Two Kenyan Women Plead Guilty to Circumcising Each Other, Say they Wanted to Save their Children from Death

Two Kenyan women arrested for allegedly circumcising each other were on Friday arraigned before Marimanti Law Courts in Tharaka Nithi County.

Appearing before Senior Resident Magistrate Peter Maina, 27-year-old Winjoy Wanja and Julia Ngugi, 25, pleaded guilty to committing the offense.

Winjoy and Julia, who are married to brothers, told the court that they circumcised each other using a razor blade to save their children from a generational curse.

The two claimed that a great grandmother left a curse threatening that all married women in their husbands' family must undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) failure to which all their children would perish.

Wanja and Ngugi further told the court that they were being haunted by the spirits of their husbands' great grandmother because they were uncircumcised.

They alleged that the spirit appeared to them while asleep, asking them to choose between getting circumcised and losing their children.

"We decided to circumcise each other to avoid the death of our children," said Wanja, a mother of three.

They said that they only learned about the curse after the spirits began haunting them, adding that their husbands had not informed them about it. The two further claimed that the spirit stopped tormenting them after performing the act.

"After we circumcised each other the spirit stopped haunting us," said Ngugi, a mother of two.

The court ordered the suspects to remain in custody until November 14th, 2019.

Kenya outlawed the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in 2011.