When I heard the recent May announcement by the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP), to take a neutral stand on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and allow doctors to do a genital “nick” on little girls, I remembered the girl I will call “Lily. “
She was a Hmong-American girl and one of my best friends when I was in college.
Lily came across as a cheerful and carefree person, but it was only when I got to know her closely that I found out that she had a deep and painful secret. When she was about thirteen years old, and living in the mid-west, a Hmong American man kidnapped her and held her hostage in his house, where he also raped her. In the eyes of the Hmong American community Lily was now “married” to this man. Read the whole article here
