trinidad don't believe they are doing anything contrary to the Muslim faith.

"There is nothing written in the Koran saying you need to do that," Meite said.

Growing up in Guinea and the Ivory Coast, Mariama and Meite watched girls who were not cut be ostracized, whispered about, called "unclean."

It wasn't until she came to the United States, as the bride of a Guinea-born chemist, that she learned that in many places what happened to her was not acceptable, or even legal.

The first time she was examined by a doctor in the U.S. — who had never heard of FGM — "his face was like he had seen a ghost," Mariama said.

When she gave birth to their daughter, it had to be by cesarean section; nurses couldn't even insert a catheter, she said.

Her daughter, now 5, has never been to Guinea, and she never will, Mariama said.

"I refuse to go back. I won't let them near my daughter."

A path toward healing

After they met with Bowers and filled out paperwork at the hospital, the women went to their rooms at the Morning After Guest House.

Typically, the Morning After is a haven for those who have come to Trinidad for sex-change surgery. But this week, it had been reserved for the women.

The night before the surgeries, that guest house was a bustling, noisy place. The television on, the radio was blaring, exotic smells wafted from the kitchen as owner Carol Cometto threw a dinner for them.

The women come as a group for pragmatic reasons — Bowers blocks out time for surgery, the guest house is reserved.

But there is another less tangible benefit to the mass scheduling. As the evening proceeded, the women got acquainted, and for many, it was the first time they met others who faced the same traumas and made the same decision to seek healing.

Eventually, a woman in a plaid schoolgirl miniskirt, fishnet stockings, boots and a fur-trimmed white jacket walked in, carrying a large box of vibrators.

"Tonight I get to play Santa Claus," Nadine Gary said.

Gary is with the organization Clitoraid, which she describes as working toward twin goals of "ending FGM worldwide and to help as many victims as possible through surgery."

To fully help them, Gary believes, means more than just ending the women's pain. It also means beginning their pleasure.

Female genitalia is "just like any part of body that has been cut," Gary said. "You need physical therapy so it starts to work again. The nerve paths need to be reactivated so they reach the brain."

If that notion was a bit much for a group of women whose childhood lessons taught that sex may be enjoyable for men but a source of pain for women, they didn't say anything.

Early Tuesday morning, while darkness still clung to Trinidad, a car pulled up outside the guest house, for the first of four trips that day to the hillside hospital.

The surgeries took little more than an hour each, and by 3 p.m. four women were back at the guest house, sore and resting.

Wednesday, the process was repeated with the remaining three.

Bowers had prepared them for some post-op pain, but that didn't deter them.

Meite, who said she has converted to Christianity, believes "God has a purpose for everything." Now, she said, she has found the answer to why this happened to her.

"Now, I have found someone who can help me, and so I can help a lot of other women."

Karen Auge: 303-954-1733 or -email-

LAS VEGAS, Feb. 14 – Eight women are about to receive a highly unusual and belated Valentine – the ability to achieve physical satisfaction during sex after being forcibly deprived of that capacity in childhood through female genital mutilation (FGM), an act of horrific brutality.

Initiated by Rael, leader of the Raelian Movement, the non-profit, all-volunteer organization Clitoraid, based in Las Vegas, announced today that its second round of female genital mutilation (FGM) reversal surgeries will take place March 2-3 in Trinidad, Colo.


Dr. Marci Bowers
Trinidad is where Dr. Marci Bowers, Clitoraid’s head surgeon, practices.
“FGM is common in many countries, even in the United States in some ethnic neighborhoods,” said Clitoraid representative Nadine Gary. “Clitoraid’s twin mission is to end FGM worldwide and to help as many victims as possible through surgery.”

A specialist in pelvic and sex-related surgery, Bowers went to France to learn the new procedure developed by Dr. Pierre Foldes that successfully restores clitoral functioning to FGM victims. In 2009, having learned the technique directly from Foldes, she became the first U.S. surgeon to successfully perform this type of restorative surgery when several Clitoraid-sponsored women traveled to Bowers’ clinic to have the operation.

“Dr. Bowers was the first American doctor to volunteer her services, said Clitoraid representative Nadine Gary. “We’re hoping more will follow, since the need is great.”
Gary said the new surgery could change the lives of millions of FGM victims worldwide, restoring the capacity for pleasure most of us take for granted.

“Waris Dirie, whose true-life story was told in the movie “Desert Flower, was just one of countless FGM victims,” she said. “But their suffering can now be relieved, because Clitoraid offers the possibility of restoring what was so horribly taken away. We just need much greater public awareness about this issue. The more funds we raise, the more victims we can help.” Gary said FGM is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. “That’s why Clitoraid is building its first clitoral repair hospital in Burkina Faso, where victims will be treated for free,” Gary said. “Construction is almost finished and Dr. Bowers will perform the new hospital’s first surgeries on site in June. She’ll also train local doctors to perform the procedure so more women can be helped.”

In the interim, Bowers will operate on the second group of Clitoraid-sponsored victims at her Colorado clinic in March. The eight patients range in age from 22 to over 50 and represent four continents. Their countries of origin include Japan, Korea, Liberia, Austria, Canada and the United States.

Poignant stories of suffering and new hope
“Those having the surgery have just one thing in mind – to get their pleasure and dignity back,” Gary said. “They know what they’ve missed. One woman is having the surgery so she won’t be the mutilated bride her relatives intended her to be. She’s getting married soon and wants to enjoy the physical part of things along with her husband. She had the courage to defy tradition, and we’re hoping many others will follow in her footsteps.”
Another of the eight patients resigned from a teaching position to have the procedure and plans to leave her homeland permanently.

“She wants to leave that place of dreadful memories behind,” Gary explained. “After the surgery, she’s moving to another country to begin a new life, a life in which she can be a complete woman at last.”
Yet another patient (whose name is withheld to protect her privacy) gave Clitoraid a poignant, written summary of the atrocity she experienced as a helpless child.

“All I remember is going to bed one night, having breakfast the next morning and then having two ladies hold my legs while another woman came toward me with a razor,” the woman wrote. “I struggled and managed at one point to escape, but they just came after me in the street and held me down again. I weep as I type this, because this memory is so horrible. I spent weeks recovering, with ropes tied around my legs.”


Dr. Larry Ashley
Pre-surgery, each patient will receive free, private counseling from Dr. Larry Ashley, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, professor who specializes in sexual trauma.

“FGM not only cuts the flesh but affects its victims mentally and emotionally for the rest of their lives,” Gary said. “They feel guilty and ashamed about pleasure and sensuality and those feelings are deeply ingrained. That’s why Clitoraid considers counseling as important as the surgery itself, and we made sure to include it in our program.”
She added that the new patients will also have the opportunity to take part in a workshop that incorporates the self-love teachings of sexologist Betty Dodson, who volunteered to assist the women during the post-op months of the recovery process.

How clitoral repair surgery restores pleasure
“The restoration [of sexual pleasure] is possible because the entire clitoris is sensory, not just the amputated portion,” Bowers explained. “Sensation is robbed [through FGM] because the amputated portion retracts back and then gets covered by scar tissue. The clitoris is foreshortened by FGM but it isn’t removed – not even a majority of it. The restoration surgery exposes the clitoral stump. Then, with plastic surgery techniques, we are able to bring the exposed portion to the surface, suture it there and even create new labia minora in many cases by utilizing the available surrounding skin. The exposed sensory portion, free of overlying skin and scar tissue, is then there to function.”

Please download Clitoraid Info Package Clitoraid Information Package 2009

by Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs

(February 2009) An estimated 100 million to 140 million girls and women worldwide have undergone female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and more than 3 million girls are at risk for cutting each year on the African continent alone. FGM/C is generally performed on girls between ages 4 and 12, although it is practiced in some cultures as early as a few days after birth or as late as just prior to marriage. FGM/C poses serious physical and mental health risks for women and young girls. According to a 2006 WHO study, FGM/C can be linked to increased complications in childbirth and even maternal deaths. Other side effects include severe pain, hemorrhage, tetanus, infection, infertility, cysts and abscesses, urinary incontinence, and psychological and sexual problems. Since the early 1990s, FGM/C has gained recognition as a health and human rights issue.

On Feb. 6, 2003, the First Lady of Nigeria, Mrs. Stella Obasanjo, made the official declaration on "Zero Tolerance to FGM" in Africa during a conference organized by the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (IAC), a nongovernmental network headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In her statement, Mrs. Obasanjo praised the work that had been done since the early 1930s at the local, regional, and international levels.

"However," she said, "IAC has come to a stage where a paradigm shift would move the gains we have made so far by having a common agenda which will provide a common framework to intensify and collaborate our activities at the different levels while respecting our diversities. In light of this, IAC has decided to declare 6 February of every year The Day of 'Zero Tolerance to FGM.' The zero tolerance forum will be an initiative which will bring all our efforts to celebrate, reflect and deliberate on FGM, and to renew our commitment to liberate African Women from cultural and traditional belief systems that are inimical to the sexual and reproductive rights of women in the continent. We are together in this with our sisters and brothers in the Diaspora whose efforts we wish to recognize."

After outlining ways in which "wives of Heads of State on the African Continent" and all of the members of the IAC and various donors can move this common agenda forward, she ended by saying, "I, Chief (Mrs.) Stella Obasanjo, First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, on behalf of all the First Ladies of Africa, hereby append my signature on this day, 6th of February 2003, as The Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM."

Subsequently, the 6th of February was adopted by the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights as the International Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM, and ceremonies marking this day have taken place around the world.

PRB marks Zero Tolerance to FGM Day by highlighting our work to bring attention to and present accurate data on this practice that affects millions of women and young girls worldwide.

Prevalence of FGM/C Among Younger and Older Women



To read the full text of the declaration, see .

Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs is program director, Gender, at the Population Reference Bureau.