Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): A multidisciplinary approach to the presentation, investigation and prosecution

Dr Deborah Hodes has been a consultant community paediatrician since 1990. In 2003 she started working at University College London Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) where she is currently employed. She was named doctor in the Camden Community trust from 2003 till 2014 and designated doctor for the London Borough of Camden from 2014 to 2020. She has been the lead paediatrician at the Lighthouse service for sexually abused children and young people alleging historic sexual abuse since it opened in 2018.

Her interest in safeguarding includes clinical work, management, research and teaching.  She developed a very successful and busy tertiary safeguarding clinic at UCLH, where children with suspicion of abuse and neglect were referred and has two publications describing this cohort of children. She has long experience of being a witness in criminal and family court for her patients over the years

At UCLH in 2014, she co-established a dedicated service for girls less than 18 years of age with suspected or reported female genital mutilation (FGM). This multidisciplinary clinic is the only one of its kind in the UK.  She was the expert witness for the prosecution in two cases of FGM in the UK and ROI where there were successful convictions.

She has contributed to the work of the Royal College of paediatrics and child health including teaching on safeguarding in particular child sexual abuse on many courses over the years, chairing the Child Protection Special Interest Group (CPSIG) and being a member of the Child protection standing committee until 2018.

She has carried out research in the area of FGM and child abuse and neglect and published widely and contributed to textbooks on the subject of child abuse and neglect. ​

Inspector Allen Davis joined the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in 1996 and has an extensive background in developing a multi-agency strategic response to complex public protection issues.  He is the MPS operational lead for harmful practices (FGM, forced marriage, honour-based abuse and abuse linked to witchcraft and spirit possession) and works at both a national and international level on these issues.   

He is deputy chair of the National Working Group on abuse linked to witchcraft and spirit possession and is the national lead for operation limelight; a multi-agency safeguarding operation that focuses on harmful practices at the UK border.  

Inspector Davis is also co-chair of the London Chemsex Working Group and established Project Sagamore, the multi-agency strategic response to crime-related risk, harm and vulnerability within the Chemsex context.  He also leads the MPS operational response to sex work. 

Outside of work, he is the founder and chair of the board of trustees of the charity, ‘Growing Against Violence (GAV).  GAV has delivered evidenced based preventative education curricula tackling peer-on-peer exploitation to over 226,000 students in more than 1150 schools and colleges. 

Dexter Dias is an award-winning human rights barrister and visiting researcher at Cambridge University (and previously Harvard, where he was a visiting fellow).   

He has counselled in many high-profile cases including multiple murders, contentious deaths in state custody, genocide, terrorism, national security, freedom of expression and institutional racism. 

He was the principal author of the bar human rights committee’s report to parliament on FGM, which was endorsed by the home affairs select committee and contributed to changing the UK FGM law by strengthening the safeguarding mechanism. He has particular expertise in violence against women and girls, domestic violence and abuse and the rights of children.   

His internationally published bestselling book The Ten Types of Human (2018) explores the interface between human rights and human psychology and was BBC R2 book of the month and a Waterstones book of the year selection.  His legal expertise is regularly sought by international think tanks, NHS England, UNICEF, Google Talks, TED, INQUEST, Bar Council, Plan International, UN Women, Refuge, numerous universities and (especially low SES) schools.  His TED talk on racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd has over 1.6 million views and is one of the most viewed about race on TED